Knowledge Process Outsourcing

Knowledge Process Outsourcing (KPO) The new Mantra That Cheers!!!

No doubt the time is changing and can India remain unchanged? Definitely not, India is on the run, if the “Wharton and Boston” consulting group’s report is any indication. “Once upon a time there was a nation by name India which lived by doing data entry works for the whole world” is passe. Now that it is a nation which exports knowledge (as if it has got exportable surplus of knowledge!) and earns a trillion bucks.

They further claim that India’s outsourcing industry is traveling beyond traditional fields like medical-transcription, call center jobs and other transaction intensive services to “KPO” (knowledge process out-sourcing) services where power of judgment, discretion makings, cutting edge knowledge are the tools. If knowledge is power as the adage goes India must be the most powerful nation in the world.

If the whole world is an office, India was so far a clerk in it. Now the old clerk is undergoing training to be promoted for the post of junior manager, glad news indeed! Indians generally celebrate auspicious occasions by serving sweets like laddu and jelebi, now the question is when India is getting promotion, who will serve sweets to whom.

The memory is still fresh in the mind of the author, when the Janata Party first came to power after emergency, Raj Narayan-the crazy old law minister- was forcing laddus (a cricket ball shaped Indian sweet) in to the mouths of the bewildered foreign dignitaries).

The present ministry by god’s grace is devoid of such pranksters and as Raj Narayan is dead we will have to discover some others to do the force feeding.

George Bush who boldly stood firmly behind outsourcing band-wagon, even at the time of US election definitely deserves a cartload of laddus, because he can be qualified as the father of outsourcing! The author is suggests Mr. Bush for this laddu award and will be able to eat it one by one when haunted by Iraq-war and the ever mightier congress which is determined to give him no peace of mind.

Indian advocates argue cases in oversees courts for their clients abroad and Indian Chartered accountants deal the files and give guidance to their clients overseas. The author is sorry of only one thing that nobody is approaching us to outsource the multifarious skills of our ministers and politicians; if some of them were exported overseas India would have been a much better place to live in. The exporting of the politicians should be done only on one condition: “things once exported will not be taken back under any circumstances”

The one billion dollar contract ‘Tech Mahindra has won in the previous month from British Telecom was one of the biggest out-sourcing deals signed by Indian firms so far (Tech Mahindra is the Indian arm of British Telecom never diminishes the size of the deal). If Wharton and Boston is right this was only a beginning the real multi-billion deals are only in the pipeline!

The voracious elephant that is India is not content with just the exporting of knowledge it has determined to foray in to bulk manufacturing of mobiles, auto-parts, engineering etc etc. Multinational giants like Nokia, Ford, LG, Motorola, are busy in negotiating with Mr. Dayanidhi Maran (India’s Minister for IT and telecom) in staring production centers here. Mr.Maran has only one condition, the production unit should be located only in Tamilnadu (his home state), if that is agreed all other things are OK.

Just think of a time when all these units start functioning, the two thousand billion Rs. Investments on which Mr. Narendramodi (CM of Gujarath) boasts at present will be left in some dark and cold corner without much limelight.

The author who is very optimistic about the future of this land is impatiently waiting to use a handset that is manufactured in India at present he is engaged in swatting mosquitoes with a “made in China” electric bat! And his children are playing with “made in China” toy cars. Why can’t this knowledge exporter make a good mosquito swatter or a good toy-car? Can make real cars but can’t make a quality toy car!

Once the author asked these questions to one biggie and his answer was that, “toys and such small items are reserved for small scale sectors and they have neither capital nor technology to make good things. Even if they make good things, the economies of scale will make the products expensive, moreover lack of marketing network will kill the industry, and hence we have to import them from China as long as such a law exists”. The author has not believed his statement, is it true that such a law is there? Will anybody give an answer?

China is India’s neighbor and importing things from it is no crime. That is not the issue, why India has made such rules and still keeps it unchanged so far, even if it is against the existence and growth of labor intensive industries of our own land. Will our PM and FM listen?