"WHO is this Berners-Lee, that you are so excited about?" my father queried. He had been quite surprised to have me talk incessantly about Sir Tim Berners-Lee and his achievements all time (especially, as the date of my interaction with him came nearer and nearer). I explained to Pa the wonders of the Web, the magic of the Internet, and how the 'father of the Web' was responsible for it in so many ways. Somehow, I couldn't impress my Pa much, so, I told him a small fact a wee bit exaggerated, that had Sir Tim patented the WWW invention, he could have been many more times richer than Bill Gates. Bringing Gates into the topic was what one calls; coup de grace, as suddenly Pa too developed respect for Sir Tim, after all who wouldn't want to be as rich, if not many times more richer, than Gates.
Yet, so often, Sir Tim has debunked the thought. He argues that had he patented his invention, it wouldn't have spread the way it has. Still, his supposedly altruistic action has added sheen to his persona and earned him respect and adulation from all quarters. For me, personally, speaking to him was a high point of my professional life. For years, I have read and heard about Sir Tim, and when I finally got to talk to him, it was just amazing.
In an hour or so, we discussed the evolution of the web and also the future of it. Sir Tim also seemed very inquisitive about the way India was adopting the Web and asked me time and again on how things were on the ground. For instance, he is very keen that there is more content in local languages on the Web, as it represents the diversity of the Web. "Diversity is important for the planet. We need to have diversity of cultures, of languages, of points of views, of ways of looking at problems and solving them. Without that the human race will not have its incredible richness," he says.
This interview was published in the Dataquest magazine in an abridged form, after all, it is hard to print ten pages of content. Yet, everything that Sir Tim said in his soft and learned voice is of immense value, as he has become the ombudsman of the Web, a caretaker, a guardian. Hence, I publish here, the complete transcript of the interaction we had. I do hope, sometime in the near future, I get to interact with him again, there is just so much to ask to him.
Even my Pa has a query for him now, "Why did you not become (as rich) like Bill Gates?" Forgive my old man and thank heavens that Sir Tim is not.
*************************
'I think the opening up of the free flow of information (on the Internet) is inevitable'
“Quite an ordinary person,” is a term that Sir Tim Berners-Lee uses for self. Nonetheless, the world that refers him as the “father of the Web” chooses to disagree. It was in the early nineties, while working at CERN; Sir Tim proposed a project based on the concept of hypertext, to facilitate sharing and updating information among researchers. The project is now known as the World Wide Web (WWW), or simply as the Web. Sir Tim did not patent his invention and made it available freely so that it could be adopted and spreads rapidly. It has indeed, according to Internet World Stats there are an estimated 1.2 billion Internet users spread across the different continents. And the usage is growing at an astounding 244.7%, especially in Asia and countries like India and China.
Currently, Sir Tim is the director of the World Wide Web Consortium or W3C, an international standards organization that oversees the evolution of the web. The ‘father of the Web’ has now taken on the role of caretaker and is often talking about different issues that hinder or are beneficial, for instance semantic Web, net neutrality or introduction of domains like .mobi or .xxx. He is also very excited about the prospects of mobile web and hopes that countries like India that have a huge population of mobile users could benefit from it. Sitting at the W3C HQ at MIT, Massachusetts, Sir Tim is very interested on how the Web is playing out in India and is there an explosion of Indian local languages on the Web.
In an extensive interaction with Dataquest, Sir Tim talks talks about different issues be it India’s limited role on a global scale or how could what he thinks of Web 3.0. Excerpts.
Let’s start the discussion with India; with 3.6% of Web users -- some 40 million – India is the 4th largest in terms of sheer numbers. Yet, the nation and its people have so little say on how the Web is run, moderated or evolves. What do you make of that?
When you say that India has little to say how the Web is run, moderated or evolves, there are numerous aspects to it. First thing is content. On that front, Web is a very open space where anybody can publish what they want. Basically, it all comes down to having enterprise and creativity of individuals to put up a Website or a blog and of course there is an increasing number of Indian Websites with local and global content. One of the most important feature about the Web is its diversity, not just about languages and culture but also in terms of social things, the fact that you don’t have to put up really professional things, you could just put up amateur things, just about anything. The bar has been set pretty low, so as to say. So if people 
things that some subject or certain languages are under-represented on the Web, I would encourage them to fix that.
Second level is the standards. Traditionally hypermedia has been the crux of the Web, namely interlinked text documents with pictures, but now we are also seeing a lot of audio and video on the Web. Another interesting area is the publication of data on the Web, data about all kinds of people, about the way they are connected, about products, about weather, and so on. Things keep evolving over the Internet and standards are a process of this evolution.
Personally, I want to have participation in the standard setting process from every part of the globe and I would encourage people in India to involve in the process. There is a W3C office in India which we set up to for helpdesk, to help small local groups, it can be approached for guidance. Standard setting process is basically an international activity, so any W3C working group that has an inclination or an idea can be involved. So one possibility in which people in India can choose and direct the further evolution of the Web is by getting involved in the standard setting process.
Finally, there comes the infrastructure. There is little governance of the underlying infrastructure like domain names, etc. But that is relatively small part of the social governance. What really drives or rather regulates the Web is more of social laws of the land, laws regarding copyright and libel and contracts and these differ from nation to nation. India has always been a part of the Web, I expect it to play a bigger role in the coming years.
How do you feel about the fact that millions of millions of people in Sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America or even in rural parts of India and China are completely oblivious and touched by the wonders of the Web or the Internet?
I have often pondered upon this, and feel that a lot many things are inter-linked here. First and foremost, Web is not the be all and end all of everything and I do not think that it should be forced on anybody. Many countries in Africa or Latin America already have a long list of things including clean water, healthcare, peace, etc. that are a priority. And history tells us, that many of these social development things have been achieved in the past without the Internet.
So we have to make sure that, while we are very excited (have heard very positive stories about Internet connectivity helping the population in developing countries), it is important, that we do not get distracted by it. The rush for fiber optics should not come at the cost of clean water and healthcare.
Yet, I do feel it is the duty of the developed countries to help the developing countries in as many ways. There is an ethical duty that any developed nation must help a developing country.
There is also this view that the Web is basically a tool for the educated and the elite, what is your take?
Well, to be honest, if one looks randomly, there indeed seems to be a bias on the Web. The bias comes from two ends, one is the language, there is disproportionate amount of content in English and secondly, the type of content, a large amount of this content is rather technical in nature. So you can easily find content on technical topics using the search engines. For instance, if a same term is used to describe something technical, or musical or historical, you would be more likely to find the technical paper. That is simply, because technical people are more apt to use the Internet and thus more apt to put things on the Web. Hence, there has been a skew that has existed from the beginning. The good part is, it is becoming less and less strong.
There are basically two things that inhibit a person in rural India in regards to using the Web. First, there is the physical level, namely the computer or an Internet connection. In that 
respect, Net is a tool that requires certain amount of technology available before it can be used. That would change as more and more people in rural areas get access to technology, as the prices of the terminals and computers come down or even with the introduction of smart phones with Web browsers. That is bound to change, so that we will have more and more people with access to the Web.
I have great hope on the mobile device and feel that mobile devices will bring the Web to very many more people. We at the W3C consortium have a Mobile Web initiative, which is designed to promote the use of Web on the mobile devices and also impress upon Website designers to keep in mind the small screen size of the mobile phone when they design a Website. Some are easy on the phone screens and some are not, so we are promoting the best practices in Web designing. This will not only help the person or the corporation to reach the executive on the handheld but also the person browsing the Web in rural India using a mobile device.
Now, let me come to the language barrier, namely accessibility in the given language, I feel strongly on the issue. The standards that we promote at the consortium have a very strong internationalization angle to them. We have an internationalize team which ensures that standards don’t have a bias to one particular culture. So most of the standards use XML, and XML uses Unicode. So we try to make Web work with different systems of writing and different characters used in languages. When the technology is completely internationalized and localized, still there will exist a big gulf in terms of provision of content in ones local language. That is something that really Indians have to do, i.e., creation and translation of content into Indian languages.
What I suspect that Web in local languages will explode in a similar sort of a way as in English. It may be that English becomes the common language for things that can only be in one language and then would come the local or the regional language. In the near future, possibly Chinese will become very common on the net due to the large number of people who speak that language. I feel people will end up learning two languages, one is an international language like English and the local language.
Personally, I hope that we don’t lose the diversity of the Web, diversity is important for the Web. In fact, diversity is important for the planet. We need to have diversity of cultures, of languages, of points of views, of ways of looking at problems and solving them. Without that the human race will not have its incredible richness.
You have often spoken very strongly about the universitality of the Web. But is it really universal in a manner of speaking, with numerous governments monitoring and block the flow of information like in China, Saudi Arabia and even to some extent in India?
That is an interesting thought. I grew up in the west, and I believe that openness and government are very important. I believe there are very small number of dangerous things that should be really banned. Certain things are just illegal, like, child pornography, communal incitement, criminal activity, etc.
But I also think that free speech is very important. I do also feel that anonymous free speech can sometimes be dangerous because it can be used to spread lies. I think the ability to blog and be frank is a great tool and medium but bloggers should bear certain responsibilities. I feel bloggers sometimes do not realize that they have major force, if they mean or misrepresent things and it can have a very negative effect. In the days to come general openness will increase inexorably because people understand what they are missing and will demand it.
However, I realize also that countries that are used to having very strong control on information flow, it is impossible to change instantly. So I think these changes will happen over time, at times there might be a few setbacks, but I think the opening up of the free flow of information is inevitable.
What do you think of the enterprises colluding with repressive regimes for commercial gains, like Yahoo that helped in the prosecution of a blogger or Google filtering the search results in China?
I am really not in the position to comment on individual cases as I do not know them well enough. It is very tricky decision. I know that the companies have stated that they were forced into areas of compromise. I think compromises can sometimes be very essential for progress and can at times be very disastrous. I am in no position to really weigh whether these compromises were fair enough, or wise or not, history will be the best judge.
You have been talking extensively about Semantic Web or Data Web. When do you think it will be a reality?
It is evolving at the moment. The data Web is in small stages, but it is a reality, for instance there is a Web of data about all kinds of things, like there is a Web of data about proteins, it is in very early stages. When it comes to publicly accessible data, there is an explosion of data Web in the life sciences community. When you look about data for proteins and genes, and cell biology and biological pathways, lots of companies are very excited. We have a healthcare and life sciences interest group at the Consortium, which is coordinating lot of interest out there.
Meanwhile, there are various data projects to create link data that is data with which you can browse unlike browsing that we do normally on the Web. With Link data, you can do things like produce tables and map and put them in spreadsheet. The possibilities are endless. So the data Web is in fact starting to catch up, people are understanding how to use it as a data integration system. Under this new term link data, it has only been around for year or so, there is growing rate of data that is actually on the Web that allows you to start exploring one piece of data and pulling other related data and process it together.
Do you think, developing countries that have relatively less Internet penetration can leapfrog to Web 3.0 or Semantic Web?
I believe that is always the case. A country that is developing tends to leapfrog over its developed peers in terms of technology, so for example, I would expect developing countries when they put data on the Web (especially the government) to use RDF or Resource Description Framework. RDF integrates a variety of applications using XML. This is a truly great way to disseminate data. For example if the Indian government has say census data, or rainfall data or even train timings. If they put the data on the Web using the semantic data standards, then anybody can write a Website which can use that train timings data and display them in their own language, as data is global and does not have a language. And that is one of the exciting things about semantic Web, when you put the data out there you are not putting the data in English or in Hindi, you are putting it up just as data. Essentially data is numbers, and these numbers can be displayed in different languages. So the train names, station names, etc can be converted into multiple languages without human intervention.
In the west, for example in England and in America, that governments are putting up data and other Websites are picking up data from these government Websites, reusing it and making their own Websites. So Mysociety.org or Govtrack.org is a Website that tracks the US government by taking the data from US government Websites. So anybody can use this data and generate Websites automatically in different localized languages. In these ways and more, I think the semantic Web is more accessible and more international, you could produce a Braille version, you could produce a speaking version, based on the same data. I am very excited about the prospects and possibilities presented by semantic Web.
Wanted your take on the different jargons that one comes across, Web 2.0, Web 3.0, I even came across something like Web 2.5?
(Laughs) These numbers just keep floating around. The term Web 2.0 was invented by Tim O Reilly, it started by being a name for a conference on evolving technology and the term caught on and people started using it generally to describe what seems to be happening now and what we think would be happening in the future. I tend to talk more about sets of standards, about specifics. What I really think in the future, the mobile Web will be a big thing in the next ten years or so. The difference being that Web on mobile devices is going to be much bigger.
In fact mobile devices accessing the Web will be much larger than fixed devices. In the future, data will be accessible in lots of different ways. Today, the term Web 2.0 is used for Websites where the users generate the content. So I think, when people use the term Web 2.0 it is more about user 
generated content. But these different Websites do not interconnect, in the future, I would not call it Web 3.0, users would want their data to be interconnected. If they upload the photographs to different Websites, then they want to be able to see the photographs using the same tools.
For that they will need semantic Web that interconnects all. It would be like, I have given you my data, now give it back to me, because I need to be able to reuse it. Now I need to make a scrapbook, now I need to look at whole year the photos I have uploaded to different communities. I want to look at all my content, some of my friends are in Orkut some are in life journal. Now what I want as a user if I have my friend circle in Life Journal for example, then I use other tools to explore who I know including people in Life Journal and other online communities. We will see the interconnecting of data from different sites and that is an important part of Semantic Web.
You have also been a staunch supporter of Net Neutrality. How do you perceive the threat and what needs to be done to safeguard it?
The threat is mainly an American phenomenon, I think Net Neutrality is treasured so much by the user community that I don’t think there is a serious chance that we will loose it. But that does not mean that the threat isn’t there. Lot of countries and even companies would like to be able to control the Internet, because it is always very valuable to control the flow of information.
And as we have seen, some governments can’t stand on their merits, they feel they have to limit the flow of information. Meanwhile, if companies can control what you see, they can control what you buy, and where you buy from. They could also control what political things you se as well. The fact that the platform is neutral is very important, the threat at the moment in the US.
Currently, my Internet connectivity is actually provided through my TV cable, you the company that use to sell me television feed now sells me Internet over the same cable. Suppose I go to a site like Google Video or Youtube, or I download a movie using iTunes. But suddenly I find that the Internet signals have been blocked and when I call my cable company and they say that “Sorry but we can’t let you watch videos from Websites, because we reckon that if you want to watch a movie it would be better if you chose it from our library and watch in on your TV. Since you have signed up for Internet access from us, you must buy up movies from our Website.” These companies could try and dictate what we see and how we see it.
Can you share an instance of such an event?
In fact if you look at the movie industry, and of course India has its own internationally famous movie industry, at the moment it is very complicated to be able to access movies. Of course there are different channels, there are cinema halls, DVDs, etc. but it is still very complicated. If for instance you are an Indian in London and want to access a whole selection of Bollywood movies, you possibly can’t because your local store might not have it. Movies over the Internet may actually open up the whole film industry to a much wider and diverse group of people making films. It may allow a lot of films to be made available in different languages and independently of place. So you could watch a film in your mother tongue from any part of the world. And of course there will be other things like more choice due to documentaries, and other independent films which don’t have a big following but some people are passionate about.
In most industries and as on the Web, you see what’s called the long tail, a few very heavily used sites and a large number of very likely used sites. This is the typical way of distribution. The long tail is necessary, as you homogeneity from a host of popular Websites, but also the diversity that is available from the long tail of diverse Websites. And this balance does not exist in the movie industry at the moment, so there maybe a bit of a shakeup and there maybe a huge reinvigoration for the movie industry when it happens.
Obviously the companies that deliver movies at the moment in the traditional way will have to learn to change. That’s does not mean that they will go away, they would learn to adapt as book stores learnt to adapt to the Internet and they didn’t go away neither do the books. So that is one example of a change that could be threatened by ISPs, if the providers are given control of what you see. But my worries are of macro kind, for instance if certain political party pays an ISP for not giving access to a rivals Website, etc. There are all kind of ways which you can imagine. If you do not have rules, there are all kinds of way in which net neutrality can be damaged.
Does the shift from current Web technologies to future correspond your idea of “from interactive to intercreative”?
I think that’s an interesting shift at the moment. I coined that word intercreative a long time ago. In order to get people to work in the direction of building things together and solving problems together. So it is about group being more smarter than the individual. The original Web browser which I wrote, was also one in which you could edit, make links and save the links very easily. My original vision was that everybody would be an editor, everybody would be a part of space where they can write. You could make links from one page to another by pressing the correct control links.
The fact that blogs and wikis have taken off, confirms by belief that people really need to be creative rather than reap up other people’s things. I think both blogs and wikis demonstrate how you can have a very positive creativity emanating from a lot of people. I think blog is one particular genre, it allows one person to publish and sometimes other people to comment and it works by people making links with each other. As these blogs link to each other, if people are interested in a particular topic, they can find out what other people are thinking by using these links.
The blog is very particularly interestingly constrained form of this genre. Then the wikis is another genre where whole lot of people will get together and everybody would try and hone a project, like an encyclopedia, or common information about what they should do on a vacation. And we would see very many different genres appearing in the future.
One of the things we haven’t seen on the Web really is workflow, where you can very easily set up systems, where for instance we are working on a broad set of activities, I am working on one set and you are working on other, we can setup Web systems that can make that very easy. We have easy tools that help us in collaboration. We do have things like issue tracker on the Web, which is very useful in terms of projects help keep tracks of different.
A very important area of intercreativity is how we make communal decisions, I suppose it is self government. That involves the lost art of argumentation, how do we make arguments. So I would love to see, tools on the Web which support reasonable argument, allow people to put up a thought in the spirit that it is there to be challenged and allow people to build pieces, allow challenges to quote sources. I can imagine a Website where you would have people debating and quoting facts and statistics that can be tracked by anybody through the links. 
I am living in America at the moment, we ourselves use the Web extensively in our work. The working groups makes standards and have people or groups contributing in from all over the world. Web is used to build a consensus. To that end, the art of building consensus and using Web as a tool to that I hope to see much more powerfully done in the future
You have spoken against the addition of new tier of domain names like .mobi, .xxx, etc. Why is that?
We have spoken about the mobile Web and how different people would be accessing the Web at different times and on different devices, a very great diversity. You have a screen with 3 million pixels one moment and would have a 3 inch screen the next moment.
But is important that if I refer to something like train timetable for example and if I bookmark it using my phone, I can view it on my computer screen. Hence, it very important that the same URI works on different devices. The problem with .mobi, I didn’t want to have a domain that limited accessibility from certain devices, small devices in this regard. Then this would mean that, there would be a different URI for the computer and mobile devices. I fail to understand the need for it. The important thing is that the same URI should work, I don’t want to keep track of two URI for same thing, and I do not want to keep two bookmarks of same thing, depending on whether I am using my computer or my mobile device. It is very pragmatical engineering reason.
The engineering of the Web depends on you have a general one URI for something and wherever you use it, it works, irrespective of the software or the hardware you are using. That is part of the universitality of the Web. I think the consortium behind .mobi have the best intention because they are trying to -- and we are working closely with them -- see a lot of content available from mobile devices. But architecturally I feel that .mobi is a gimmick, the same URI should work very well on different devices.
But again from a developing country’s perspective, not many domain names are available, as people have already booked the .com domain. Do you not think it is an uneven proposition?
That’s a sad reality. You will not find short ones available, but you will certainly find the longer ones. Also, there are the local domain names. I know for instance a lot of people in the UK do not use .com very much but rather .co.uk and then there is a whole Indian domain (.in) which is available to for India to manage.
And I would recommend, like in UK, .org is only used by non-profit. I think that .co.in is a very respectable domain name like .co.uk is a very respectable domain name in the UK. That gives you an access to a lot of words. I also think that people are going in for quite long words, long names for domain names and as public gets more and more used to it, you would see the number increase hugely and people making up new names or words.
What do you make of the tussle between ICANN and other nations over the ownership of domain names?
The roots of the domain named should not be owned, it is a public domain resource and it should be managed very carefully for the people of the world. There is a lot of management that has to be done for the domain names and it has to be done carefully. As you know I am not in favor of creating just top level domain left, right and center. I think the Internet can happily survive for the next ten years without the need of a new top level domain. I think most of the time people are doing this not because they think it will help the society but because they can own a whole lot of Internet real estate. For instance I don’t think that the .info domain has really helped as very much, people still feel they should get a .com and it only adds to the confusion if different companies have the .com, .biz and so on. And there isn’t very clear definition what each domain is for.
I think that the top level domains, it is very important, are run fairly internationally with a fair representation of businesses and consumers worldwide, not just the companies that run the Internet. I think that whenever you have something that represents the whole world, like the United Nations, it becomes bureaucratic and it becomes slow, because it takes a long time to take into account everybody’s point of view. So we should be prepared to put up with some bureaucracy.
We don’t need a domain name system in which you could very very quickly get a new domain name. Domain names are not the most critical part for the functioning of the Web. The Web depends on the development of standards, I think we should put our energy into creating new standards, bringing new technologies, like open standards for video, encoding, open standards for data communication, putting scientific and clinical data out there on the Web, to spread that sort of information between countries. I think that sort of thing is very important, that’s where our energy should be spent.
You have also warned about the dark side of the Internet or the Dark Net. It seems quite morbid, what is the threat level here?
I never spoke about the Dark Net, the article that BBC put up was just a case of very bad reporting. At times reporters seem to be more interested in bad things. What happened was that I had a long discussion with various reporters, and I think there was somebody from the Guardian asked if there was anything that I was worried for and I said yes, there are lot of things that one could worry about. And this was blown out of proportion and the report said that the inventor of the Web is very worried about the dark side of the Web. Whereas most of the conversation we had, like the one we are having now, was about very strong hopes for the future and tremendous excitement about very positive things.
For instance, when you asked specifically what concerns I have and I spoke about Net Neutrality, but then I am very optimistic about humanity and am sure we will have neutrality because a vast majority of users of the Web understand how important it is. And they would fight for it, as you said they have fought in India.
Which aspect of the current Web impresses you the most, say, like Wikipedia, Orkut or even Second Life?
I think that all of that is very interesting. I never had any favorite, I think Second Life kind of thing or virtual reality is very interesting because as the screens will get bigger and processors will get much more faster and smarter, these Websites would become even more compelling, Thus I think there could be lots of positive things that emerge out Websites like Second Life but in that area I think standardization and openness would be very important. So all the things that you mentioned like social networking, are generally very positive, there could many more things to come, it is just not over.
Shashwat DC
Interview: Sir Tim Berners-Lee
Feature: BPO Employee Satisfaction Survey 2007
IF some sociologist were to study the last few years of changing patterns of Indian society, surely he or she would be impressed and mystified by the impact of BPO on Indian youth. Not many moons back, Call Centers were a strict no! no! The late nights were looked down by suspicious neighbours, parents would embarrassingly stutter when asked what their children were doing and friends who were working in day-jobs, would chide their lesser BPO pals. Employees in call centers lived in a virtual bubble, a universe of their own, working in the nights and sleeping through the days. Little wonder, so many marriages were made and unmade in these very call centers.But one critical thing was though different: the money was always better.
As the country underwent change thanks to Manmohan Uncle and his market liberalization policies, so did the society. The content-family structure was replaced by ambitious-nuclear families. Suddenly, things like DINKs (Double Income No Kids) and the Metro-sexual Man, and other tags became fashionable. In this scenario, the high-paid BPO population were no longer social outcasts but rather a model of changing India. Those halter tops and low waist jeans, the date allowance and the valentine parties, the pick-up and drops and the Sodex-ho coupons, were all so much alluring. BPO employees were buying flats in beautiful colonies, buying latest cars and taking an annual vacation to an European location. In a few years time, Call center was 'THE' place to work in.
Yet, the great BPO dream is steadily dissipating. As the cost arbitrage enjoyed by the BPO companies withers away due to rising Rupee, the salaries are not growing the way other sectors are. My wife, who works in a reputed IT company, tells me that scores and scores of BPO people are eager and keen to make a shift to normal day jobs, even if it means a nominal pay cut. One of the main factor, beside job satisfaction, is the health factor. BPO employees are not keeping well. The sad part is, not many seem to be listening.
Every year Dataquest in conjunction with IDC India, conducts a comprehensive Employee Satisfaction Survey for BPO industry. The idea is simple to gauge the satisfaction levels from the perspective of the BPO employees. This year, I chiefly just analyzed the data from one perspective health. And was shocked to see that over the years, complains have been rising and yet no one seems to be listening. The story I present below, is quite different from the one published in Dataquest and my editors do not necessarily agree with my interpretation. But, yet,I am presenting the story, merely to highlight the issue and hope someone, somewhere thinks about it. Thinking is the first step of doing. The original Dataquest story can be accessed from the following link (http://dqindia.ciol.com/content/top_stories/2007/107111617.asp)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
BPO E-Sat Survey 2007: Of Sleepless nights and salary hikes
All is not well on the BPO front. Indian BPO employees are suffering from a variety of health related issues, right from sleep related disorders to anxiety attacks. This year’s Employee Satisfaction Survey maps a disturbing trend, the ailing BPO employee. While the attrition has gone up to 20% and the average wage hike as come down to 14.8%, it is the health issues that seem to be the biggest concern.
In a quaint corner of Goregaon suburb, Mumbai, exists Dr. Ramkumar Moorthy’s clinic. Moorthy is a general physician and has been seeing patients in the clinic for over two decades or so. Known to be quite adept, his clinic is often brimming with patients, from kids to septuagenarians. But over the past year or two, there has been a detectable change in profile of patients pay a visit to the clinic. Any given evening, his waiting room is brimming with groggy-eyed irritated teenagers waiting for their turn. These twenty-somethings can be overheard on the phone, asking for an extra day off from their TLs or assuring them that they would reach the office, in time for the log in.
Not prone to worrying, Moorthy is still a wee-bit taken aback by the sheer number of youngsters that are reporting sick. “The number of young patients has indeed gone up by quite many notches over the past few years. I am saddened to see a 26 year old suffering from high blood pressure, or 28 year old from heart ailment,” he says grimly. In all probability Moorthy might be getting more cases due to proximity of his clinic to the BPO nerve center of Mumbai; Malad.
But then, he is not the only one, visit any doctor in your locality and after the stethoscope has touched upon different points on your torso he or she will invariably start talking about how unhealthy today’s youngsters are. Not with disdain but with a touch of pity and many docs blame the BPO companies or what they refer as call-centers for the sudden spike in these numbers. “What else can be the reason?” asks one doctor indolently.
Surely not in the pink
One need not be Einstein to figure out the link between call centers and increasing ill-health among the young work force. Working continuous night-shifts, and often at unearthly hours like 3 am, is bound to take a toll on the body. The body cycle is completely thrown out of gear, and BPO employees often complain of sleep-related disorders or digestion-related problems.
It sheer travesty that not much attention has been given to the health related impact of BPO industry on Indian youth. There hasn’t been any major study conducted on the issue and even Nasscom, that has a BPO forum, also seems to have ignored the issue. Yet, Dataquest and IDC have been tracking health related information of Indian BPO industry through the annual BPO Employee Satisfaction (E-SAT) Survey. Every year, employees are asked to list down factors that cause stress and also the ailments that they are stricken by. Year after year, the list is collated and released as part of the survey.
Most of the times, health takes a backseat to issues like increasing attrition, wage issues, or dipping or upping employee satisfaction levels. But this year, we have decided to play it a tad differently. On going through the data available for the last few years, it is obvious that health related issues are on the rise. As DQ has always stuck out its neck and drawn attention to issues that might turn into whole scale problems, so would we do it this time round.
Going by E-SAT 2007, one thing is apparent; Indian BPO workers are not in the pink of health and if attention is not paid soon enough they would be in the red of it, figuratively speaking. The biggest bane of BPO employees is ever increasing stress, which is the root for numerous other physiological and psychological ailments. Reasons are aplenty, right from working hours to insufficient holidays. The top 5 reasons thrown up by the survey for high stress remain more or less the same as that of last year, namely; travel time, work timing, insufficient holidays, work load and long working hours.
As most of the BPO companies are pinching corners in terms of cost saving, one of the first perk -- home pick-up and drop – has been withdrawn or curtailed. Every major BPO company today at max offers either pick-up or drop, seldom both. Result, half-awake individuals rushing home in the day or half-asleep beings making a dash for office late in the evenings. Except for New Delhi (as there is not much of public transport to talk of), in most of the cities, BPO companies often loath to provide even home pickups or drops, even when it is only one that they do. They prefer to drop or pickup employees from central or vantage points, thereby saving on costs.
While such measures might shore up the company’s bottom line, they are certainly not helping 
the employees. Over 32% of the respondents listed travel time as a major reason for increased stress. Things have come to such a pass, that the few companies that still provide pick-ups and drops are much in demand and HR managers do not forget to mention the benefit at the time of interview. For instance, JP Morgan Chase prominently displays the fact that its employees are provided air-conditioned cars to ferry them to office or drop them back. According to a few HR managers, prospective employees are known to have settled for lesser sums for companies that provide drop and pickup. Little wonder, it can be used a good tool for curbing attrition.
Sleepless in India
Returning after a 9-hour shift in the noon, Shweta Puthran is seldom able to sleep, even though she desperately wants to. It has been a few years since she has been suffering from insomnia, and has even tried sleeping pills. The condition has marginally improved; more so because her biological clock has now got more or less acclimatized to the change, sleeping in the day and
slogging in the night. Yet, there are days when Puthran would keep staring the musty roof, waiting for slumber to set in.
Going by the data available through the E-Sat Survey; sleeping disorder, digestive system related disorder, eye sight problem, severe stomach related problem, depression, are the top 5 ailments afflicting the BPO employees. Insomnia is the most common of the ailments for the industry and it mostly affects the agent or CRE level employees. As manager and senior TLs tend to have flexi timings or at the least take the weekends off. BPO companies that have a high focus on European operations, mostly UK, tend to be more in demand then US-focused BPO companies (since, difference between UK and India is a more manageable 5 ½ hours rather than 12-14 hours, as with the US).
Digestive ailments figure prominently on the list after sleeping related ones. Not surprisingly, as most of the employees are eating at odd hours and more importantly eating odd stuff, from medu vadas at 4 a.m. to American chopsuey at 7 p.m. Junk food has more or less replaced proper meals for BPO employees. According to one physician, BPO employees are increasingly becoming obese and it would result in many more health hazards like Diabetes (type 2), high blood pressure and even heart related ailments.
The other worrying ailments that have increased over the years are psychological ones like depression and anxiety. Indeed, BPO employees are well versed with panic or anxiety attacks, and often a friend or a colleague who has been a victim of the same. The survey has also for the first time collected data on back pain and this year close to 2.34% complained about persistent and niggling back issues. Most of the BPO companies have a doctor on-board but he or she is usually in a reactive mode, i.e. if you have an ailment while at work, you could consult him or her.
A few companies seem to have woken to the issues. Take the case of e4e for instance, it keenly promotes flexi timing as a means of lessening stress. It even has made it mandatory for the managers to ensure that their juniors are taking at least a week off annually. While a lot many have tied up with local gymnasiums and health centers, offering heavy discounts to employees. But it is too little or too less. 
Many would argue that health and stress related statistics has more or less remained constant over the past few years, hence there isn’t much to worry about. But a spike is not necessarily an indicator of a problem, constancy is a big issue as well. For instance, when you are running a high temperature, the big problem is if it does not come down, not whether it keeps going up.
The industry that employs over half a million individuals and accounts for over $8.4 billion annually, needs to relook at things and take corrective measures before things get out of hand. Hopefully, after the publication of this report, associations like Nasscom would look into the issue and hopefully conduct a comprehensive health related study on the BPO employees in India. Till we really know and understand the problems faced by employees, there is little than can be done to help them.
Big versus small
The Indian BPO industry had been growing at a steady rate, even though under a lot of pressure. According to Nasscom estimates the Indian ITES-BPO exports grew from $6.3 billion in FY 2005-06 to $8.4 billion in FY 2006-07 and expected to touch $10.5-11bn in FY08. Employing over 553,000 people, the industry is facing a lot of pressure in terms of competition from other low-cost destinations and Indian economic factors. The biggest bane for exporting BPO firms has been the rising Rupee. As a result, this year the margins have been badly hurt.
Fortunately, Indian BPO companies have so far been able to more or less nullify the ill effects, and continue to grow at a steady rate. There have been two things that BPO companies are doing assiduously over the years, first moving into niche and specialized domain that pays more and secondly they are becoming more productive in terms of seat utilization and a smaller bench. Many BPO companies are looking at KPO seriously, thus even when they continue to 
depend on plain vanilla customer interaction services to provide the bulk of their revenues, they are also looking at niche business services, like financial accounting, HR administration, logistics hand ling, etc. to shore up their revenues.
Returning to the BPO E-Sat 2007. The ratio of bigger BPO companies vis-à-vis smaller ones, more or less remains the same. There are 6 big BPO companies (with over 5000 employees) featured in this years list. It more or less corresponds to last year’s figure.
It is the mid-sized (greater than 1000 and lesser than 5000 employees) companies that take up the maximum ranks. Close to 50% places, as many as 10 mid-sized companies are featured on this year’s survey.
There are lesser small BPO companies this time round. Last year, there were 5 BPO companies (with less than a 1000 employees), this year the number falls down to 3 (though, one of last year’s small company has moved up to being a mid-sized outfit). Out of the three, Equinox Global and Knoah Solutions are making a debut on the list, while Motif India continues to retain its rank at 17.
Of the top 5 BPO companies on the list, 3 of them happen to be big BPO companies, namely IBM Daksh, Genpact and Wipro. The two smaller companies at the top vCustomer and e4e exist solely due to the employee satisfaction score (both have been ranked as number one and two on E-Sat score rank). And that is where the difference lies. The big companies score well on the HR ranks, while the smaller ones score well on the employee satisfaction. But employee satisfaction can be transitionary, it can be won easily and lost easily as well. Thus, smaller companies need to focus more strongly on the process and put them in place.
Movers and shakers
Every year, there are shifts that happen on the list, companies climbing up a few notches and then there are those that fall a few. It always makes an interesting read, as it is more or less gives an idea of the best practices that are working in the marketplace. The biggest fall this year has been that of 24/7 falling to 16th from last year’s 10, a fall of 6 places. The reason behind is not hard to gauge, as the company’s HR score have fallen quite drastically due to decrease in absolute employee strength, average salary hike, average tenure of senior professionals, etc. Even its employee satisfaction has fallen, the areas in which the 24/7 employees were found to be most dissatisfied are; overall satisfaction and company culture.
The other big fall has been that of TCS BPO, falling by 4 places to 13th rank this year. Ironically, while the company’s HR rank has gone up by five places due to huge improvement in the employee size, average salary hike and CTC as compared to the last year. The result, HR rank has increased from 10th to 5th. But the employee dissatisfaction seems to be increasing. The drop on E-Sat Score has been more dramatic than the gains on the HR rank, falling 8 places and standing at 15th this year versus 7th last year. The major area for employee dissatisfaction has been salary and perks.
In terms of gainers, except for the big IBM Daksh debut at the third rank, the biggest gainers are Brigade and EXL Service, both by 2 ranks. Brigade has shown marked improvement in its HR rank basically due to improvement in employee size and average training days in absolute terms. The score in average salary hike has also increased as compared to that of previous year by reasonable amount which has resulted in rise in its rank from 19th to 15th in HR part.
Meanwhile, EXL has shown improvement in employee size, average training days in absolute terms which has resulted in rise in its rank from 7th to 6th in HR part. Whereas it’s E-Sat rank has fallen by a single rank to stand at 14th place this year.
Of the companies that participated last year, 7 were missing this year, namely, Office Tiger Database, ICICI First Source, Sutherland Global Services, SlashSupport, AXA Business Solutions, Keane Worldzen, Integreon. Sadly, these companies did not take part in this year’s survey. Similarly a lot many ‘big’ companies were also missing, like Infosys BPO, WNS, Intelenet, and others. Hopefully, next year these companies would not shy away from sharing data about their employee satisfaction, which is the best indicator of how good or how bad they are doing.
Attrition Blues
Ask any BPO company’s CEO or HR manager, what is his or hers biggest challenge, and attrition is the word that will escape their mouths. The industry’s biggest demon is rampant attrition, with scores of BPO companies looking for talent, BPO professionals are in hot demand and often these fresh out of colleges graduates hop from one job to another, till they can hop no more. With each jump, the package going up by as much as 20%.
But the companies have woken up to this tactic and are loathe to hire job-hopping monkeys. An HR manager working with a reputed BPO company says that nowadays the company lay a lot of significance on the “dependability” of the new recruit and pays much attention to the antecedents. The companies are trying to find potential job hoppers at the interview stage and then not hire them. “Prevention is often better than cure,” she says. Nevertheless, be it no-poaching agreements or not hiring high risk individuals, the average attrition rate has gone up by 2 percentage points, up from 18% last year to 20% this year.
The most common factor for employees leaving an organization or being dissatisfied is money and nothing else. Not much surprising as the BPO industry is in cost-saving mode, the increments are getting lesser and lesser. In fact according to the DQ-IDC Survey, the average salary hike across categories has decreased from 17.2% to 14.8%. It is quite a significant drop and is surely one of the main factors that promote dissatisfaction among the employee base. The second most common reason cited by exiting employees is growth opportunity, followed by higher opportunity and of course job timings. The survey findings reveal that transport facility, work pressure, and work timings are amongst the top reasons for employee dissatisfaction.
A lot of BPO companies are able to arrest attrition through a variety of HR strategies. It has also been noticed that salary is a big issue in everyday voice centric call centers, while in the KPOs the employees are known to put up with lesser amount as long as the work is challenging and interesting. HR managers also seem to support the view and hence are taking more interest in employee’s workload, trying to find cues that trigger an employee to call it quits. In the end, there is just as much as a company can do to control attrition as it is more of an industry wide issue rather than specific to a company or more. And as the BPO companies keep squeezing the salary increments, the attrition is bound to go up.
Innovative HR
As said earlier, it isn’t all about money, honey. Many companies on the E-Sat Survey are employing a variety of innovative HR strategies to hold on to their employees. Take the case of Hyderabad-based Brigade. The company has appointed a Chief Fun Officer that looks into ways and means to ensure that employee stress levels are low and they remain highly motivated. The secret behind Brigade’s joie de vivre is not that hard to miss. As the BPO companies are facing immense pressure due to the squeeze on the margins, retaining good employees is a priority like never before. Frequent hiring and retaining can be quite costly, so if you can hold out to your employees, anything is justified.
Or take the case of Bangalore-based e4e, most of the employees grievances are sorted out during the HR powwows, wherein the management and employees discuss problems face-to-face. The company also has a policy where it is mandatory for employees to take 7 days off in a year and it is the manager’s responsibility to see that his junior takes it.
In both the above instances, the companies were able to arrest attrition by proactively reaching out to employees, e4e has been ranked at number 1 and Brigade number 7 on the E-Sat Score Rank. Similarly a lot many companies are pursuing newer ways of employee retention. At the end, it boils down to innovative HR practices. Going by the data available, smaller and mid-sized BPO companies stand a better chance by being imaginative.
Whither woman?
One of the disturbing trends noticed in BPO E-Sat Survey has been the falling ratio of woman employee base. Based on analysis of figures of common companies who are participating since 2005 in a row, namely, e4e, Genpact, HCL, Ajuba, Motif, Cambridge, the ratio of man Vs woman has been increasing.
In 2005, the man: woman ratio stood at 1.80:1 (12136 males for 6708 females). The ratio increased marginally to 1.97:1 in 2006 (17822 males for 9044 females) and now there are over twice as many men for each woman, 22696 males for 10870 females.
Could it be that women are unable to cope up with the pressures of BPO, namely unearthly timings and high stress and opting out of this industry? There are many assumptions that
one can make, but it is the health one that seems the most plausible. Hopefully as things improve, the ratio will improve in the coming year. It is a misnomer that BPO companies would be a dull place if women start shunning them.
Hard times to come
In the end, the overall satisfaction index has improved over last year, while the average salary increment has fallen proving beyond doubt that an Indian BPO employee expects a lot more than money. Indians are basically an emotional lot, and if BPO companies can touch a chord with their employees, they can often get away with lesser salary hikes.
With the companies facing the squeeze, it all boils down to imagination. Are Indian companies ready to experiment newer and innovative ways of employee retention. For the same we need a new breed of HR managers that do not hide behind management jargons but take the bull by the horns, or rather be ready for a ‘powwow’ with employees. Will they pick up the gauntlet, will be proved in next years E-Sat Survey.
Also let’s hope that next time round, as the BPO companies wake up to health related issues we would have a healthier employee force to contend with. BPO companies are in many ways the custodian of Indian youth, and if they turn a Nelson’s eye to their workforce, a whole generation might have to pay. Let’s cross our fingers that it won’t be so, and that while Moorthy’s practice in Mumbai continues to do well, the number of youngsters sitting in the waiting room would diminish. Amen!
Shashwat DC
Interview: Larry Sanger (Citizendium & Wikipedia)
The other day, I received a very unusual mail. It was a press release from Larry Sanger, editor in chief of Citizendium and co-founder of Wikipedia. The press release read, "One year and thriving". It felt good, as I remembered an extensive interaction I had with him, when Citizendium was launched. And it has been a year already. How time flies doesn't it? Sanger at that time, was certainly saddened by the way Wikipedia had "ill-treated" him, "More than anger, I am pained," he had stated.
Later on, when I had asked Jimmy Wales for an interaction specifically on his take on Citizendium, he had written back; "I am happy to be interviewed by you, but I don't consider either Larry or his little project to be of sufficient interest to be worthy of an interview. I know the media likes to make up stories about people being enemies or rivals, but the truth is, I just don't find that sort of story very interesting at all". I, personally, was saddened, for I have immense respect for Jimbo (as Wales is more popularly known) and I felt for Sanger as well. The rivalry between Sanger and Wales is certainly not a thing to be happy about, like we used to be happy about McNealy Vs. Gates, or Noorda Vs. Gates, etc. Someday in the future, hopefully the hatchet would be buried and bygones would be bygones again.
Meanwhile, Citizendium continues to grow, whereas Wikipedia has become the most renowned source of information on just about anything and everything. In this light, I thought, for the sake of nostalgia, I would put up the interview that I had done with Sanger and as it was published on CIOL and on Dataquest as well.
One of thesedays I intend to call up Sanger, and talk to him about the progress that he has made and how is Citizendium doing. Talking to Sanger was indeed great, especially since he so well versed with things and so keen a listener. He doesn't argue or tries to bow you down to his point, but would rather mildly explain it and show you the merits and leave it there.
*************************
“I believe experts and scholars have a lot to share with the world”
One would be hard pressed to find a person knowing anything about the web and not knowing Wikipedia or its founder Jimmy Wales. Wales is toasted across the globe, and hailed as an icon. Time Magazine even bestowed the sobriquet of a prophet on him. It is a story that hardly needs any mentioning. Yet, there is one small thing that blemishes the beauty of the such startling success, a certain controversy that refuses to die down, a certain name that refuses to be devoured by the demons of anonymity.
Sometime in 2000, Larry Sanger was dining with a friend and discussed the concept of wikis and how users could collaborate in a way like never before. Sanger discussed the same with his boss, Wales (then CEO of Bomis Networks) and thus Wikipedia was born. Sanger’s official designation was ‘chief organizer’, and was also working on another project similar in nature, Nupedia. A few years into the project, precisely in 2002, ideological differences cropped up between Wales and Sanger and both decided to part ways.
In the ensuing years, Wikipedia went on to become a big, big thing. And so the legend of Wales was born. But in all this pomp and festivity, Sanger was left out. In fact his role at Wikipedia is debated even today, Wales questions his claim as a “co-founder” and terming him as just another employee. Sanger seemed to take it all rather stoically, maybe because he is a PhD in philosophy and loves epistemology - the study of the nature and scope of knowledge.
A few months back, Sanger returned with an announcement, he is going to set up an alternative to Wikipedia, the project was named as Citizendium or citizen’s compendium. Sanger claims it is more close to the idea that was really in his mind, when he started Wikipedia.
Currently he is putting things in place for the tentative launch in January 2007. In midst of all this, Sanger spoke to Shashwat Chaturvedi from CyberMedia News at length about his project, and why he is hurt at the way he has been treated by Wales. Excerpts.
Searching information on the Internet is becoming increasingly difficult due to things like clutter and unreliability. It is hard to believe on what is available and yet there is little choice for a person searching for information. Your take..
Precisely. As the Internet is rapidly expanding, the available information is increasing in a way like never before, thereby adding to the clutter. But even so, if you notice there has been a slight
shift in the way we search for information. For instance, if we want something generic we use Google, but if we are on the lookout for something specific, there is Wikipedia. Google is best suited for more general or rather generic information. In fact, one of the best things currently is that, Google even searches inside Wikipedia now.
Reliability of information is a critical issue according to me. And Wikipedia has often been accused of having unreliable information; there are quite a few reasons for it. And that is where Citizendium fits in; it is a citizen compendium of knowledge, moderated by academicians, scholars, editors, etc. Thus bringing credibility to the information that is displayed.
By bringing in academicians, scholars, etc. would not Citizendium be more elitist in nature?
Certainly not. We are not trying to make it elitist in any sort of way; I am just trying to involve a section of the population that so far has not contributed in a major way. There will be complete democracy at Citizendium, similar to what is there on Wikipedia but there would not be mob rule democracy. The role of editors has been clearly defined and whenever a dispute arises, multiple views will be sort. I believe experts and scholars have a lot to share with the world, and Citizendium is just providing them a platform, like it is for everyone else.
In a way, isn’t it like creating an expertopedia akin to Encyclopedia Britannica?
I disagree. The fundamentals of Citizendium are quite the same as that of Wikipedia, but there is a major difference. Wikipedia lacks maturity that is attractive to professor/academics. Things like anonymity are quite off-putting to potential educational contributors. While Citizendium involves these academicians in way it hasn’t been done before. This is the essential difference between Citizendium and Wikipedia. Yet, the method and the aim of both remain alike.
Meanwhile, take the case of Britannica, it is quite picky on articles and is created in a top down fashion. Whereas as Citizendium and Wikipedia for that matter are created efficiently in a bottom-up process. Thus we are much more closer to Wikipedia then we are to say Britannica.
Why will scholars and experts choose to contribute at Citizendium? What is motivation for them to contribute?
Let me first tell you something, it is not as if, scholars and experts did not get involved with Wikipedia. A lot many did, in spite of their reservations and the reason they do it is because they feel innately obliged to share knowledge with the world at large. In most of the academician there is a inherent desire to spread their word, in a way to show off. Many are also driven by their liking for truth and aesthetics and thus want to clear the air of any fallacies. These are broadly the things that motive such people and so Citizendium will encourage them to share their knowledge, for instance, there will be no anonymous contributors.
Will the articles carry signature of the individuals then?
Not at all. People are often averse to articles that have been signed by others. By anonymity, I mean, people will have to log in and register with a valid email id before they can be a part of the edit team.
How is the work progressing at Citizendium and when will it be launched?
We will start of as a fork of Wikipedia (thus we will have the same number of articles, etc.) and we will start of with English version. Over time, as more and more people keep editing or adding information to articles present (and once it is approved by editors), these edited versions will be retained and thus Citizendium will evolve into a viable alternative. But this process will be long, as there are millions of articles and it will be stretched over a few months.
What is the revenue model? How will the venture be funded?
Donations is one of the major way, both individual and corporate, to fund the venture. So far we have received over $1300 from individuals. We have also received our first seed grant, and have also received commitment for larger amount of money from other foundations. Corporates are also supporting this venture through different means, like providing deep discount on computer hardware, bandwidth connectivity, etc. To generate revenue, we will be looking at content brokerage in the future.
Wales somewhere mentioned that if you fork from Wikipedia, he can similarly display Citizendium pages at Wikipedia. Your take.
Wikipedia can, but when we are forking we are providing a link back to Wikipedia. I do not know how will they display Citizendium content without providing a link back to us.
Are you angered at not being recognized for the role that you played in Wikipedia?
More than anger, I am pained. To be frank, I would have been much more happier if my contribution was recognized, and not underemphasized in a self-serving way. While I do not undermine, Jimmy’s (Wales) role in Wikipedia and he deserves the accolades for it, but my role at Wikipedia has been significant. Till 2004, a Wikipedia press release referred to me as a “co-founder”. All of sudden, my role is being questioned. Believe me, it is quite disheartening. Through all this, I had faith that one day, the real truth will indeed come out.
When you started off with Wikipedia, did you imagine that it will be as successful?
To be honest, I did believe that it was going to be successful, but the scale, I did not imagine.
Do you have any specific strategies for countries like India? How has been the response so far?
The response has been very encouraging. We have received quite many applications from India. In fact, a quite a few of them are among the editors, the number is significant say equal to the numbers from Australia. We are banking on India and glad for the response so far.
Finally, when was the last time you met Wales or interacted with him?
(After much thought) Around one year ago, it has been a while, isn’t it?
