Ajay Kumar Singh is new Press Secretary to President

Ajay Kumar Singh appointed as Press Secretary to President Ram Nath Kovind. He is currently associated with the Firstpost as a contributor. The Appointments Committee of the Cabinet led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi approved the appointment of Singh as Press Secretary to the President on contract basis initially for a period of one year He succeeds Ashok Malik.

BPO: Front of Back Office

How the Philippines beat India in call centres

 

At the Worldwide Corporate Centre office  block, thousands of young Filipinos are  crowding into endless open-plan offices. Once seated, they quickly start answering the questions and calming the frustrations of vexed consumers. To outsiders it is hardly a glamorous profession, yet despite the antisocial hours these men and women have every reason to be as well-motivated and cheerful as they seem. They are well paid and know that they work at the heart of their country's most dynamic industry. The rise of what is known as business-process outsourcing (BPO) in the Philippines has been nothing short of phenomenal. The very first calls were taken in 1997; today the sector employs 638,000 people and enjoys revenues of $11 billion, about 5% of the country's GDP. Last year the Philippines even overtook India, long the biggest call-centre operator in the world, in “voice-related services”. The country now employs about 400,000 people at call centres, India only 350,000.
The South-East Asian upstart is unlikely ever to surpass the South Asian behemoth (1.2 billion) across the entire range of outsourcing offerings, which also include all kinds of information-technology services. Yet given the extraordinary growth so far it is hard to gainsay the Philippines' own projection that its BPO industry could add another 700,000 or so jobs by 2016 and generate revenues of $25 billion. At that point, the industry would make up nearly a tenth of GDP and be bigger in value than the remittances from the 10m Filipinos working overseas.
As in the call-centre business so far, some of these new jobs will come at the expense of India. Yet India's relationship with the Philippines in back-office work is more complex than the numbers suggest. The main reason for the success of the Philippine call centres is that workers speak English with a neutral accent and are familiar with American idioms—which is exactly what their American customers want. Of these, many have taken to complaining bitterly about Indian accents. As a result, the Indian firms themselves have been helping to move jobs to the Philippines by setting up call centres in Manila and other parts of the country. Infosys and Wipro, as well as scores of other Indian firms, now have substantial operations there. And they aren't drawn to Manila by cheap labour. Wages in the Philippines are higher than in India since the Filipino accent commands a premium.
It also helps that the country has a big pool of well-educated workers. The million or so Filipinos who graduate every year have few other options to choose from, besides emigrating. And working in a call centre is considered a middle-class job (new recruits start at $470 a month). The big question is whether the Philippine BPO industry, having conquered the call-centre market, can now move up the value chain. To keep growing rapidly—and profitably—it needs to capture some of the more sophisticated back-office jobs, such as those processing insurance claims and conducting due diligence. 
Integreon offers a glimpse of what the future may hold. The firm occupies just a few discreet, very secure offices. “It makes it very easy for us to do legal research for American firms,” says Benjamin Romualdez, the firm's country manager. This sort of operation is new in Manila, but Mr Romualdez expects that he can find the skilled workers to double his workforce over five years. Western banks have also discovered the Philippines. JPMorgan Chase now has over 25,000 workers on its own payroll in the country, many of whom do much more than answering phones. The Philippines is set to compete with India across the BPO board.

Strangers by Choice

India and China

FEW subjects can matter more in the long term than how India and China, with nearly 40% of the world's population between them, manage to get along. In the years before they fought a short border war, in 1962, relations had been rosy. Many in China, for example, were deeply impressed by the peaceful and successful campaign led by Mohandas Gandhi to persuade the British to quit India. A few elderly people in China yet talk of their admiration for Rabindranath Tagore, the Bengali writer who won the Nobel prize for literature in 1913. And though Nehru, India's first prime minister, was resented as arrogant and patronising by some Chinese leaders, the early post-war years saw friendship persist and some popular respect for him too. 
The past half-century has produced mostly squabbles, resentment and periodic antagonism. India felt humiliated by its utter defeat at the hands of Mao's army in the 1962 war. China's long-running close ties to Pakistan look designed to antagonise India. In return India is developing ever warmer relations with the likes of Vietnam and Japan. An unsettled border in the Himalayas, periodic incursions by soldiers into territory claimed by the other side and China's claim—for example—that India's Arunachal Pradesh is really a part of Tibet, all suggest that happier relations will be slow in coming. Even a booming bilateral trade relationship is as much a bone of contention as a source of friendlier ties, given India's annoyance at a yawning deficit.
One glimmer of hope, in theory, is that ordinary people of the two countries might start to understand each other better as levels of education, wealth and interest in the outside world all grow. As tourists, students and business types visit each other's countries, perhaps they will find that they have more in common than they believed. In fact, judging by a sharp and well-crafted memoir by an Indian journalist who was posted in Beijing for four years, ignorance and bafflement are likelier to persist.
Most entertaining, from an Indian point of view at least, are her accounts of Chinese ignorance about India. She visits a centre in Beijing devoted to learning cricket in case it ever becomes an Olympic sport, whose players have never heard of Indian stars, or of the cricket world cup, and who appear to prefer playing ping pong. During numerous forays to universities she finds students learning foreign languages who routinely dismiss India as dirty, poor and irrelevant. A wide misapprehension, she says, is a belief that India is Buddhist. Officials and journalists tell her that India suffers from an “inferiority complex”, that it is so backward  that there can be “nothing to learn” from the country. She suggests that one Indian drink, the mango lassi, has become popular in China, but otherwise the Chinese she meets mostly have little interest in Indian products or culture. Indian traders are famously stingy. Its brands, such as those of big outsourcing firms, are poorly understood or assumed to be of low quality. Persistent racism towards dark-skinned Indians is broken in only one case, by the head of a Chinese modelling agency who says he is fond of Indians who can pull off a “Western look”.
India meanwhile makes pitifully little effort to correct Chinese misunderstandings. As well as few journalists, India had only 15 diplomats based in Beijing during President Patil's time, most of them inactive. Only two had any economic expertise, and most only started learning Mandarin after their arrival in the country. A big Indian business lobby group had a single representative based in Shanghai. She estimates that only a few hundred Indian businesses, in any case, are active in China (with even fewer Chinese ones in India), and few of the Indian ventures are led by Mandarin-speakers or local hires. As an example of ignorance, she mentions a Chinese business reporter who has never heard of Infosys, a $33 billion Indian IT firm. India's low profile in China, she argues, “prolongs the shelf-life of anti-India propaganda”. For if most Chinese are merely ignorant, many are troublingly nationalistic where their neighbour is concerned. Sometimes India ships a low-cost dance troupe to China. Most such exchanges of students, journalists and others end up in mutual frustration; a failure to communicate; and terrible hunger among vegetarian Indians horrified by Chinese cuisine.
A Chinese artist, lauds the freedom of speech that exists in India and says he hopes India will grow strong and prosperous. He also points out that Chinese security agents like to mention the chaos of India as an example of why democracy is not worth attempting. Some Chinese businessmen, as well as reporters, who return from trips to India praise the openness and free speech there, or point to the “inner peace” and happiness that they discern among even poor Indians. Others mention the relative openness of Indian courts, the mass anti-corruption protests that would be impossible in China, and the fact that poor rural migrants are allowed to use hospitals in the cities, unlike those in China. 
China is still experimenting with its use of soft power. In one striking detail our former President relates a visit to China Radio International's Hindi service, where she is told that the station is popular in rural India and receives over 100,000 letters from enthusiastic listeners a year, some of whom receive radios in return. She also finds ten universities in China that teach Hindi. India, by contrast, fails to broadcast much worth listening to beyond All India Radio's Chinese- and Tibetan-language services. Very few Indian students are learning Mandarin.
Analysts frequently point to the military imbalance between the countries: China's armed forces have a budget three times larger than India's and enjoy far superior infrastructure near the mutual border. Nationalist Chinese bloggers mock Indian aspirations to military strength as all talk and little action—“loud thunder, tiny rain”. The launch, in 2013, of India's first home-built aircraft carrier drew some attention in China, but officials point out that China's navy, with 150 ships, is already three times the size of India's. Naval clashes seem a more likely risk even than those on the border: India's defence ministry claims that in 2012 there were 22 “contacts” with suspected Chinese attack submarines outside of Chinese waters. 
A mutual perception of being threatened by the other country is growing. One poll in 2013 found that 83% of Indians see China as a security threat. Large numbers of Chinese similarly think nuclear-armed India is hostile, even if it is not taken as an immediate threat. When Chinese soldiers cross the disputed border into India—a report on August 19th suggested a fresh incursion in Ladakh—reporters in Beijing are promptly instructed by officials not to mention it. An Indian journalist who dared to ask a Chinese politician at a press conference why official maps, digital maps on iPhones and other devices show Indian territory as part of China was told furiously to “shut up”.
Official Chinese hostility towards Indian journalists is well-documented. A constant gripe from China's government is that India's politicians fail to keep their media in line. Yet freedom of the press and communication is one obvious area in which India has a great advantage over its big rival. India has over 85,000 newspapers (it is not clear if that includes digital outlets) to just 2,000 in China. As micro-bloggers and users of social media get a louder voice in China officials there have to devise ever more elaborate means of restricting unwelcome messages; by contrast institutions in India, as in the West, are far more confident about allowing more transparency. India could do much more to present itself in China, sending better-trained diplomats and better-prepared businessmen. She sees enormous potential benefits if, for example, suitably trained Indian graduates and cleverly devised Indian software could somehow be made to work with Chinese infrastructure and hardware. The growth of China, its huge cities and big economy has to be an opportunity for India, she suggests. In turn, the Chinese population—at an average age of 35 years old, compared to India's 26—will grow old far sooner than India's, which suggests a demographic advantage to India. Sheer numbers also suggest advantage tipping towards India: by 2028, says the UN, India's population will outstrip China's. By then, will the two countries have managed to move on from being strangers to something more like friends? 

M K Jain appointed as ED

Public sector Indian Bank said Mahesh Kumar Jain has joined the bank as its Executive Director with immediate effect. Prior to taking up the new role, Jain was the General Manager of Syndicate Bank, Mumbai branch, the city- headquartered Indian Bank said in a statement. Jain was also a member of the Steering Committee on Risk Management, Indian Bank Association and also a member of IBA Working Group on Risk Management and Implementation of Basel II and III, it added. 

PK Sinha appointed as OSD in PMO

Pradeep Kumar Sinha, IAS officer of 1977 batch, UP cadre has been appointed as Officer on Special Duty (OSD) in PMO on August 30, 2019. He has been appointed at this position after the resignation of Nripendra Mishra. The announcement came after Principal Secretary to the PM expressed his intention to be relieved of his assignment.