At the launch of the IT industry’s first trade union in Kolkata, the Centre for Indian Trade Union alleged that labour laws were being routinely flouted by several BPO firms in India.

Firebrand leaders also went to the extent of naming half-a-dozen errant companies violating labour laws.

“There, it was actually very difficult for us - the lower level employees - to go ahead and approach and talk to the management and ask for our rights,” Prasenjit Biswas, a former call centre employee, said.

Even well-paid employees of companies like Tata Consultancy Services and Wipro said they weren’t happy with the way they were treated at the workplace.

“There are times when we feel really frustrated, like what kind of work we are being given, and sometimes in spite of having the capabilities of doing the work, you don’t get the kind of work that you should get,” Soumyajit Roy, an executive with Tata Consultancy Services, said.

The CITU-sponsored union, called IT Services Association, is aimed at call centre employees rather than executives and software engineers.

While CITU seems to be bang on when it comes to target audience, it remains to be seen how many of them would actually come forward to join the trade union.

For, though some people feel it’s of little use in the IT industry, others believe a platform for collective bargaining would help.

A vast majority of professionals CNN-IBN spoke to in Kolkata’s hub of IT companies, agreed that trade unions were needed, but most said it shouldn’t have any political affiliation.

“It’s better to have a group - an internal group - who can put their own opinion and have their own ideas. But we shouldn’t give any political colour to it,” Debabrata Bardhan, an employee with LSI Logic, said.

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Via

Tibetan writer Tenzin Tsundue who has written “I am more of an Indian.
 Except for my chinky Tibetan face” has been put under house arrest in India.

In this prize-winning essay, he wrote:

Ask me where I’m from and I won’t have an answer. I feel I never really belonged anywhere. Never really had a home. I was born in Manali, but my parents live in Karnataka. Finishing my schooling in two different schools in Himachal Pradesh, my further studies took me Madras, Ladakh and Mumbai. My sisters are in Varanasi but my brothers are in Dharamsala. My Registration Certificate (my stay permit in India) states that I’m a foreigner residing in India and my citizenship is Tibetan. But Tibet as a nation does not feature anywhere on the world political map. I like to speak in Tibetan, but prefer to write in English, I like to sing in Hindi but my tune and accent are all wrong. Every once in a while, someone walks up and demands to know where I come from…my defiant answer - ‘Tibetan’, raises more than just their eyebrows…I’m bombarded with questions and statements and doubts and sympathy. But none of them can ever empathise with the plain simple fact that I have nowhere to call home and in the world at large all I’ll ever be is a ‘political refugee’.

Via India Uncut.