In Afghanistan no end in sight…..

British prime minister Gordon Brown is calling on the international community to share the burden of the military campaign in Afghanistan, according to a report in the BBC.

"We cannot allow the Taleban to be back in control of such an important country. And the work that has been done in the last six years to build a democracy in Afghanistan is an important bulwark against terrorism everywhere in the world," Brown said, during a visit to Downing Street by Afghan president Hamid Karzai.

Six years after the US and UK invaded Afghanistan and ousted the Taliban regime that was providing sanctuary to the Al Qaeda, including its leader, Osama Bin Laden, the war in Afghanistan is far from over. The Taliban is having a revival of sorts, and the country has emerged as a major dealer of opium as drug cartels induce poor farmers, struggling for a livelihood, to take up illegal poppy cultivation. Some NATO countries have also deployed troops in the country.

The invasion of Afghanistan in October, 2001 is generally regarded as a military intervention by the US and the UK that was morally justified. After the attacks by terrorists on the US on September 11, 2001, the attack on Afghanistan was seen as a collective act of self-defense, and backed by appropriate resolutions of the UN.

Sending soldiers and ordnance to Afghanistan can only be one part of an overall program to weed out the Taliban, and extend the influence of Karzai outside Kabul. Development funds have to reach the people and generate employment and long-term means of livelihood. However, rampant corruption, local war lords, and renewed fighting with the Taliban have proven to be a major obstacle in rehabilitating the masses of the country.

Indian outsourcers have to head home

Indian outsourcing companies are facing shortages of good quality staff, particularly in the call centers and business process outsourcing businesses. The attrition rate in these two businesses can be as high as 50 percent, according to some reports.

Most staff are leaving to join other companies for better terms. But some staff are leaving because of burn-out, including the long commute time to and from work. Some others are women who leave their jobs to start a family. India’s traditional joint families, in which entire generations lived in one household, are falling apart in the cities, reducing the traditional support systems offered to new mothers.

Indian outsourcers could have access to more workers if they would allow more staff to work from home. Apart from young mothers, a lot of other categories of people, including freelancers and pensioners may be willing to join the workforce, if given the option to work from home.

In this way, the outsourcers would go a long way towards empowering a whole section of Indian society. They would also save on transporting staff to and from work, providing them meals in the campus cafeteria, and other perks employees have come to expect.

To be sure, customers will not take kindly to calls being taken from homes with the dog barking, the door bell ringing, or a child crying in the background. But once home workers see the opportunity they will make the adjustments necessary to ensure that the customer gets top quality service, undisturbed by any extraneous noises.

None of the suggestions outlined here are startlingly new. They have been tried extensively in the US and the UK. They are new in the Indian context, where surprisingly Indian and multinational services companies have been hesitant to move away from proven techniques and processes to exploring new sources of staff.

But there are still a lot of challenges going forward. Mothers and pensioners in India are less likely to own personal computers. Outsourcing companies use their computers over three staff shifts. Giving a computer to a single home worker would therefore lead to an underutilized asset. Probably companies can enter into an agreement with home workers whereby they take a computer on a bank loan, on assurance of business from the outsourcer. High quality telephone and VOIP (voice-over-Internet-protocol) links are available, and outsourcers can probably buy the capacity in bulk and distribute that out to the home workers.

The biggest sticking point is however likely to be data security, the fear that outside company monitored facilities, home workers could misuse confidential information such as credit card and social security numbers.

Companies are already masking at their facilities the data that could be used to compromise the customer. In many cases because of data security laws in their home countries, customers themselves are already filtering what information is available to a call center agent.

So outsourcing companies will probably have to rely less on physical monitoring using closed circuit TVs (CCTVs) and other technologies, and focus more on masking the data that is accessible to the home worker. There are also a lot of processes in business process outsourcing that do not require handling information that is confidential and liable to misuse.

Olympic Games, and the diplomatic charade over Myanmar

The think tanks have come up with a way to get the army in Myanmar to heel. Get China, which is a large investor in the country, to intervene. If China, declines to intervene, European Union countries should boycott the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Now that gives the Chinese something to think about !

The upshot is that the diplomatic community is passing the buck to China as it finds itself impotent against a repressive regime in Myanmar that at this point cares for nothing else than its survival in power.

The boycott of the Olympics is however unlikely to pan out, because other interests, stronger than the fate of the democratic movement in Myanmar, will come to the fore. Will the US for example agree to a boycott of the Olympics ? It views China as a strategic partner in Asia, far more important than old ally Taiwan, and has turned a blind eye to Chinese repression at home. Nor will the European countries like the UK and France agree to boycott the Olympic games, and give China a stinging rebuke over Myanmar.

The regime in China, and the army in Myanmar know that caught up in their business interests, the world has become impotent to fight against repression. So you will find China making some polite remonstrations while the army in Myanmar gets on with its brutal work. After it is done, it may even announce that it has backed off at the request of the Chinese.

In recommending a boycott, vice president of the European Parliament Edward McMillan-Scott, has shown a large heart. “The civilized world must seriously consider shunning China by using the Beijing Olympics to send the clear message that such abuses of human rights are not acceptable,” he told Reuters in a telephone interview.

But political decisions by large nations are not from the heart, but conceal cynical long-term calculations. As the nations of the world debate on a boycott, the massacre in Myanmar will be over. So our only option may be to sit back and watch the massacre. We did that in 1988.

UPDATE: Internet connectivity has been cut off in Myanmar, even as the army intensifies its crackdown on protesters. Blogs, instant messenger, and video sharing sites had provided locals an opportunity to get information on the clampdown to the world outside.

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In Myanmar, impotence against a brutal regime
India shouldn’t hide behind diplomatic niceties on Myanmar

A celebration of British colonialism in India !

I have no objection to descendants of Genghis Khan deciding to hold a quiet, prayerful ceremony to commemorate their ancestor.

I have no objection to some British going quietly to Lucknow and other parts of India and paying homage at graves of some of their colonialist ancestors, as a private visit from close relations.

But I object to them making an excursion of it, coming in large numbers to make a spectacle, to commemorate 150 years of a colonial war against the Indians.

Because then they will be walking rough-shod over the sentiments of the people of India, whose ancestors were the victims of these British soldiers.

The decision of some British soldiers and civilians to go to Lucknow to honor soldiers that were involved in suppressing the 1857 Sepoy Mutiny, which Indians regard as the first war of independence, has created a furor in India.

The visitors from the UK even “ hoped to install a plaque in a church in Meerut commemorating the bravery of British soldiers at the site of another key flashpoint during the 1857 rebellion”, according to a report by Reuters.

If the British visitors were moved by respect for their ancestors, over 150 years later at that, they could have gone to Lucknow in smaller numbers and paid their discreet homage. They could have done it every year, and nobody would have objected.

Instead they are planning a well-choreographed event. Would the Indians be entirely wrong if they apprehend that this visit is less about homage and more about revisionism in British thinking about its colonial role ?

The history of the West as colonizers is a part of their history that they should do their best to help others to forget. It was a period of untold brutality, and exploitation which people in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East are still trying to come to terms with. It is a period that the British, the French, the Portuguese and other colonialists should also come to terms with in humility and contrition.

Today the West is horrified by the cruelty and massacre of people in the Africa and Asia. They hold their kerchiefs to their noses, figuratively, when referring to people like Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe or President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran. They forget that less than a 100 years ago, the Western colonialists were the butchers of Asia and Africa.

A public commemoration in Lucknow, India would be a celebration of that butchery !