30 Little Turtles
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

Published: February 29, 2004

BANGALORE, India

Indians are so hospitable. I got an ovation the other day from a roomful
of Indian 20-year-olds just for reading perfectly the following
paragraph: "A bottle of bottled water held 30 little turtles. It didn't
matter that each turtle had to rattle a metal ladle in order to get a
little bit of noodles, a total turtle delicacy. The problem was that
there were many turtle battles for less than oodles of noodles."

I was sitting in on an "accent neutralization" class at the Indian call
center 24/7 Customer. The instructor was teaching the would-be Indian
call center operators to suppress their native Indian accents and speak
with a Canadian one ? she teaches British and U.S. accents as well, but
these youths will be serving the Canadian market. Since I'm originally
from Minnesota, near Canada, and still speak like someone out of the
movie "Fargo," I gave these young Indians an authentic rendition of "30
Little Turtles," which is designed to teach them the proper Canadian
pronunciations. Hence the rousing applause.

Watching these incredibly enthusiastic young Indians preparing for their
call center jobs ? earnestly trying to soften their t's and roll their
r's ? is an uplifting experience, especially when you hear from their
friends already working these jobs how they have transformed their
lives. Most of them still live at home and turn over part of their
salaries to their parents, so the whole family benefits. Many have
credit cards and have become real consumers, including of U.S. goods,
for the first time. All of them seem to have gained self-confidence and
self-worth.

A lot of these Indian young men and women have college degrees, but
would never get a local job that starts at $200 to $300 a month were it
not for the call centers. Some do "outbound" calls, selling things from
credit cards to phone services to Americans and Europeans. Others deal
with "inbound" calls ? everything from tracing lost luggage for U.S.
airline passengers to solving computer problems for U.S. customers. The
calls are transferred here by satellite or fiber optic cable.

I was most taken by a young Indian engineer doing tech support for a
U.S. software giant, who spoke with pride about how cool it is to tell
his friends that he just spent the day helping Americans navigate their
software. A majority of these call center workers are young women, who
not only have been liberated by earning a decent local wage (and
therefore have more choice in whom they marry), but are using the job to
get M.B.A.'s and other degrees on the side.

I gathered a group together, and here's what they sound like: M. Dinesh,
who does tech support, says his day is made when some American calls in
with a problem and is actually happy to hear an Indian voice: "They say
you people are really good at what you do. I am glad I reached an
Indian." Kiran Menon, when asked who his role model was, shot back:
"Bill Gates ? [I dream of] starting my own company and making it that
big." I asked C. M. Meghna what she got most out of the work:
"Self-confidence," she said, "a lot of self-confidence, when people come
to you with a problem and you can solve it ? and having a lot of
independence." Because the call center teams work through India's night
? which corresponds to America's day ? "your biological clock goes
haywire," she added. "Besides that, it's great."

There is nothing more positive than the self-confidence, dignity and
optimism that comes from a society knowing it is producing wealth by
tapping its own brains ? men's and women's ? as opposed to one just
tapping its own oil, let alone one that is so lost it can find dignity
only through suicide and "martyrdom."

Indeed, listening to these Indian young people, I had a déjà vu. Five
months ago, I was in Ramallah, on the West Bank, talking to three young
Palestinian men, also in their 20's, one of whom was studying
engineering. Their hero was Yasir Arafat. They talked about having no
hope, no jobs and no dignity, and they each nodded when one of them said
they were all "suicide bombers in waiting."

What am I saying here? That it's more important for young Indians to
have jobs than Americans? Never. But I am saying that there is more to
outsourcing than just economics. There's also geopolitics. It is
inevitable in a networked world that our economy is going to shed
certain low-wage, low-prestige jobs. To the extent that they go to
places like India or Pakistan ? where they are viewed as high-wage,
high-prestige jobs ? we make not only a more prosperous world, but a
safer world for our own 20-year-olds.