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From:
http://www.newindpress.com/Newsitems.asp?ID=IEB20031021150653&Title=Business&Topic=263
'Britain merely returning jobs it stole from India'
Wednesday October 22 2003 00:37 IST
IANS
LONDON: Britain is merely returning the jobs it stole from India 200 years ago during the Raj, says a commentator in The Guardian about outsourcing.
George Monbiot's comment on the phenomenon is likely to further incense British unions and call centre workers that have been planning industrial action against outsourcing.
"We are rich because the Indians are poor...For centuries, we have permitted ourselves to ignore the extent to which our welfare is dependent on the denial of other people's. We begin to understand the implications of the system we have created only when it turns against ourselves," he wrote Tuesday.
"Britain's industrialisation was secured by destroying the manufacturing capacity of India. In 1699, the British government banned the import of woollen cloth from Ireland, and in 1700 the import of cotton cloth (or calico) from India.
"Both products were forbidden because they were superior to our own. As the industrial revolution was built on the textiles industry, we could not have achieved our global economic dominance if we had let them in.
"Throughout the late 18th and 19th centuries, India was forced to supply raw materials to Britain's manufacturers but forbidden to produce competing finished products," Monbiot commented.
Anybody in a Western nation who relies on a computer and telephone for work will be without a job in five years' time, he predicted.
"Now the jobs we stole 200 years ago are returning to India," Monbiot wrote and recalled reports about more jobs being relocated to India by the likes of HSBC, National Rail Inquiries, Reuters and British Airways.
"There is a profound historical irony here. Indian workers can out-compete British workers today because Britain smashed their ability to compete in the past.
"Having destroyed India's own industries, the East India Company and the colonial authorities obliged its people to speak our language, adopt our working practices and surrender their labour to multinational corporations.
"The most marketable skill in India today is the ability to abandon your identity and slip into someone else's," Monbiot wrote.
Workers in call centres in Germany and Holland were less vulnerable than British, as Germany and Holland were less successful colonists, with the result that fewer people in the poor world now speak their languages.
He commented that there was nothing new about multinational corporations forcing workers in distant parts of the world to undercut each other. What was new was the extent to which the labour forces of the poor nations were also beginning to threaten the security of British middle classes.
"For the first time in history, the professional classes of Britain and America find themselves in direct competition with the professional classes of another nation.
"So a historical restitution appears to be taking place, as hundreds of thousands of jobs, many of them good ones, flee to the economy we ruined," he wrote.
On the other hand, the most vulnerable communities in Britain are losing the jobs that were supposed to have rescued them. Almost two-thirds of call centre workers are women, so the disadvantaged sex will slip still further behind.
As jobs become less secure, multinational corporations will be able to demand ever harsher conditions of employment in an industry that is already one of the most exploitative in Britain, he wrote.
http://www.newindpress.com/Newsitems.asp?ID=IEB20031021150653&Title=Business&Topic=263
'Britain merely returning jobs it stole from India'
Wednesday October 22 2003 00:37 IST
IANS
LONDON: Britain is merely returning the jobs it stole from India 200 years ago during the Raj, says a commentator in The Guardian about outsourcing.
George Monbiot's comment on the phenomenon is likely to further incense British unions and call centre workers that have been planning industrial action against outsourcing.
"We are rich because the Indians are poor...For centuries, we have permitted ourselves to ignore the extent to which our welfare is dependent on the denial of other people's. We begin to understand the implications of the system we have created only when it turns against ourselves," he wrote Tuesday.
"Britain's industrialisation was secured by destroying the manufacturing capacity of India. In 1699, the British government banned the import of woollen cloth from Ireland, and in 1700 the import of cotton cloth (or calico) from India.
"Both products were forbidden because they were superior to our own. As the industrial revolution was built on the textiles industry, we could not have achieved our global economic dominance if we had let them in.
"Throughout the late 18th and 19th centuries, India was forced to supply raw materials to Britain's manufacturers but forbidden to produce competing finished products," Monbiot commented.
Anybody in a Western nation who relies on a computer and telephone for work will be without a job in five years' time, he predicted.
"Now the jobs we stole 200 years ago are returning to India," Monbiot wrote and recalled reports about more jobs being relocated to India by the likes of HSBC, National Rail Inquiries, Reuters and British Airways.
"There is a profound historical irony here. Indian workers can out-compete British workers today because Britain smashed their ability to compete in the past.
"Having destroyed India's own industries, the East India Company and the colonial authorities obliged its people to speak our language, adopt our working practices and surrender their labour to multinational corporations.
"The most marketable skill in India today is the ability to abandon your identity and slip into someone else's," Monbiot wrote.
Workers in call centres in Germany and Holland were less vulnerable than British, as Germany and Holland were less successful colonists, with the result that fewer people in the poor world now speak their languages.
He commented that there was nothing new about multinational corporations forcing workers in distant parts of the world to undercut each other. What was new was the extent to which the labour forces of the poor nations were also beginning to threaten the security of British middle classes.
"For the first time in history, the professional classes of Britain and America find themselves in direct competition with the professional classes of another nation.
"So a historical restitution appears to be taking place, as hundreds of thousands of jobs, many of them good ones, flee to the economy we ruined," he wrote.
On the other hand, the most vulnerable communities in Britain are losing the jobs that were supposed to have rescued them. Almost two-thirds of call centre workers are women, so the disadvantaged sex will slip still further behind.
As jobs become less secure, multinational corporations will be able to demand ever harsher conditions of employment in an industry that is already one of the most exploitative in Britain, he wrote.