charukesi January 12th, 2005
Racism is just a phone call away, says this report on the front page of today’s Times of India. Frustrated at being ‘Bangalored’, crusaders from the “Western” world have now taken the fight into their own hands - literally - by picking up the telephone.
And what is truly disgusting here is not the abuse itself (racism in any form is disgusting, to be sure) - but the way employees at call centres have been advised to handle such calls. The report says that ‘they have been told never to hang up on the caller’. Instead, “de-stressing, yoga, and special training on how to deal with this is given to us”
And in case you are wondering what this special training is all about, it enables the recepient to press the ‘mute’ button so that inadvertent responses to abusive language are not heard by the caller. Sure, it is imperative to protect the sensibilities of the caller - hw can we even think of using offensive language against a white?
To what lengths will we take servility?
I had written a while ago about my experience in a call centre… where the supervisor I chatted with told me, oh, these people work here for the glamour. Yeah, sure.
charukesi January 5th, 2005
Study quoted in Outlook on happiness levels across cities in India - Bangalore, City In A Deep Blue Funk
Despite its weather and greenery; despite its emergence as the city of opportunities, Bangaloreans are India’s unhappiest people.
Once again, a lot of figures and percentages quoted from this study by Synovate but little analysis and explanation of the reasons behind… Sachin Tendulkar (27%) is perceived to be happier than Amitabh Bachchan (23%), but Aishwarya Rai (34%) scores over both in Bangalore. Only 2% respondents felt Mukesh Ambani was happy. Why???
Is this because of the limitations of the research methodology - purely quantitative - or of the research agency? Or is that we the readers demurely glance at these figures and move on with life without any further curiousity, demanding nothing more from such surveys…
Also read my earlier post The Polling Game….
charukesi January 5th, 2005
Interesting post on Why Advertising, Marketing And PR Pros Should Blog. Top ten reasons given in three parts.
Link through corporate blogging blog
charukesi January 5th, 2005
Reading Winds, Waves Help Indian Islanders, says this article from the Guardian in the antropologi blog.
From the Guardian article,
Government officials and anthropologists believe that ancient knowledge of the movement of wind, sea and birds may have saved the five indigenous tribes on the Indian archipelago of Andaman and Nicobar islands from the tsunami that hit the Asian coastline Dec. 26.
`They can smell the wind. They can gauge the depth of the sea with the sound of their oars. They have a sixth sense which we don’t possess,” said Ashish Roy, a local environmentalist and lawyer.
It appears that many tribesman fled the shores well before the waves hit the coast, where they would typically be fishing at this time of year.
It is sad that we have left so much ancient knowledge behind us, moving ahead blindly in the name of ‘progress’…
charukesi January 1st, 2005
Here is to new beginnings - a new year filled with peace and happiness
(Sunrise at Mahabaleshwar, October 2004)
Happy new year….
