Murder most foul

The practices followed by multinational IT and BPO companies operating in India are different from those adopted back home. For example, while the practice in most software companies operating in India is to make their employees work during weekends, this does not happen in the U.S. The rape and murder of a BPO employee in Bangalore raises a debate on issues ranging from the safety of young people like her working on night shifts to the employment practices of IT companies.

RAVI SHARMA in Bangalore

`BRAND Bangalore' - India's own Silicon Valley and a metropolis considered relatively safe - took an image-beating on December 13 when an employee of a multinational business process outsourcing (BPO) company was raped and murdered, allegedly by the driver of the vehicle that had gone to fetch her to work. The decomposed body of Prathibha Srikanth Murthy, a 24-year-old technical support staff of Hewlett-Packard (HP) Global Delivery India Centre, was found in a ditch on the outskirts of Bangalore.

The cold-blooded murder has sparked a debate on a number of issues. The first is the security of the almost 200,000 BPO employees - about half of whom are women - who are transported round the clock to and from work each day by a pool of taxi drivers, many of whose antecedents are not known either to the BPO or to the transport operator who hires them. Other issues include the question whether women should be allowed to work night shifts; the extent of the concept of corporate liability as a principle of law in India; the human resource practices of multinational Information Technology (IT) companies in India; and, the importance/protection given to the BPO/IT industry whose contribution to the overall Indian economy is a measly 2.2 per cent.

While suggestions are being made to the corporate sector to enhance security for employees, also in focus is the state's responsibility to protect its citizens. Not the least, the role of the Bangalore Police, who continue to police the city on the assumption that it still is the `pensioners' paradise' it was three decades ago, has come under scrutiny.

Bangalore is the world's largest BPO hub; it houses 200-odd domestic, multinational, captive and pure-play companies, with most of their employees falling in the 19-26 age group. The companies are unwilling to acquire or maintain vehicles or appoint their own drivers as "it is not part of [their] core competence" and there is a feeling that it does not make commercial sense: appointing drivers would entail provision of benefits such as provident fund, gratuity and medical cover.

Ballpark estimates indicate that the BPOs in Bangalore hire 30,000-odd cars and eight-seater vehicles every day. These outsourced vehicles and their drivers have been involved in any number of accidents. Neither the stickers on these vehicles asking road-users to call the company that has hired them in case of traffic violations nor the police checks on over-speeding have had any effect on the drivers. They, on the other hand, complain of unrealistic timings and long work schedules, often extending up to 16 hours.

Bangalore Police Commissioner Dr. Ajai Kumar Singh said that although it was pointed out at a meeting with BPO managers and transporters last April that one of the reasons for rash driving by the hired drivers was the limited time specified to pick up the employees, nothing was done. "With thousands of such hired vehicles using the city's roads, it is a nightmare for us to check every vehicle. It also puts other road-users to a lot of inconvenience," he said, at the same time admitting that transportation and related security aspects of BPOs had "not been tackled properly".

The current practice is for an employee to place his/her request to the team leader indicating the time when he/she has to be picked up. The team leaders, in turn, access tools such as the Employee Logistic Management System (ELMS) which, utilising the available database on employees, schedules in real time such requests. The transport managers, who have access to this tool, fine-tune the day's schedules by routing the vehicles in such a manner as to ensure that they pick up eight people. The written lists of names of employees are then handed to the drivers. The need to maximise the number of occupants results in drivers operating different routes on different days.

This explains why most BPO employees rarely have the same driver picking them up on two consecutive days. Although many companies insist that women employees are not to be picked up first or dropped last, with some even dispatching security guards during late-night pick-ups and drops, most ignore this criterion. Many BPO employees complain that drivers - especially if the employee is seen as somebody not hailing from the same State - behave rudely, refuse to drop them at their doorsteps or wait even for a few minutes if they are late, and often report for duty drunk. The employees feel that the companies must show more involvement in matters of transport and security.

According to police sources, a greater level of security at HP would certainly have gone a long way in preventing the Prathibha incident. On that night, Prathibha, who was on the 3 a.m. shift, was picked up by Shiva Kumar, who called her on her mobile phone, saying that he, and not the regular driver, was assigned to pick her up; took her address; and arrived at her gate around 2 a.m. Once inside the car, she called her husband of 11 months, Pavan Shetty, to tell him that she was on her way to work. The car sped in a direction away from her work spot, and Shiva Kumar explained that he had to pick up another employee.

Meanwhile, the `regular' driver Jagadish telephoned to say that he would be outside her house in a few minutes. On being informed that she had already been picked up, Jagadish offered to speak to the driver (on Prathibha's cellular phone). Shiva Kumar informed Jagadish that he was the driver of route "405" and that he had been assigned to pick up HP employees from the areas in the vicinity of Prathibha's house.

Shiva Kumar then allegedly took Prathibha to an isolated place, threatened her at knife-point and tried to molest her. When she resisted, he dragged her into a ditch, raped her and slit her throat.

Police investigations indicate that when Jagadish realised that Prathibha had been picked up by some other driver, he informed the transport desk staff of HP, but they apparently did not follow up his information. Even when Prathibha failed to turn up for work, it was assumed that it was a "no-show". According to the Police Commissioner, even after Prathibha's maternal uncle, anxious after she failed to take his call, contacted the BPO, the staff merely maintained that Prathibha had not reported for work. This despite the fact that Jagadish had told HP that Prathibha had boarded a taxi leased by the company. So, did HP violate Section 25 of the Karnataka Shops and Commercial Establishments Act, 1961? The Act allows for the employment of women on night duty provided they are given adequate security and transport facilities.

Many Bangaloreans feel it was a disaster waiting to happen. There have been a number of instances of women BPO staffers in Gurgaon being molested by drivers assigned to pick them up; and of acid being thrown on a woman employee of MphasiS in Pune who rejected the advances of the driver of Wipro Call Centre, where she was employed previously.

While the latest crime has added to the pressure on Bangalore to provide good infrastructure, industry observers are unsure whether it will affect the BPO business in India.

However, it certainly will make it impossible for the BPO industry to attract talent. Women, who are seen as ideal for the BPO business - given their ability to sit up for long hours and take calls - may be reluctant to take up such jobs.

THE practices followed by multinational IT and BPO companies operating in India are different from those adopted back home. For example, while the practice in most software companies operating in India is to make their employees work during weekends, this does not happen in the United States (U.S.) Also, when employees are made to work above the mandatory eight hours (stipulated time) in India, no additional monetary compensation is given. In the U.S., employees rarely stay beyond the stipulated time, and if they do so, they are adequately compensated.

Night shifts are rare in the U.S., whereas they are a regular feature in India since that is when clients and colleagues in the U.S. work. Also, most IT companies in the U.S. provide employees facilities to work from home, but in India only senior personnel get these facilities. The BPOs and IT majors in India enter into contracts with employees, keeping in mind such factors as availability of talent, local industry benchmarks, the country they operate in and the laws in operation, the kind of money that the company is making, and their affordability levels. They cannot offer salaries or other packages that are offered to, say, American employees. It does not make business sense.

As a consultant says, "meeting the aspirations of employees and motivating them to give of their best are the two bridges that multinational companies hope to cross while negotiating salaries with employees".

Says a young employee of a major IT multinational: "We don't mind the lower pay, but what we want is for the multinational (and Indian) companies to treat us better and take responsibility for what happens to their employees. If the Prathibha incident had happened in the U.S., HP would have been sued for millions of dollars."

That is exactly what Shilpa Bugnait is doing. Widowed on December 13, 1998, after her husband A. Subramaniam, a product manager with HP (India), was shot dead in Lucknow when on a road show, Shilpa moved the Delhi High Court in 2000 seeking payment of insurance cover from the American Express Bank Limited Travel Related Service (AmEx) Corporate Credit Card that had been issued through HP to Subramaniam. Explains Shilpa: "HP did pay me Subbu's salary up to December 13, his superannuation, gratuity, provident fund and accident insurance. The last mentioned only after I initiated the exercise. But I never sought nor did I receive any compensation over and above what was specified in Subbu's contract. And it was HP which informed me of the insurance cover from the AmEx card, having me fill in the required forms, affixing the company's seal and sending it for a claim."

But the claim was rejected in 1999 by the Oriental Insurance Company on the grounds that Subramaniam's AmEx card was defaulted and suspended at the time of the incident and also that it had not been used to purchase his airplane ticket. Says Shilpa: "According to a letter written by HP to the insurance company, Subbu was holding an AmEx card at the time of the accident, and nowhere did the policy mention that the card had to be valid at the time of the accident. HP was at that point of time billing the air tickets of their employees through another AmEx card that had been issued for HP. This was apparently a bad practice and it has affected my insurance claim. Why should I be penalised for no fault of mine and the bad practices of HP?"

In its reaction to Shilpa's accusations, HP sent Frontline a written reply through its public relations company. The emailed reply in part says that HP was in close touch with Shilpa, that she had herself expressed gratitude for all that they had done, and that "the last of the in-house agendas of compensation from HP had come to a conclusion". It also went on to say that HP could not do anything in the matter of insurance since the issue was "between the credit card company and the holder of the card". Hearings in the case are expected to commence from 2006.