The Backroom Brigade

2006 Contracting out

Author : Seetha
Release : 2006
Genre : Contracting out
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 040/5 ( reviews)

Book Synopsis The Backroom Brigade by : Seetha

Download or read book The Backroom Brigade written by Seetha. This book was released on 2006. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Back in 1993, American Express launched its rupee cards in India. It was an operation similar to those it was running in other countries. Except for the curious fact that while the quality of the operations seemed to be better than elsewhere, the costs were much lower. Certain that something was wrong with the figures, the companys comptroller visited India, and found that the reports were indeed correct. That initial discovery would lead, shortly after, to the decision to locate the companys finance functions for the Asia-Pacific region in India. The centre was set up in the Mohan Cooperative Industrial Area, along Delhis busy Mathura Road, a beehive of corporate offices and factories that is still plagued by the standard Indian malaise of power cuts. Setting up the centre was a nightmare, from dealing with babudom to establishing the all-important connectivity, but somewhere along the line things began to come together, and the centre began to efficiently execute processes that were seen as time-consuming and difficult. The Amex centre, in hindsight, might count as the precursor of the BPO revolution that has spawned close to 400 ITES (IT-enabled services)-BPO units in the country. The sector now employs around 300,000 people, ranging from call centre staff selling credit cards to Americansin an American accentto analysts preparing research reports for Wall Street investment bankers, and generates an astounding $5 billion (Rs 22,500 crore) in revenue. That figure is to quadruple in the next two years, even as, piquantly, it is now people in the West who complain of loss of jobs as companies route work to India. In The Backroom Brigade: How a Few Intrepid Entrepreneurs Brought the World to India, Seetha, a Delhi-based economic journalist, tells the story of this entire phenomenonhow a group of people combining sophisticated technology with the improvisational skills of a street mechanic changed the way the world looked at India.

The Backroom Boys

2013-10-05 History

Author : Graeme Sligo
Release : 2013-10-05
Genre : History
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 543/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis The Backroom Boys by : Graeme Sligo

Download or read book The Backroom Boys written by Graeme Sligo. This book was released on 2013-10-05. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Backroom Boys is the remarkable, but little known, story of how a varied group of talented intellectuals, drafted into the Australian Army in the dark days of 1942, provided high-level policy advice to Australia’s most senior soldier, General Blamey, and through him to the Government for the remainder of the war and beyond. This band of academics, lawyers and New Guinea patrol officers formed a unique military unit, the Directorate of Research and Civil Affairs, under the command of an eccentric and masterful string-puller, Alf Conlon. The Directorate has been depicted as a haven for underemployed poets or meddlesome soldier-politicians. Based on wide-ranging research, this book reveals a fuller and more fascinating picture. The fierce conflicts in the wartime bureaucracy between public servants and soldiers, in which the Directorate provided critical support to Blamey, went to the heart of military command, accountability and the profession of arms. The Directorate was a pioneer in developing approaches to military government in areas liberated by the combat troops, as demonstrated by the Australian Army in New Guinea, and Borneo in 1945-46. It is an issue of enduring importance. The Directorate established the Australian School of Pacific Administration, and had an important role in founding the Australian National University. Its influence extended into post war Australia. The Backroom Boys emphasises the personality of Colonel Alf Conlon, as well as the talented men and women he recruited. Above all, this book shows how, unexpectedly, the Australian Army fostered a group of men and women who made a lasting contribution to the development of Australia in the decades after the war.

Red Army Faction. Red Brigades, Angry Brigade. The Spectacle of Terror in Post War Europe

2015-07-13 History

Author : Gianfranco Sanguinetti
Release : 2015-07-13
Genre : History
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 883/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis Red Army Faction. Red Brigades, Angry Brigade. The Spectacle of Terror in Post War Europe by : Gianfranco Sanguinetti

Download or read book Red Army Faction. Red Brigades, Angry Brigade. The Spectacle of Terror in Post War Europe written by Gianfranco Sanguinetti. This book was released on 2015-07-13. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection brings together a spread of writers, revolutionaries and reprobates to offer up a variety of critical perspectives on key European armed struggle groups from the 1970's . Gianfranco Sanguinetti, founding member of the Italian Section of the Situationist International, writes in 'On Terrorism and the State', 1978 : "Italian terrorism is the last enigma of the society of the spectacle and only those who reason dialectically can solve it.... Today, all those who speak of social revolution without denouncing and combating the terrorist counter-revolution have a corpse in their mouths." Dave and Stuart Wise, (King Mob) look into the relationship between the Italian Communist Party, workers struggles post 68' and the roots of the Red Brigades, concluding of the latter: "they added to the substitutionism of Lenin, who replaced the proletariat by the Party, by replacing the Party with the armed struggle." Prof. Charity Scribner (MIT), contributes "Buildings on Fire: The Situationist International and the Red Army Faction", exploring how and why the SI and the RAF's differing definitions of autonomy produced divergent modes of resistance : "Both the RAF and the Situationists drew from the arsenals of anarchism and Marxism. But whereas Debord critiqued the society of the spectacle...the leaders of the RAF became fodder for the media machine, leaving a legacy heavy on style, but light on political analysis." Tom Vague contributes fast paced, potted histories of the RAF and Angry Brigade, both strong on time line energy, both useful entry level introductions to the respective narratives. John Barker was sentenced to ten years at the Old Bailey in 1972 for his Angry Brigade activities ("they framed a guilty man"), and here he laments Tom Vague's "fetishisation of the Angry Brigade" and "how comfortable he is with ‘the situationist angle' while saying nothing about the analysis and theory that came out of the Italian movement from Potere Operaio onwards, which was more important to us." Barker's piece, dated from the late 1990's, goes on to give a brief, but uniquely frank first person perspective on the AB's activities, viewed through the prism of realism, maturity, and continued belief in the revolutionary potential of mass working class action over the clandestine, substitutionist activities of the few - a fitting end to this book.

Madras Matters

Author :
Release :
Genre :
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 873/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis Madras Matters by :

Download or read book Madras Matters written by . This book was released on . Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

The Outsourcer

2015-03-20 Business & Economics

Author : Dinesh C. Sharma
Release : 2015-03-20
Genre : Business & Economics
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 348/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis The Outsourcer by : Dinesh C. Sharma

Download or read book The Outsourcer written by Dinesh C. Sharma. This book was released on 2015-03-20. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A history of how India became a major player in the global technology industry, mapping technological, economic, and political transformations. The rise of the Indian information technology industry is a remarkable economic success story. Software and services exports from India amounted to less than $100 million in 1990, and today come close to $100 billion. But, as Dinesh Sharma explains in The Outsourcer, Indian IT's success has a long prehistory; it did not begin with software support, or with American firms' eager recruitment of cheap and plentiful programming labor, or with India's economic liberalization of the 1990s. The foundations of India's IT revolution were laid long ago, even before the country's independence from British rule in 1947, as leading Indian scientists established research institutes that became centers for the development of computer science and technology. The “miracle” of Indian IT is actually a story about the long work of converting skills and knowledge into capital and wealth. With The Outsourcer, Sharma offers the first comprehensive history of the forces that drove India's IT success. Sharma describes India's early development of computer technology, part of the country's efforts to achieve national self-sufficiency, and shows that excessive state control stifled IT industry growth before economic policy changed in 1991. He traces the rise and fall (and return) of IBM in India and the emergence of pioneering indigenous hardware and software firms. He describes the satellite communication links and state-sponsored, tax-free technology parks that made software-related outsourcing by foreign firms viable, and the tsunami of outsourcing operations at the beginning of the new millennium. It is the convergence of many factors, from the tradition of technical education to the rise of entrepreneurship to advances in communication technology, that have made the spectacular growth of India's IT industry possible.

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