Although he calls himself a communist, the chief minister of West Bengal, Shri Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, has banned strikes in information technology outsource centres, declaring that they are 'essential services' like the military and utility providers. The strong pro-business stance he has adopted is designed to attract industry and investment to his state. The centres - known as business process outsourcing, or BPO, in India - provide services like call centres and back-office keyboard processing for companies primarily in the US and Europe.

Asian Labour Update/Newsweek International

This article is from the May 2005 issue of New Internationalist.

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