Prasun Sonwalkar
Protests over the export of jobs related to the state-owned National Savings to India is gaining ground in Durham in north England.
The move is being fought by the Public and Commercial Services Union by claiming that any Indian office would not comply with Britain’s Data Protection Act standards.
The PCS, which represents over 400 staff at the National Savings office in Durham, is considering using the Act to prevent Siemens Business Services, the company running the operation, from hiring new Indian staff.
The PCS is trying to fight the decision taken by SBS to hire 250 Indian workers to carry out unskilled tasks for the business, as it believes they will undermine the position of British employees.
Although no redundancies are threatened amongst SBS’s existing workforce, the union is concerned about the long-term job security of the employees.
The PCS move follows a similar enquiry by a Lloyds TSB customer aiming to prevent the bank closing down its Newcastle call centre in favour of hiring staff in India.
The union claims SBS’s offshoring plans should be suspended until the outcome of Lloyds TSB customer’s legal challenge is known.
Said Leigh Mavin, branch secretary at the National Savings complex in Durham: “Our fear is that the transfer of 250 jobs to India is just the first shot before the further off-shoring of what is essentially government work.
“We have asked Siemens Business Services, the government and National Savings and Investments to suspend the plans until a decision is reached in the Lloyd’s TSB case.
“Otherwise we fear that the government could find itself in breach of the data protection legislation it has introduced.
“If our legal adviser suggests we have a similar case and that advice is strong, then we will seriously consider launching a challenge.”
Mavin said the union believed that the plans for the transfer of jobs abroad were not only unsettling and bad for the staff but bad for business too.
He added: “There are a number of anecdotal reports coming in that customers are already closing accounts. Having already contacted a number of MPs, we will continue to oppose the transfers on behalf of our members who are seeking guarantees on job security and pensions.”
A Siemens spokesman said: “We can say categorically that customer records and transactions would continue to be stored in the UK, with procedures in place to ensure that they cannot be stored or taken off site.
“Additionally, they will be encrypted for transmission to and from Siemens India. Data security is paramount and it will be protected by the best systems available in the industry.”
India slipping away from me: Anita Desai
Writer Anita Desai says that “modern-day India is slipping away from me”, and has set her new novel, The Zigzag Way, in Mexico.
Desai released the book at the Edinburgh book festival last week. She currently shuttles between Boston, Mexico, Cambridge and Delhi, but says her visits to India have become less frequent.
“To my friends and family in India, I am becoming a ghost,” she told The Guardian.
In a lengthy feature on Desai, the newspaper remarked that “at an age when most writers are descending deeper into their own fictional worlds, into meditations on age, identity and the bankruptcy of the modern world, Desai is exploring lives increasingly remote from her own.”
During her annual visits to India, to see her husband and eldest son, Desai says she feels more and more a stranger.
“One likes to imagine that things have stood still, but so much happens. I have become an observer, and not a participant. And so much has happened to me that to them, my friends and family in India, I am becoming a ghost.”
The Zigzag Way is set in Mexico and Cornwall, and is narrated by a young American writer, a man who travels without really knowing why.
Desai said this was more and more her own experience.
“There are two ways of travelling: there is the stumbling, directionless kind, and there is the more efficient sort, where you know exactly where you are going and how long it will take. But I think most things in my life have come about through chance, through serendipity,” she told the newspaper.
Desai is said to have developed a passion for Mexico. She first went there six years ago, and immediately felt its affinity with India.
“It’s such an ancient country, you feel every stone has a history to tell. Mexico and India share a history of colonialism—300 years of Spanish and British rule—along with this a much, much longer past that goes back into myth.
“Physically, we’re alike, too: I am constantly taken for a Mexican,” she said.
Speaking about her initial years in India—she left India at 45—Desai said: “My whole life was about family and neighbours: it was very difficult for a woman to experience anything else.
“I was bored, and I needed to find more range, which is why I started to write about men in books like Baumgartner’s Bombay (in which a German Jew flees the war in India) and In Custody (in which a college lecturer goes in search of a famous poet).
“Men lead lives of adventure, chance and risk. It just wasn’t possible to write that from an Indian female perspective.”
Desai has been shortlisted three times for the Booker Prize.
How authentic is ‘Indian’ food in Britain?
If you walk into an ‘Indian’ restaurant in Britain, chances are it will be owned and run by restaurateurs of Bangladeshi origin.
Now a Coventry-based entrepreneur of Indian origin has come up with the idea of serving authentic Indian cuisine.
Ownership of ‘Indian’ restaurants by Bangladeshis here is so widespread that many Asians of Indian origin remark that they should pay royalty to use the word ‘Indian’ in their businesses—because that is what brings customers in. Several patrons also often complain that what is served in such restaurants as Indian food is a pale shadow of the real thing.
In Coventry, which has a considerable Asian population, the newly opened Flamingo Bar and Grill has begun with the promise to serve the best of Indian cuisine.
Matharoo Holdings is investing ? 400,000 on the new outlet, which specialises in Indian cuisine as snacks or main meals.
Jo Matharoo, one of three brothers who are partners in the venture, said: “The food we serve will be genuinely Indian. Many restaurants nowadays call themselves Indian but actually serve Bangladeshi cuisine.
“There’s nothing wrong with that and it is extremely nice food, but Flamingo Bar and Grill will be the real thing.
“What many people don’t realise is that 50 per cent of people in India are vegetarians so that is a market we intend to cater to strongly.
“We are not just a restaurant,” added Matharoo. “We will be open as a bar for people to relax and enjoy a drink and will complement that with high quality food.”
(The writer is a UK-based journalist and can be contacted on sprasun@hotmail.com)
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