Communications minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said on Friday that the government will soon unveil a policy to generate around 48,000 jobs in Business Process Outsourcing firms that would be set up in small towns.
This would help to not just improve literacy rate, but also to generate employment for youth, he said.
“My idea is to have BPOs in Bhagalpur, Muzaffarnagar, Gorakhpur, Deoria, Saharanpur, Idukki, Aurangabad and places like Dhenkanal. We will soon announce a policy that envisages 48,000 BPO jobs in the country. The BPO centres will be allocated according to the population of each state as per the last census,” Prasad told Hindustan Times.
The absence of job opportunities in small towns is adding to urban migration.
As Charanjeet Jha, a lead manager at a branch of ISON BPO in Mohali, Punjab, put it: “I did not get much choice. After I completed graduation, I had to come so far, if given a chance I would love to go back.” Jha is from Samastipur in Bihar.
Prasad said the information technology profile of India is skewed towards bigger cities and towns, despite smaller towns having good business potential. He said there is no dearth of content in smaller towns as data on Indira Aawas Yojna, MNREGA, other public and state bodies etc, can be outsourced.
{{/usCountry}}Prasad said the information technology profile of India is skewed towards bigger cities and towns, despite smaller towns having good business potential. He said there is no dearth of content in smaller towns as data on Indira Aawas Yojna, MNREGA, other public and state bodies etc, can be outsourced.
{{/usCountry}}Young IT professionals from Bihar, Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh had recently approached Prasad in Bengaluru seeking that BPOs be promoted in their home states.
The Centre will set up 44 BPO centres in Bihar, and 84 in Uttar Pradesh. They will work in three shifts, and the central government will give big companies incentives to do handholding for small BPOs.
“This will lead to a growth of literacy, employment opportunities and e-commerce. This is going to give me a great satisfaction as a minister,” Prasad said.
BPOs welcomed the proposed initiative. “We are happy such a policy is being planned, we would like to explore such opportunities,” said Praveen Kumar, global CEO and director, ISON Group, which also offers BPO services in Africa.