India's outsourcing business might be in trouble

Rebecca at Offshoring Digest has a troubling post about the prospects for India's BPO companies.

We've seen alarm bells before -- concerns were raised early on about whether employees at India's call centers are as good as those at European or American centers. And for awhile, there was a concern that the political backlash against Offshore Outsourcing in American politics would lead Congress to pass laws restricting it. Neither of those issues have fully gone away, but they haven't succeeded in slowing the momentum in favor of Outsourcing.

But this is the first study I've seen that suggests that the trend may have peaked. The study also has sobering statistics on India's continuing problems with unemployment, in a number of different sectors of the economy.

Emphasis on "MIGHT"; I don't think anyone really knows for sure what the next phase of things is going to be in the Indian economy.

UPDATE: According to Rediff, four employees at a call center in Pune have been arrested for pilfering $350,000 USD from Citibank customers.