Tuesday, September 9, 2008
India - 8 days
Next Wednesday, September 17, we leave for India. This trip is going to be different than the last one for two reasons. First, there will only be 3 of us going instead of a group of 15. Second, we are going more places - last time we spent 7 of 9 nights in Bangalore. This time we will be visiting and staying in Dehli, Agra, Mumbai (formerly Bombay), Trivandrum and Bangalore. We will be meeting with educational institutions, tech companies and government officials. I will have my notebook computer and Internet access so plan on including regular posts (I almost put daily posts but some days are heavily scheduled).
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9 comments:
Wow! How fascinating.....India! Is this something that you routinely do? I bet that you have many exciting stories to tell!
Amy Bair
EDU 271
on line
Oh you are so lucky! I would love to visit India one day. I am eager to see your pictures from the trip! I hope you have a wonderful time!
Hi,
I've been reading through your journal, beginning with your trip last year and through to the upcoming visit to India.
Last year, a close friend of mine spent 6-8 months in India, working with young girls as an educational and emotional support person.
Her descriptions of the travel, including traveling by bus and stopping for all sorts of animals and other vehicles, could almost exactly match yours verbatim.
She also described the panhandling, but, and perhaps because she was in the cities for longer periods of time, she felt she needed to establish boundaries with people in the marketplace.
I have read some of the descriptions of your project.
I cannot say that the project has led me to change my underlying beliefs about the outsourcing of work to countries, but I do see that there are people in IT who are sincerely interested in making educational connections to make IT technology accessible.
I am not a nationalist, nor do I wish for an international police dog to oversee economic trends globally.
However, I do worry about the fact that US companies shut down factories because they can find cheaper sources of labor overseas; and, in the professional fields, workers have been down-sized and/ or offered early retirement so that the work can go elsewhere.
Your descriptions of the work environments seem to indicate that, relative to their own social class system, people who work in the IT field, even in some of the lower-level positions, are well paid.
However, people in the US, who were fairly paid for their work here, are not generally underemployed.
I went on a detour in my career through the world of medical records in a small acute care hospital in a rural area.
I was a medical transcriptionist for four years and a medical coder for two-and-a-half.
It was during that time that many companies in the US or independent companies in other countries began sending dictation to transcription centers in countries such as India; in fact, I believe that India was the first and major source of supply for US transcription.
Medical transcriptionists had generally been paid well in this country and it was considered a form of clerical work that required a high degree of skill.
Though some companies do still operate in the US, and many hospitals and doctors maintain their US transcription services (I think likely due to the necessity for extreme sensitivity to the English language, for example, with respect to accents, etc.).
I can see and admire the value of your project, but, for me, the underlying economic dynamics cannot go unaddressed in terms of assessing the global economy.
Unfortunately, we no longer have much in the way of media and theory which would provide a level of "objectivity" with respect to the "what's really going on here" of the development of the international economy of the past 10 years or so.
Michelle
What a great job perk--to be able to travel to the places you go. I have always wanted to visit India and have several friends that have. I think I would have a hard time with the poverty but I understand that it is mostly in the large cities and the country is beautiful. When do you get back? I guess you will be in constant communication via the computer. Have a great and safe trip.
It is so funny I read this today. At my church today we had a preacher from India named Sam Chacko of the Ebenezer Gospel. I enjoyed meeting and talking with him. I beat INdia is a beautiful place to visit. I love to see the clothes they wear and such. But 16 hours is a long flight. I went to England when I was 11 and we flew from Newark too. I hope you have a wonderful experience. Can't wait to see what you write in your india journal next.
That is so cool I would love to go to India. Have a wonderful and safe trip.
Holly
EDU 271
That is wonderful I hope you have a great safe trip.
HOlly Briggs
EDU 271
I would be so excited to be going to India. It just seems like such an interesting place. I hope you take lots of pictures to post and have a great time!
Crystal Melrose EDU 271
we will miss you and hope you are well
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