THE BIGGEST OPPORTUNITY: Call centres are mushrooming in India. Jobs are a-plenty in the business process outsourcing sector. Lifestyles are changing. Cultural barriers being overcome.

BPO is the biggest opportunity to come India's way. The software sector took 25 years to employ 500,000 people, BPO already employs over 100,000 persons; that figure will cross 1 million in another five years.

By 2004-end, one out of every ten US software jobs will move to nations like India, Russia and China, according to global research agency Gartner Inc.

And India - with its vast English-speaking workforce, skilled manpower and extremely low costs - has captured the largest proportion of white-collar jobs exported from the West.

(L) Employees of ITC Infotech at a call centre in Bangalore.

Photo: Indranil Mukherjee/AFP/Getty Images

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