A typical day for Archana, 29 and a mother of two, used to start with milking cows, cooking breakfast for her large joint-family, preparing lunch
for her husband, an insurance agent, and seeing him off to work. Rest of the day for the intermediate pass from Teekli village’s senior secondary school was more of the same: looking after the kids, doing chores, and sometimes, doing nothing. All that changed this March, when her village, about 30 km from Gurgaon, got its first BPO (business process outsourcing) centre, from Harva, an outsourcing company with a rural focus. Archana joined Harva as a process executive, on a salary of Rs 4,500 per month.

Today, Archana and 29 other women from Teekli transfer animal-census data of Haryana’s animal husbandry department from handwritten spreadsheets on to Microsoft Excel sheets on the computer. They enter book details for a large global online retailer. They do all this out of the village numberdar’s (registrar) under-construction two-storey house, which Harva has rented and remodelled as a BPO. It’s barebones. The walls are still the colour of cement. There’s a large table, rows of computers and plastic chairs — and nothing else. (more…)