Visualizing a grand future for the BPOs, in view of the growing market, the corporate houses have to make an attempt for putting in operation a new agenda of governance. This keeps in line with the objective of creating a new image for the `domain-specific vendors upon which the growth of the business rests. In this article, the core issues that find relevance in the image-making exercise are discussed besides revisiting the current scenario from a socio-cultural perspective.

By setting up $60 bn as export market by 2010, the BPO sector is expected to change the face of rural and urban India with renewed commitment towards winning the loyalty of the investors and clients on equal footing. As such the mission of making the BPO industry reach the expectations needs a critical examination from the point of view of feasibility and infrastructure due to the growing demand for another 1.6 million knowledge professionals and 15 million sq. m of world class workspace.

"I've polished my technology skills. Now I want to focus on getting placed in a world class work whereby I can improve my levels of exposure on diverse platforms and sophisticate my passion for career-building," says Anju Sachdev, a Chennai based call center employee who is on the threshold of drawing a long and chequered career path with beaming confidence and maturity. The statement while displaying the visualization made by a sizeable section of the professionals working in IT-enabled Services (ITES) spread in various domains also implies the youth perception emerging across the country. Here we find two strands of thought concerning the BPO industry, which is found to be the solace for the growing unemployment in the organized sector. The first line of thinking evolved by corporate circles talks about the industry's potential for making significant contribution towards knowledge economy that is in the formative stage. It further denotes the required direction in the process of making it a pathway for reaching prosperity both for individuals and society at large. Even the second line of thinking among workforce for making BPOs as a `career destination' besides satisfying livelihood needs also shows the expectations held out by the employees. The need for achieving synergy between the two approaches to BPO sector assumes paramount importance for which attention is devoted here by identifying the potential drawbacks in the management of HR strategy in view of growing criticism on many counts. This we can describe as a new `agenda for governance' for making BPOs a wealth-making stream in the changed scenario by focusing on the much-required transformation from the HR point of view. As such the issues like utilization of human potential to the core, evolving cross-cultural teams and functional diversification are to be addressed with attention on the changing needs and aspirations of the clients. Though it has a huge customer base, the operational scope is confined to the urban areas and so much needs to be done to expand the BPO operations to Tier-II cities where the market is found to be untapped.

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