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Listen, the Vatican is outsourcing

September 4, 2009

Business and religion don’t mix. Yet, when Pope Benedict XVI managed to raise a furor with his opposition of the outsourcing trend, his critics could not be restrained from commenting that the Pope’s comments bore racial overtones. It was O.K for the white men to outsource their religion to the second world, thereby dislodging their “native” faith but quite another thing to let the native dislodge a white-collar worker in the First World!

So much for equal opportunity and all that high talk about laissez faire!

As Swaminathan Aiyar argues in his column, “For most of history, China and India were the richest countries in the world, with the most advanced technologies and best jobs. The Industrial Revolution changed that, the best jobs moved to the West, and millions of Indian textile workers were rendered unemployed by British mills…”

Vatican Outsourcing

All that was fine. However, the reverse trend is not fine.

Meanwhile, this dust over outsourcing also shifts attention away from another form of religious outsourcing —- the export of Indian catholic priests to the US that the Pope apparently does not object to. Roman Catholic priests are bountiful in India. For a section of the unemployed young men in India, especially in the south, it promises a life of basic comforts. There are two large seminaries in Don Bosco College in Aluva, Kerela, each of which outputs over 400 Catholic priests per year. Quite a handful of these are Hindu converts. Serving in US parishes, far away from home, they fill a real vacancy in the priest-starved country No one objects to the presence of these “fathers without borders,” or these “divine recruits,” when they are beasts of burden, i.e., when they fill a real skill shortage. However, their presence is not so welcome in other fields.

Related posts:

  1. Reverse outsourcing: Following in the footsteps of the Japanese automakers
  2. Jobs in outsourcing
  3. Outsourcing IT Makes Horse Sense
  4. IT Outsourcing On the Rise, While Offshoring Plummets
  5. New Careers In Outsourcing


Written by Radhika · Filed Under Outsource Blogs 

Comments

3 Responses to “Listen, the Vatican is outsourcing”

  1. Jon (outsourceblog) 's status on Friday, 04-Sep-09 23:46:16 UTC - Identi.ca on September 4th, 2009 6:46 pm

    [...] Listen, the Vatican is outsourcing http://outsourceportfolio.com/listen-vatican-outsourcing/ [...]

  2. Outsource anything on September 14th, 2009 9:13 pm

    Ousource has been happening all over the world for a long-time. Not sure what Vatican is saying about it? It doen’t matter as long as both the offshore vendor and companies benefit from each other.

  3. Arrindel on September 15th, 2009 4:55 pm

    Ousource has been happening all over the world for a long-time. Not sure what Vatican is saying about it? It doen't matter as long as both the offshore vendor and companies benefit from each other….

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