About that delay on the line...

India's Call Centre's are getting a reputation:

With employees who are young, usually single, and on starting salaries much higher than those of doctors or lawyers, India's booming call centre industry has been responsible for a social revolution.

"Women come to work with condoms in their handbags," said Alkesh Dua, a call centre worker in Noida, just outside New Delhi. "Everyone is doing it. You're together all night in this cool, hip atmosphere and you end up getting intimate."

Employers have tried to compensate for the monotonous nature of the work itself by creating an informal, American-style college campus atmosphere, where there is plenty of après-shift drinking and partying. Since many staff work night shifts, after which normal socialising is impossible, office friendships - with accompanying sexual liaisons - have blossomed.

In the southern city of Bangalore, a call centre hub, the rising number of abortions – up 50 per cent in two years – is blamed on the licentious lifestyles of the call centre workers. So entrenched is their reputation for dating, drinking and partying that many middle class parents are now reluctant to let their daughters take up such jobs.