[imiric]

This is a rampant industry in the US as well. The Telemarketers mini-series shows how these call centers operate, the scams they run, how police associations are involved, and how the government is basically complicit with what they're doing. This must be even easier and more profitable to operate from a more corrupt country with no regulations or law enforcement of these activities.

AI will make this industry even more successful. Telemarketers read from a script anyway, so it's only a matter of time until these scams are fully automated. We're starting to see some of this already, but it will be fully adopted in a few years.

[alephnerd]

There is regulation for this in India (eg. Each call center needs to be licensed, needs an actual registered owner/point of contact, etc) but if you are doing this with political cover you might be protected. For example, if I am running a scam call center in Kolkata, I'd need to pay off the political party that controls that state - the TMC. And similar stuff happens in other states among all parties.

That said, scam calling is a uniquely large industry in Bihar and West Bengal as neither have a significant tech industry, and see very little foreign investment, so there is less incentive for state politicians to crack down on something that generates easy money. Most BPO and Software outsourcing companies in Kolkata and Patna tend to be the old school Indian outsourcing companies that got priced out of Bangalore/Gurgaon/Hyderabad/Pune because they have low margins, and thus pay lower salaries (around $3-7k a year compared to $20-70k a year in Tier 1 cities or product driven companies)