Outsourcing from Bangalore .... to rural India

With more than a billion people, India is more a continent than a country.  So, we can and should expect wage differentials within its own borders, which means that outsourcing can happen even from costlier urban areas to inexpensive rural areas.
At the same time, as I have blogged often, here, a college degree is way too hyped, and is quite an unnecessary credential for many of these jobs. 
So, combine these two and this NY Times report is no surprise at all!  Excerpt:

Now some businesses have begun looking to rural India for an untapped pool of eager and motivated office workers. Rural Shores has hired about 100 young people, most of them high school graduates who have completed some college, all of them from rural areas around this small town. The company has three centers now, but it aims to open 500 centers across India in the next five years.
Most of the center’s employees are the first members of their families to have office jobs. They speak halting English at best, but have enough skill with the language to do basic data entry, read forms and even write simple e-mail messages.
With much lower rent and wages than in similar centers in cities, the company says it can do the same jobs as many outsourcing companies for half the price. A Bangalore office worker with skills similar to those of workers here commands about 7,000 rupees a month, or $150, Mr. Srinivasan said. In small towns and villages, a minimum-wage salary of about $60 a month is considered excellent.
Here in Bagepalli, the Rural Shores office hums through two shifts a day. One set of workers answers customer service e-mail messages for an Indian loyalty card company. Another processes claims for an insurance company. In one room, workers capture data from scanned timecards filled out by truck drivers in the United States. They record nights spent in Abilene, Tex., deliveries in Kansas City and breakdowns in Salt Lake City, all of which the workers decipher and enter into a database.

A whole new world, every few days :-)