Love blossoms in call centres as work hours increase

New Delhi: Office romances in India are blossoming and sex between colleagues at work is no longer taboo, a recent survey of the country's top corporate executives shows.

It is not only single people who are ready to mingle with co-workers, according to a survey by Synovate, a research firm, which questioned 402 employees at leading Indian companies.

A third of married male and female executives said they saw no harm in having affairs in the office as economic resurgent India's growing corporate culture forced employees to spend increasing amounts of their time at work. "This [romancing] is especially true of call centres where executives spend long hours in close proximity with the opposite gender," a manager said, declining to be identified.

The majority of call centre employees, she added, worked through the night because of the time difference with the West and ended up seeking "solace" with their co-workers.

Entitled "Romance at the Workplace" the survey, one of the first of its kind, also established that 59 per cent of executives felt that women were equal players in office romances with many even initiating affairs.

"This is an urban phenomenon, especially one in which economically independent women are increasingly finding the need to express themselves more assertively and live life on their terms," said Dipankar Gupta, a sociologist.

But one of the main reasons given by women for beginning an affair with their boss was, like anywhere else, the prospect of promotion and higher pay.

The majority of those surveyed agreed that office affairs adversely affected overall efficiency but firms had no right to interfere.

The survey supports several others that showed urban Indian women to be in the midst of a sexual revolution.