Pain in the Neck

"They are very often away from home and their normal environment and their lifestyles are very different. They have to take on a different identity — try to be more Western or American, and conflict comes with that," she said.

For these people, the physical pain becomes mental. Nearly 100 people a day call 1to1.net complaining about psychological distress, sometimes even depression.

"They have so little free time, so they get cut off from the people they would otherwise be close to," Baskar said. "They're working when everybody else is asleep. There is a high percentage of greater emotions, and that in turn affects their relationships … and they become increasingly irritable."

In a country where most young people live at home until they're married, many young IT professionals have to move out, often away from their friends and family for the first time.

"Because of the kind of lifestyles they're leading, with much less supervision than typical Indian families, they're not used to that kind of freedom," Baskar said.

Some suffer from such bad nutrition and such insecurity, they want to quit. "But many can't quit," she said. "They're the highest-earning members of their families."

When it began in 2001, 1to1help.net was a pioneering service. Today, there are stories of companies that are aware of the problem and are truly trying to help.

"There are good companies and there are bad companies" when it comes to IT, says Sharan.

Hewlett Packard and Texas Instruments, for example, allow Sharan's doctors to make regular visits to the office, checking desks to make sure employees are sitting correctly and leading talks about what symptoms to look out for.

The good companies, he says, will bring fitness trainers or yoga instructors into offices and force employees to take breaks every 30 or 45 minutes, just to relieve the strain on their eyes and bodies.

But the bad companies "take shortcuts," Sharan says. "They get any available doctor, unqualified, who doesn't know anything about ergonomics and try to get a certificate that he was there. And if an employee complains about pain the company will just produce the certificate and say, 'There must be something wrong with you, not us.'"