Bengaluru, Nov. 15 -- The $283-billion Indian IT services industry appears to be experimenting with Orwellian-level productivity monitoring, raising concerns over employee privacy and workplace freedoms.

Indian heritage IT company Cognizant Technology Solutions Corp. has begun familiarizing executives with tools like ProHance that monitor productivity through mouse and keyboard activity. Simply put, certain employees of the Nasdaq-listed company would have to move their mouse every five minutes and type something on their keyboards every 15 minutes.

Failure to do so could result in those employees being signed out, lower billing, and possibly a reprimand from the manager. The system will also be equipped to measure hours spent on "produ...