It's not bad, it's reprehensible. Notwithstanding the fact that there are about a dozen moral qualms about this line of thinking, the economic conditions of the countries have little bearing on the economic situations of individuals in this interaction.
I'd wager that the scammers here are more wealthy than most of the people they are scamming. And given their criminal backgrounds, they are likely to do more harm than unintended good to the people around them. Remember Gandhi who once said, "an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind".
> I'd wager that the scammers here are more wealthy than most of the people they are scamming
Ohohoho noo they're not. They are definitely not. Probably the one sitting at the top, but not the telecallers themselves who do the actual fieldwork. These are just poor youngsters who can't find jobs because of how ridiculously brutal India's labour market is.
If only Gandhi's idealism was even somewhat practical. This is what he thought about the Jews: “Hitler killed five million [sic] Jews. It is the greatest crime of our time. But the Jews should have offered themselves to the butcher’s knife. They should have thrown themselves into the sea from cliffs.....It would have aroused the world and the people of Germany.... As it is they succumbed anyway in their millions.”
The world is not a fair place. Morality doesn't get you fed, doesn't get you proper education or healthcare. And when you don't have proper opportunities to earn money the right way, it's tough not rationalizing scamming other people to get your basic needs fullfilled. Overall it's a good thought experiment to imagine what all we would have done if we were not born with our current privilege. I personally feel people are only as good as the world allows them to be.
Gandhi might've said a lot of things, but the point of that quote is that retaliation leads to an overall worse outcome. Unless you're an egomaniac, you will want to swallow your pride, break the chain of retaliation and live your life in peace. Retaliation is an inherently unstable state.
You are right that people are only as good as the world allows them to be. Which brings us to morality. It is not about any greater good or anything like that. Morality is simply what the world has defined that allows people to be. Over time humanity has understood a set of ideas that allow a stable society to exist. Without these you will have a very dysfunctional society that is in a perpetual state of retaliation. The wise founders of nations have realized this and codified morals into law. There is no society today that exists without law because any such society would not have stood the test of time.
I'd wager that the scammers here are more wealthy than most of the people they are scamming. And given their criminal backgrounds, they are likely to do more harm than unintended good to the people around them. Remember Gandhi who once said, "an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind".