Jobs in India

There were many things to adjust to during our trip to India – many were things that I had anticipated: the lack of Western toilets (or “squatters”, as we so fondly dubbed them), the spicy food, the crowds…but one of the things I didn’t expect to witness was the intense level of service and number of employees (both official and unofficial) assigned to one particular job or task.

When I first landed In Kolkata, a boy who couldn’t have been more than fifteen years old insisted on carrying my bag and helping me find my pre-paid taxi. And when leaving Bangalore, Jim, Rachel and I experienced something similar where an airport employee trailed us throughout
our entire check-in process, leading us to the airline desk, the security line, and ultimately asking for a tip. Later in Kolkata, I went to a salon to get my hair cut for the wedding I was attending and was surprised to see that I had not just one but two (or sometimes three) stylists working on my hair.

Three weeks ago, I would have not accepted this kind of assistance, insisting that I am comfortable carrying my own things and finding the taxi myself, or I would have balked at the number of people tugging at my hair in the salon. But in India, I had to look beyond this and just give in to letting someone else (or in some cases, several others) do certain things for me, of which I am completely capable myself and would normally prefer to not burden someone else
with. But this is not an exercise in etiquette. Rather, it’s acknowledging that those who are insisting on helping me are doing so because they really do need the [tip] money, and that it doesn’t help either party to deny their assistance.

We’ve seen how excessive the service can be in India and we have seen many instances where there appears to be at least two people doing the job of one person; this seems to be at least one of the ways in which India has chosen to respond to its massive population and the jobs that such a large number demands.

In Kolkata, the sidewalks were being dug up to lay piping that ran straight up and down one of the city’s biggest avenues. The road work evidently provided jobs for dozens of workers that dug through bricks night and day. These workers were doing the job that one backhoe could have quickly done in a few hours. Again and again during the seminar, we recognized that India is extremely tech-savvy and has a lot of talent, but hindered by its lack of infrastructure. The flip side of this, I’m thinking, is that while the lack of infrastructure seems to prevent or delay the creation of more “sophisticated” positions (and consequently filling them), it does create jobs
that require less education, less skills (road work, digging, the high number of street food stalls, etc.). I am therefore wondering about how deep of an effect will technology-advancement, increased automation and improved infrastructure – when and if achieved – will have on
job availability and unemployment rates in India, particularly to this one very large part of the population that depends on this type of labor for work.