I remember back in my engineering days when Dr. Manmohan SIngh (current PM of India) had started the process of liberalizing the economy with the idea of more job growth and greater economic strength. By the time I left India to US I was able to witness the economic growth mostly in the technical field (aka software and BPO) and during my visits back to India I saw the transformation slowly impacting different strata of the society but never witnessed it reaching all the way to the bottom. This time around I can say it has almost reached all sections of society. Here is how I justify the same.
I have spent most of my time in this vacation in Mysore and went to the famous Mysore Mall (yes Mysore also has a mall now) and to the retail store called More (a retail chain by Birla group). The first time I went to the mall was to buy sandals and the next time was to buy a phone, when went for the sandal shopping I visited quite a few stores and each store had few common features one was a bunch of young employees in the age group of 18-25 employed to help the customers and each store had a security guard whose duty is to stamp the bill while you are leaving. The second time I went I mostly spent time in the Reliance electronic store and here the ratio of employees to number of aisles was the same as other stores but with a noticeable difference in the age group (wider range than others). I am not sure what they are paid per month from what I heard it is apparently in the range of Rs 6000-10000 per month and since most of these stores are retail chains they also need to provide employee benefits like retirement funds and so on.
The story at More was a different one, the employees seemed mostly direct imports from a near by village. If it were to me I would have guessed that the average age of the employee is 16-18 but my father-in-law noted the fact to me that it is illegal to employ age less than 18. True to the norm in India, there were 1 or 2 employees for each aisle and every few aisles had a uniformed manager. This apart from the cashiers, the security and other managers.
One can argue that the entry of Dominos and McDonalds had similar impact but in my thinking the scale at which these retail chains are creating jobs is massive to say the least.
Last but not the least is that the house maid at my in-law’s house managed to lease a house for Rs.125000, keep in mind she is not educated and barely knows how to read and her primary occupation is to work as a maid in multiple houses. One can argue that such cases are rare but I am impressed by the fact that such things do exist.
On one side I am happy to see so many youth being employed but on the other hand I worry as to what is the future career paths for these countless youngsters, will it lead to the same problem USA has in terms of high school dropouts and not many following through to college? something to wonder.
