Tuesday, November 9, 2010

Go developing, go semi-automatic or go manual!

After spending most of my time in India and almost a year in US of A now, i again dared to do a comparison of few means that create jobs in India. Although most of them are of a lower class of the community and may represent small section in a developed country yet they are a source of employment. They provide means to the millions of families in India. It's not that there are poor people only in India, there is a poor class in every big and developed country. Few of the things noted:
1. All gas stations (petrol pumps) are only manned by one person, who is running the Grocery shop at the petrol pump (AM-PM stores, in & out, etc). There is no other person at a petrol pump to fill the petrol in car or check the air-pressure in tyres. A petrol pump in India at a minium employs 20 people, however less the wages may be but atleast there is a job. I am sure no corporate/ lala company will employ a person if there is no work.
2. There are huge shopping/ grocery malls all over America but there'll not be any sales person to help you out. There may be ONE but you have to find him/ her first in the countless aisles of big mall
3. Most of the domestic call centers will have a machine asking questions and providing answers. There will be no option to talk to an executive. Why would you do that? (I think being an Indian i find it extemely exasperating to pronounce words containing alphabets "T" "P" "B" 10 times before the machine understands it) ;)
4. There is almost no public transport in most of the cities. Why it's the only country where there is no good network of buses/ trains/ trams? Why these roads were created only for cars/ trucks? Public transport is success everywhere, not everyone wants to spend money on buying cars, fuel and insurance. A good public transport is a win-win for people and government.
5. Two men can lay a gas pipeline or repair a road or relocate you from one corner of the country to another or any other work under the blue sky. Both are supermen! It's not a bad thing after all, but they deserve a rest, don't they? :)
6. I asked a doctor that why her staff can't inform us when she is not on time and patients have to wait. She said we have limited staff. There are two receptionist at the medical center but it's not in their job to inform patients. Hire more people - create jobs, everyone knows doctors have lot of money!
7. Multi-tasking is alien to most of people here. You cannot ask a person to do additional work, when asked, it may imply that you are asking that person to either come early or go late or are willing to pay more. I think everyone knows why did jobs move outside US long time back.
8. Stop making pre-fabricated wooden houses. They just can't bear any windstorm and are prone to fire too. So much of damage happens every year/ season. Brick and mortar houses will generate more employment opportunities for mason and labourers and are more sturdy.

Seems like most of the low level jobs were eliminated in a process to become efficient. We may call it Job rationalization (from control rationalization =)). There are all kind of people in every nation (rich, poor, educated, illiterate, sick or handicapped), a better decision should be made by both country and corporates. I hope India doesn't elimiate all these jobs one day, just to be known as Developed nation. Actually, all first world nations should know from this recession/ bad time that there is nothing called developed nation. It's developing every day, every moment.

2 comments:

  1. Very different and probing perspective, Kapil. I guess that the part of the problem can be also because of the socio-economic background as well as population factor. However, I have still not understood the lack of public transport and multi tasking attitude in USA. Totally bemuses me.

    Just to add - how about flight attendants, I have seen one attendant in AA flights where we have minimum of 4 per flight even for a low cost like GoAir. Ground staff at the airports, people employed by railways, plenty of white collar and blue collar jobs, security guards, barbers, carpenters - so much of employment - does not really matter even if they are unorganized in nature.

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  2. Great examples and list can be much longer. Believe me there are lots of poor people here and everywhere in the developed world, who would be willing to do any blue collar job if it can feed their family. But first of all, these jobs have to be created.

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