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Showing posts from August, 2008

Low Cost Labour?

India's economy has been cruising for the past several years with the ITES sector on overdrive all due to the abundant availability of trained 'low cost labour'. And India's demographic deficit, i.e. its burgeoning population of under 35s is supposed to drive its economic growth for many years into the future. But is that really going to happen? To my mind, the day the myth of this so-called low cost labour explodes, there will be a panic-stricken exodus of MNCs, and no number of ready-mix IITs and IIMs or added seats in graduate courses are going to be enough to stem the rot resulting from India's completely inadequate primary education infrastructure. The problems are already evident when one goes to recruit from or for any institute. I had posted some time earlier about my horrifying brush with the naked truth when I went on the interview panel of a 2nd rung Bschool in Delhi. And speak to anyone about the kind of domestic help they employ and it becomes even more