A Building Site in Bangalore

Spending all day on a building site in Bangalore may not be most people's idea of a reason to feel grateful for life's opportunities. But that's what I did on Wednesday this week and that's how it made me feel.

I was down in Bangalore supervising the pilot stage of a research project we are doing at the moment. I won't bore you with the details, but it involves evaluating an initiative undertaken by a local NGO to assess the skills of labourers working in the informal construction sector. There are a lot of people doing this kind of work in India - putting in long, hard hours - and they live a fairly precarious existence, traveling wherever the work is and with no contractual protections. They've very rarely had any kind of formal education and the skills they have have been picked up on the job, with no formal recognition at all. So the idea of the project is to recognise and certify their skills, facilitating access to work and further training, as part of India's wider efforts to train its population. As a policy specialist, most of my work is done at a computer or in meetings; it's not all that often I get to see what's happening at the ground level. This was a rare exception.

Building sites in India are, by and large, hot, dusty, noisy and relentless. There's often very little shade. The workers slog under the sun before squatting in the unfinished buildings to eat their lunch. Underfoot is pretty much a mass of rubble; strange struts of metal stick at random angles out of bare concrete staircases. Mechanisation is usually minimal; bricks are either carried up flights of stairs on people's heads, or hauled up by pulleys. This is not an easy existence.

In Bangalore, there was a girl in a red outfit with a toddler hoisted on her hip. She looked about seven or eight at most. My colleague from the local NGO asked why she wasn't in school; she ducked her head and wouldn't say a word. Her father explained that he couldn't afford to send all of his children to school. Some would get an education, some wouldn't, he said. She was needed to take care of her little brother. Like her parents, she will probably remain illiterate.

We interviewed a number of workers for the pilot. Of course I couldn't understand what was being said, but a translator was to hand. At one point, one said that "the big people" had come and asked him to take the assessment. Big people, I asked? He means the NGO folk, I was told. But we are all big people to him. We have an education.

I didn't feel like a very big person at that point in time; I just felt like a very lucky person. I wanted to ask, does that mean he sees himself as a small person? Is that just accepted? But I felt foolish. There's no way I can understand the perspective of someone whose start in life has been so utterly different from my own. And no amount of liberal hand-wringing about inequality or caste can change the fact that, for him, that's just the reality of his world.

Our research partner commented that he thought it was impressive that I was willing to come to places like this; most people wouldn't bother, he said. I tried to explain that I see it as an extraordinary privilege. In my work I've had the opportunity to meet village women in Ghana, labourers in India, policy makers and researchers from countries across the world. Every one brought fresh perspective to me and enriched my world. I know that the villagers and labourers will never have the chance to broaden their horizons in the way I have, and that their lives will likely be hard until the day they die. Meeting them, even briefly, is humbling and something for which I'm incredibly grateful.

Back home, my friends are posting about their excitement at being part of the Olympics, and I have to admit to feeling a twinge of regret at not being there to participate in the spectacle. But on the whole, I'm glad I'm here instead.

Oh it all makes work...

I have a very nice apartment. It's big (way too big for me, in point of fact); it has a roof terrace; it has three bathrooms (all of which I have tried); and it's located in a spot just far enough removed from the Delhi traffic to be something approaching peaceful. However, as with many things here, you don't have to scratch very far beneath the lovely exterior to find workmanship that, well, won't be winning awards at WorldSkills any time soon. The third of the above mentioned bathrooms features an unconventional hole in the wall above the shower head; the power sockets are installed in an entertaining variety of positions and efficacy; and a number of the balcony doors have to be bolted permanently because they don't shut on their own otherwise.

I'm not too fussed about any of this. I've yet to be electrocuted, and the other things are pretty much irrelevant to my life here. Plus, the flat is so big that I've kind of got used to just inhabiting those bits of it that are more or less functional and aesthetically pleasing.

So when, on my second day in India, the door fell off one of my kitchen cupboards, I wasn't too fussed. Again, it's a big kitchen, and I could never fill all the cupboards, so I just haven't used that cupboard. Unfortunately, since then, the same thing has happened to another three cupboards. Faced with a kitchen full of lean-to detached doors, I finally gave in and got my landlord to call in the local carpenter. Re-fixing four cupboard doors, I thought. Half hour job, tops?

24 hours later, my kitchen looks like this:

Now, I'm the last to claim I have any skills in carpentry (or indeed any practical skills whatsoever) but this strikes me as a little excessive. I've been home sick today (having endured a flight back from Bangalore last night while in the midst of a raging fever, chills and sweats) and have witnessed an inordinate amount of coming and going, involving at least four people and a quite impressive amount of dust. None of the workers speak English and my Hindi is certainly not up to "um, you know you're only supposed to be replacing the doors, right?" So I've been curled up on the sofa in my dressing gown listening to the bangs and the crashes and wondering if I haven't ordered a complete re-fit by mistake. Every now and then one of the workers comes out of the kitchen and stares at me. Which is not a nice feeling, given that I feel like I've been hit by a bus right now and am even pastier than normal.

Compare and contrast: my recent discovery (I don't know how it's taken me this long) of roadside, mobile coconut stalls that, using an ingenious set of pipes, spikes and whatnots, get you from raw fruit to glass of chilled coconut water in less than 30 seconds. Efficiency is a rather selectively applied concept in India.

Update: I am chastened. It turns out that my collapsing cupboard doors were due to termites, which I had somehow failed to notice. So now half of my kitchen is being replaced, and the whole flat treated to prevent the little buggers coming back. I take it all back!

Call centres and competition

If you are in the UK, you may have seen recently that a telecoms company has decided to close its call centre in Mumbai after three years in the city and relocate it to Burnley, Lancashire. After successive years of high inflation and increasingly high wage expectations among skilled Indian staff, the rationale behind outsourcing has vanished. And reading between the lines of the quotes from the company's spokesperson, it seems that customers have had a problem with the Indian accent and would rather get information and help on their mobile phone issues in the "quite pleasant" Lancashire tones. Also reading between the lines, one suspects that UK customers found customer service skills in the Mumbai office not entirely up to scratch.

Economic reality, or pandering to prejudiced customers? Probably a bit of both, if we're honest. But it's a worrying development for India, which has done famously well out of the outsourcing trade and which continues to see it as an engine for growth. The sector, though, is uniquely vulnerable to becoming uncompetitive, as this case shows - and if people really do prefer a Lancashire accent, New Call's competitors will be looking keenly at what happens next.

In one sense this is good news for India. The country has a wealth of talent, and the potential to move beyond the easily-dismissed image of a country of call centres and cheap remote tutors and become a genuine technological leader. Indian firms like Wipro and Tata are already showing that this can be done and that they can be world beaters. But the worry is that there are not enough Wipros and Tatas to pick up the pieces if the bottom falls out of India's call centre and BPO sector.

This recent article from a professor at the University of Delhi lays the blame at the door of the Indian higher education system - a relic, surprise surprise, of British colonialism - which is adept at instilling technical know-how but fails to encourage enough innovation or entrepreneurship. Pavan K Varma's brilliant book Being Indian makes a similar point, and asks whether Indians are content to remain as "techno coolies", in the patronising but ruthlessly apt terms that has become commonplace.

But as New Call's decision indicates, they may not have a choice. The question is whether India can diversify its economy - and its education system - quickly enough to allow its citizens to stay competitive in a swiftly changing economy.

As Arthur Dudney points out, this means embracing a liberal university education that incorporates the strengths of Indian heritage, rather than being limited to a narrowly defined technocratic set of goals. But it also means a massive broadening out of what are seen as aspirational jobs in India. It's perfectly laudable to want to be a doctor or an IT consultant. But if young Indians aren't encouraged and empowered to achieve success in other fields too, the economy risks going down a cul-de-sac. So it's not just higher education that needs attention - Indians need multiple routes to success and prosperity.

With millions of young people coming on to the job market every year - in numbers that dwarf those who are leaving it - India simply can't afford not to offer its people more options in life.

A cup of coffee says a lot

, I had a meeting today at a branch of Costa Coffee in SouthEx (South Extension), a fairly upscale part of Delhi not far from where I live. Not having been there before, I arrived in plenty of time and (after having noted that there are a large number of rather decent-looking clothes stores there) went into Costa and ordered a cold coffee (no ice. Never ice).

It was 240 rupees.

That's £3.50, folks. Or for you international readers (of whom I have, oo, at least 2), about 5 and a half US dollars.

I was gobsmacked. I mean, I knew Delhi could be expensive, but that's more than it would cost in London. This in a country whose per capita income is less than $3,500 even at PPP, and where more than a third of the population lives on less than $1.25 a day. For a substantial chunk of Indians, that coffee cost over half a week's wages.

Actually, inequality in India actually isn't all that bad. In Gini coefficient terms, the UN gives it 36.8, not far off the UK's 36. By comparison, Denmark is the most equal country in the world with a coefficient of 24.7, and Namibia comes in last with 74.3 (thanks Wikipedia). But after less than a week here I've already seen how opulence exists alongside squalor - and Delhi is a long way from having the worst poverty in the country.

India, inc. is soaring, with an economic boom based largely on high-tech industries, supported by investments in higher education and based in hubs like Bangalore, Mumbai, Hyderabad and Delhi. It's quite astounding how rapidly this has come to be the story with which we're familiar when it comes to India, replacing the old image of desperate, poor and disease-afflicted India that I recall from my childhood. But the truth is that both Indias exist, and the more the economy depends on those high-tech hubs it seems the further apart the two are destined to drift.

Which is why India needs to invest in other areas of the economy and, particularly, in skilling the workforce in areas other than high-end IT, engineering and science where it has been so successful. Happily, the government seems to be taking this issue seriously (which is a lot of the reason why I'm here). So maybe, not too far from now, that coffee might be within reach of rather more Indians.

It'll still be a rip-off, though.