Cheap Labour

We are a growing and up coming middle class. We have just been introduced to the possibility of being first time home owners and owning a car of foreign make has become a reality. Many people attribute this progress to the growth of the Indian economy and the fact that more jobs are being outsourced to India. One of the biggest factors, as everyone will tell you, is cheap labour. So, on a Thursday afternoon, after a meagre corporate lunch (meagre in the nutritive, not calorific sense) I asked myself how cheap a labourer am I? And what is cheap?

Let me start with a paradigm.

Bangalore's restaurants are famous for poor service. They can get everything right, starting from the concept to the interior decoration. What these restaurants can never get right are the cutlery, the recipes (and names) and service. On more than one occasion, as I have to lunch out quite often, much after the fashion of software engineers in Bangalore where a Friday luncheon not only boosts team spirit but also provides a (questionalbly) thankful retreat from the absolute monotony of South Indian catering, I have had the privilege of being the victim of poor service. The restaurants are expensive. The people who wait on the customers are not. They are what constitutes cheap labour. And they define poor service. Why else would anyone serve soup with a table spoon or nod sheepishly at every instruction you give without understanding a single word (as you come to know eventually)?

In very much the same way, it makes business sense for large multinational companies to outsource jobs to a poorer country where people work for a fraction of the salary otherwise payable in a developed country. And it works out for both the MNC and the poor country. Or does it?

Consider the newly enriched Indian middle class. They eat out once a week, drive foreign made small cars, play teaming havoc in malls and public places, create the most unimaginably rowdy traffic, work more than 50 hours a week of which they spend a large part of it on the internet following cricket scores, checking email and trading in the stock market. Another great part in coffee breaks, lunches and brilliant discussions on optimizing income tax payout and the various loopholes that may be exploited (even if that means getting fake receipts from the local chemist). And then finally, a bit of work thrown in here and there, a few conference calls a week to buy more time from the customers but ensuring everytime of the utmost sincerity of the team. The actual work starts as the deadline approches when everything else takes a back seat. A couple of deadlines after, it is time to move on to another job because of the associated stress due to 'unrealistic' deadlines.

There is another angle. Take hold of an employee and by virtue of his supposed experience in the industry, make him a manager and open a world of possibilites. For one thing, understand very well that an incompetent manager never says no. He just accepts every bit of work, agrees wholeheartedly with the customers and then delegates non realizable deadlines to subordinates; other employees who are suddenly shaken out of their internet browsing, coffee breaking comfort zones. What follows is a miracle in modern times where after fits and starts, a few angry resignations and frantic recruitments, the project at last takes off; understaffed and over scheduled.

The beauty is that everyone is aware of it. And everyone is really quite all right with it because after all, things that come cheap are good if reliable but understandbly expected if not.

Then what really is cheap labour? Is it purely the numbers that make every MNC come wooing to our doorstep or is it the work ethics and the continuous basking in revelry over newly found riches, quite expected from a poor but young people? Or is it the acceptance of servitude by being poor which is in some way a licence to get fake bills, switch jobs for a raise - in short create a cheap attitude that can go with the name of cheap labour?

On a Thursday afternoon, after a South Indian meal that just does me no good, I am wasting my time writing about the fact that wasting time is part of being cheap labour. I am cheap labour. At least for the moment, like everyone else who is reading this on work time.