One of the attractive things about India is the availability of 'cheap labor'. Labor here refers to all blue-collar jobs and cheap because it is easy to find folks who work for less (compared to how much it would cost you in the US). If you have ever tried getting a simple job done in your house in the US, you would understand how costly it is.
While getting the job done is easier and cheaper, it is not necessarily the best work. Typically, these blue collar workers tend to do a patch up job and it works in the short-term and the problem would recur in a short-while. I'm talking about fix a leaky pipe, you get a plumber who does a quick fix for a few hundred rupees, but the problem would recur in a couple of months. Then the cycle repeats.
The other problem is that because labor is cheap, people tend to think that just adding more folk to the work-force would cause things to move faster (think Mythical Man Month problem in software).
As I see more of this blue collar workers, I'm beginning to think that maybe increase in the cost of labor is good for the economy as a whole. The rising costs implies that customers will expect a better quality of service and from the worker point of view, it forces them to work better. Increased costs would also force organizations to think in terms of efficiency and costs.
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