Cheap Labor...

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.

Two Minutes...

We are trying to move into a new apartment in South Bangalore and so, I'm trying to get the builder to wrap up some last remaining bits of work. Every-time, I talk to one of the contractors out there, the conversation usually goes like this :

Me : "Hi, so is the work done"
Other guy : "It is done sir, BUT, there is some remaining work which will be done in 2 hours"
Me:  "You promised me it would be done yesterday"
Other guy: "It is almost done sir, but the electrician was out of town yesterday. He will finish the work in 2 hours, tomorrow morning it will be ready"

At this point, I'm out of patience and I politely walk out. This conversation literally repeats itself everyday.

Of course, this is just not in my apartment complex - It pretty much happens everywhere, from plush corporate offices to the guy on the road and it is not just "time". I have seen inability to forecast when talking about distances and money. For example if someone say point X is 'just' 2 kms from here, then chances are that X is anywhere from 1 -5 kms :-)

It is something unique about our culture - it could be any of these reasons :

• They really don;t care about the customer, lets just get him out of the way and deal with him tomorrow.
• Inability to say no to things - for example, if the work cannot be done, they need to be upfront about it and say it is going to take 5 days instead of 2 hours
• Inability to plan and forecast - most folks here are overwhelmed with business and their lack of planning and organization causes them to miss deadlines.

So, patience and persistence is the key to deal with these issues.  Things usually get done, but budget 2x the time to get things done :-)