Angry young Indians: What a waste

The burden of proof is on you; further - I can corroborate everything about manufacturing even after woking in only a medium sized manufacturing firm.

People can't be fired, and as a result few people are technically employees of a firm - they are usually employed with a labor outsourcing firm that moves people out after two years or n-1 years, where n = number of years before automatic entitlement to provident fund/pension plans.

When I last heard it was something like n=3 years.

There is mass absenteeism if there's a festival or someone needs help in the fields, or just if people think that they can't be fired.

Did you know that your cash for payments of salaries of workers has to be within x kilometres of your factory?

It's one of many rules people don't follow, because there is a forest of rules.

Then there's strikes, and corruption.

To provide an idea of what the attitude difference is between people on HN and the people who have so far never really had to think of professional modern commercial systems :

There's a long way to go before the unspoken assumptions on the ground at a labor level closely match anything such as a forum like HN.

A banker went to collect a loan instalment from a farmer. The farmers reaction was "holy hell! Haven't they come up with a debt forgiveness scheme for it already?"

People still think that money can come from thin air, provided you have the connections to protect you or access to votes.

Why work when you can just make sure you won't get fired and are guaranteed an increment because of the union?

And the on the other side you have the firms- hemmed by 100s of laws to,protect labor, they yet find a way to do what they can/want.

The government has created internship program's which can lead to a certification, and I've heard of firms warping the system to convert it into cheap labor.

The article doesn't have numbers because the numbers are a search away and these are a group of known, fundamental facts.

The economist isn't supposed to make every article a phd dissertation or a full fledged wiki on the off chance that someone unfamiliar with the background material is unable to perform a google search themselves.

Do keep in mind the reason the explloding population is bad is not exclusively because of the raw number of people or the lack of food or power availability (both can be improved with tech) but more because the population explosion is in the poorest Indians in the most isolated areas who suddenly came into contact with basic medicine and health practice in the last 30 years.

Population explosions at the bottom always hurt economies, and you just never see them happen at the top for a plethora of reasons.

Do note that things were worse before.

There were famines, massive food shortfalls and terrible job opportunities.

But if you look at the power situation, there's still something like 89%+ of power requirements being met, with capacity being added constantly.

It's the southern grid that has the highest levels of supply demand mismatch with Andhra Pradesh having a 16% shortfall.

But that's an opportunity for firms to sell generators, which at least give people a chance to move ahead while the govt gets over being corrupt.

As a US-raised Indian I'm not familiar with the macro details. But I've been living in India for the past few years working for a startup, so let me identify some low-hanging fruit.

1) Incredibly, shockingly poor hygiene. Dirty black rags being used repeatedly to dry plates at restaurants. Idlys being cooked on plastic sheets inside hot streamers. Infernoes of uncollected trash burning on streets. Rats and cockroaches everywhere including your toothbrush at night.

2) Utterly horrifying road conditions. Potholes large enough to cause motorcycle crashes every 100 feet. A culture of not giving the other motorist more than 6 inches on any side. Driving on the wrong side of the road, including on highways. It's incredibly stressful to think about your odds when you leave the house.

3) A political system that no-one is optimistic about. Stories are rampant of politicians buying votes by giving free household appliances away to the poor, and then doing nothing in office to help them.

4) An education system that isn't remotely good enough. Miserable professors, antiquated curriculums that churn out the IT coolies we're so famous for.

5) Congestion so bad you hardly ever leave a 5-mile radius. People tend to hang out based on which neighborhood they live in, because a trip to a friend's place more than 5 miles away can turn into an hour-long slog on terrifying roads.

6) A culture of being cheap. If you're only willing to tip your waiter 10 rupees, it may help out your savings rate, but it certainly won't help the waiter buy his kid a computer someday. Same goes for our beloved household servants, who get paid $150 per month at best, $40 at worst to clean our floors.

But to voice a conflict that everyone who lives here talks about, I'm not a pessimist about India by any means, because it's amazing how much the people of this country have achieved through individual hard work in the face of so many poor institutions.