Labour is cheap

With so many people competing for every job it is easy to understand how labour can be so cheap. There is no incentive to buy sophisticated machinery when you can hire workers for a fraction of the cost and get the job done quite quickly. The city is one great big work site in preparation for the Commonwealth Games, now only a couple of weeks away, and the city is swarming with manual laborers laying brick pavement and footpaths, repainting walls, planting medians, fixing broken walls, re-plastering columns. There are colonies of temporary 'housing' for the workers who have moved close to this opportunity for employment and they sleep under tarps slung on ropes between trees on the pavement. Whole families seem to have come together. Women carry sand, gravel, cement or debris in broad shallow bowls balanced on their heads on top of some fabric cushion and children run from puddle to puddle with little sticks or the occasional filthy toy.

The narrow and absolutely crammed household goods shop over in the Defense Colony area had a surly owner sitting behind the counter. He was responsible for adding up the items. The chief assistant, clearly paid the most, was the fluent English speaker and he sped up and down the narrow emporium swiftly finding options for our new kitchen, to which we'll be 'shifting' on Friday. He had a junior assistant who could also deal with the Hindi speakers and then there was a 14 year-old who ran errands and boxed items and carried them to your 'conveyance' and a much smaller boy who was good for sending up into the rickety and very stuffed attic (reached through a tiny and precarious opening in the shop ceiling). When two more customers came in we were almost standing on one another. Each of those guys were glad to have their jobs, even though I'm guessing the owner isn't very nice to them, and I keep thinking how many of the employees would be out of luck if a minimum wage was enforced. It is those guys at the bottom who get hit the hardest.

Our phenomenal hotel also has an astounding number of employees. The grass is mowed by a narrow mower and the edges trimmed with shears by two or three gardeners. The hedges get more trims than movie stars and someone has the job of daily placing and then removing the floating candles in the large water filled urns filled with marigold petals. There are two greeters at the restaurant door so that one is always available to walk you to your table while another waiter brings the menu and three more bring the delicious food to the table. The gym has at least two full time trainers in it to ensure that someone is always at the door to hand you the headset for the media, your towel and a bottle of water and if you happen to drape your towel on a lounge chair by the side of the pool someone will come and lay your towel out and place a refreshing, aromatic, warm face cloth with a bottle of water for you. Perhaps I should also mention the daily musicians in various spots in the hotel. :)