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One of the best things about living in India is watching families move from lower or lower-middle class to middle-class status. Usually, all it takes is someone

• nsenifty 4y ago
  My first job was in Infosys back in 2001. Coming from a lower-middle class farming family, it was a huge deal. My monthly gross was something my dad (farmer) + mom (school teacher) would earn in an entire year. I remember my dad proudly putting a portrait of NR Narayana Murthy (founder of Infosys) on our wall - it is usually reserved for gods/ancestors or revered sages.
  • spoils19 4y ago
    That's awesome to hear! Our family does something similar - we have a line of portraits above our family photos of the various CEOs that have hired us throughout the years - namely coal and oil company owners.
    • dlivingston 4y ago
      How interesting, what country are you in and what's the motivation to do so? Similar to parent comment's reason?
  • FooBarWidget 4y ago
    When I see Indian developers, I have in my mind that they're similar to Chinese: the whole village bands together and gather resources to give that one kid a university education and a good job, so that that one kid returns to the village many years later to help people out of poverty.
    • rsgrafx 4y ago
      I have an uncle who came from Malaysia to the US in the 70's to do his studies. He was "given the task by his village elders.." as he would say and they did exactly that pooled resources and made sure he finished school. When I heard his story I was so moved. He's built everyone in his village a house, invested in many businesses now, literally changed lives of countless families and friends.
      • devoutsalsa 4y ago
        That's a great story.
      • tmd83 4y ago
        What a beautiful story. Both how the village came together to help him and how he remembered those elders and their contribution. Both are such rare gifts in a jaded world.
    • deepzn 4y ago
      not villages necessarily, families look out for each other, everyone's own kin.
      • synergy20 4y ago
        agreed, I feel it's not village-based at all, it's more of kin based, or family based.
      • twawaaay 4y ago
        It is different for different cultures but also depends on mobility. In western world it is currently family but that's because family ties are much more likely to be preserved over time than ties to your village. In other places in the world people are so immobile that they are expected to be born, grow up, work and die in the same village. And so ties to your local community are much more likely to be preserved over time just like ties to your family. It is not that the village replaces your family, it is just another group of people where it makes sense to invest to get something back in the future. Imagine you had tight knit group of friends where you left school but somehow are still able to stick together. If you trusted that this will continue for a long time it would be much easier to invest within the group knowing somebody might help you out later.
  • spaceman_2020 4y ago
    My FIL funded their maid’s kids education. The son got into a decent engineering school and landed a job at TCS. The daughter studied nursing and got a job at a large chain hospital. The kids bought their mom an apartment and a car. Its just amazing to watch - this woman’s mom, grandmom, aunts, uncles were all peasants or did odd trades. Now because of a single generation, the entire family could dream of middle class dignity.
    • deepzn 4y ago
      real cool, thx for sharing!
    • retinaros 4y ago
      its amazing. and unfortunately they will be the last generation that will be able to do it. just like for western countries everything will become unaffordable and the middle class wont be able to buy houses
      • dkokelley 4y ago
        I'm not sure of your point, but I think I disagree. The previous comment was about going from poverty to middle class. Why won't this be possible in the future?
        • rowanG077 4y ago
          If India follows the west then it won't be possible for 2 people with education to lift a family out of poverty to middle class. In my country you basically require 2 full-time wages to be able to support a 3 person family. You wouldn't be able to buy an apartment and car for your family. I think that is the point they were making.
          • gravitywave 4y ago
            That's because of idiotic zoning laws that make it nearly impossible to build multi family properties, high density residential, limit the height of skyscrapers and basically forced the entire nation to be a damn suburban hell hole, not because of a land shortage. India hopefully won't make the same idiotic mistakes the NIMBY soccer mom boomers did.
  • highwaylights 4y ago
    For anyone that doesn’t know (although admittedly not particularly relevant, but topical) Narayana Murthy is the FIL of the now-current UK Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak.
    • vanattab 4y ago
      What is fil?
      • vram22 4y ago
        Father-in-law. Like BIL for Brother-in-law. Apropos, I've always wondered where the terms gf and bf, for girlfriend and boyfriend, came from, i.e. the West, or India. Wonder, because many such short forms come from or are unique to Indian English.
        • titanomachy 4y ago
          gf and bf widely used in the west
          • vram22 4y ago
            Known, before. See my reply to raverbashing.
        • dlivingston 4y ago
          I mean, acronyms are pretty common to the modern English language in general. Is what you're talking about a bit different? Can you dive in a bit?
          • vram22 4y ago
            Sure they are common in modern English. (I only speak that version, being modern myself ;) [1] >Is what you're talking about a bit different? Can you dive in a bit? Sure I can. Thanks for asking. Yes, I was talking about something different. But I seem to have been misunderstood by a few people in this subthread. No worries, it happens. Human languages are not perfect, nor are they always unambiguous. Nor are humans perfect, in writing or interpretation. :) I wrote the comment casually, so did not think to check how it might be understood differently by others. When I said >many such short forms come from or are unique to Indian English. , I meant, first of all, just "some", because "many" does not necessarily mean "most", let alone "all". It just means "many", for some value of "many". It does not necessarily imply a comparison or relative valuation, such as, "many" relative to the total number of acronyms. (5000 is a big number on its own, but not compared to 5 million.) And secondly, I had first come across usage such as gf and bf in emails between Westerners and Indians known to me, some 15-odd years ago, and Indian (techie) English has many :) possibly unique acronyms such as o/p for output, i/p for input, so I thought at the time, that gf and bf might be Indian English acronyms, having not come across them in general Western English usage, at least before that. [1] An arcane reference to an Asterix comic issue, maybe Asterix in Rome (or Italy), where they talk about learning modern languages such as Latin :)
  • kamaal 4y ago
    In the 2000s landing a job in Infosys in India was really the equivalent of landing a job in FAANG's. May be even more than that because the era preceding it has such scarcity in terms of opportunity, that it was literally the equivalent of landing a job in some promised land. If you didn't go into government jobs, where there was lots of bribe income potential. The next best paying jobs were in IT services namely three big IT giants Infosys, Wipro and TCS. It was also a huge social status symbol to get a job in these companies. Of course many made it big, many didn't. Many realised the same corruption and Indian social practices applied to these companies too. While there was definitely a base upgrade in terms of a salary. The big opportunities, promotions, travel were subject to discrimination, bigotry and corrupt practices plaguing Indian society. And by early 2010's there was total disillusionment with these companies. Many MNCs set up their own shops in Bangalore, where the systems were relatively fair and HR practices, though not perfect did work to some extent. 2010s were all about working in MNCs directly. Then came the start up era. While some made it really big, start ups in India like everywhere are subject to same lottery set up and also some Indian founders can be stingy with equity, and many turn up to be straight up frauds. Software jobs did move the needle by a big margin in moving Indians from lower-middle/poor class to middle class.
• anthropodie 4y ago
  Those millions who moved to middle class are also helping the layer below them. These lifted households are spending their wealth on house helps, local grocery stores, taxis/autos and a whole lot of other local businesses. This trickle down effect then boosts development in cities where these IT hubs are located. Even more students then want to join these IT companies and enjoy the lifestyle of their seniors thus continuing the cycle. P.s. We spend money in local shops because the stores like Walmart have still not penetrated the Indian market as they have outside India.
  • TremendousJudge 4y ago
    You seem to be close to the situation. Do you think Indian Walmart is a future inevitability?
    • makestuff 4y ago
      Not op, but Walmart owns Flipkart so I think that is their play for India expansion.
      • bombcar 4y ago
        This is how Walmart and other companies spread into things like India - you might even see a few Walmarts open as a "higher class American-like" store, but the vast majority will be in things like Flipkart that are directly aimed at the market.
    • anthropodie 4y ago
      We actually have D-Mart and they are quite huge but not comparable to Walmart. These are present at multiple locations in tier-1 cities but are hardly present in tier-2 cities. The thing is even though these are very popular they are not shutting down local shops in the region that they are located. The sheer demand is so high that people get things from local shops instead of standing in long queues at D-mart. To answer your question, yes Walmart can happen but it has to be ready for some serious competition because other than D-mart other big player JioMart backed by Reliance has entered this space recently.
• piva00 4y ago
  Be careful with that, I saw the same happening in Brazil between 2002-2012 just to start unraveling quickly after that. Our economies and societies are still pretty fragile, any political shock can start a downwards spiral. Stay vigilant.
  • bergenty 4y ago
    I think the difference is India is a major startup hub that mostly caters to the local market so the effort to shift to more resilient income streams not completely dependent on the global market are underway, something Brazil did not do.
    • spaceman_2020 4y ago
      Entirely possible India hits a lean phase and stays stuck where it is. Truth be told, everything from infrastructure to basic law and order are far behind even a “middle income trap” country like Thailand. Too early to pat ourselves on the back.
    • mayama 4y ago
      And recent focus on manufacturing. New govt is heavily pushing local manufacturing(atmanirbhar bharat) for last 8 years. Progress is already being felt in some areas, for example in smartphone manufacturing India went from nothing to #2 in world in those years. They are now targeting more phone phone supply chains like pcb, modems etc. and other consumer electronics too. https://tech.hindustantimes.com/tech/news/india-now-2nd-largest-mobile-handset-manufacturer-in-the-world-says-amitabh-kant-71643607326675.html https://tech.hindustantimes.com/tech/news/india-now-2nd-larg...
      • spaceman_2020 4y ago
        To be fair, despite all these efforts, the manufacturing sector has consistently underperformed the rest of the economy. The share of manufacturing as a % of GDP has been trending down for quite a while. Outside of the headline grabbing numbers (such as the iPhone factory), the reality is different.
• akudha 4y ago
  Not everything is rosy though. In cities like Bangalore, real estate is super expensive, thanks to software salaries. The same is happening in second, third tier cities now. But generally speaking, yes, all it takes is one person from a family landing a white collar job. And life becomes (relatively) much better
  • db1234 4y ago
    Not everything is rosy anywhere in the world. One can find issues with any positive story. I would rather have expensive real estate problem due to high paying jobs than poverty.
    • akudha 4y ago
      During my dad's time, it was much easier to buy a house on a modest salary. And the houses were well built too. These days, it is near impossible to buy a house unless you are a very high earner, as all available real estate is being gobbled up by "investors", aka, who have high paying jobs (mostly software). It is good that we are elevating people from poverty. All I am saying is it creates a different set of problems. But yeah, overall it is good that we are able to pull more people up from poverty.
      • vbezhenar 4y ago
        Buy an acre of land in a remote location and build a house? Programming is a remote job, you have to enjoy it. That's my plan anyway.
      • searchableguy 4y ago
        Just live on rent. It will be far cheaper and flexible in India. The rent won't even pay the EMI for home loans for vast majority of these land lords in metros.
  • wobbly_bush 4y ago
    Real estate will get more expensive due to political greed than any other kind of development. The supply of real estate is artificially constrained by the political class, so any kind of development (say hypothetically manufacturing instead of software) will make it expensive. There used to be a time when new land for building houses was frequently sold by the government in the form of new "colonies", but that has completely stopped. The local political greed (municipal corporators, mayors, MLAs) has destroyed most Indian cities due to lack of planning, and this small fish only cares about short term money they can make.
• mrtksn 4y ago
  > While the tech bodyshops (TCS, Infosys, etc.) might have a poor reputation in the US, these companies have been absolutely critical in helping move tens of millions into middle-class respectability. The same goes for most "slavery" jobs. A lot of people's fortunes has turned all over the world by working under "inhumane" condition for American or European companies. These are actually good jobs in respect to state of play in these countries. The harm comes from degrading the employment standard in the rich countries where it's impossible to compete with places like China when they work under these conditions and as a result the jobs with "humane" conditions disappear in the wealthy countries or get worse. Overall though, the world becomes a better places as the people in the developed countries get their stuff for cheap and people in the developing world catch up.
  • spaceman_2020 4y ago
    Have to agree. Anyone who has lived in a third world country knows that a formal job is better than a no job, and that many would absolutely love to work for, say, Foxconn for a steady paycheck. Some of those stories about workers at Foxconn committing suicide also neglect to mention that the factory town has 1M workers who all live and work there, and that the suicide rate is actually lower than that for a city of equivalent size, or that 1M people living together might hurt themselves for any number of reasons (debts, unrequited love, adultery, etc), not just work.
  • Aunche 4y ago
    Anti-capitalists and anti-globalists fail to understand that it's impossible to transition from very shitty conditions to good conditions hitting a midpoint of moderately shitty conditions. They just cherrypick examples of bad situations out of context and declare it to be proof of the failings of globalist capitalism without listening to the actual opinions of those they perceive to be victims.
• acchow 4y ago
  Is TCS/Infosys/etc taking a risk on hiring untrained/undertrained employees and putting in the effort to train them? Or did they get training through a college/university? If the latter, I’d say education is helping pull these people out of poverty.
  • Dharmakirti 4y ago
    Indias software sector is so starved of talented resources that they have already started tapping into rural areas. e.g. navgurukul.org
  • GordonS 4y ago
    IME (I led offshore teams of Indian devs for years), the quality of the in-house training TCS/Infosys/Cognizant/Capgemini etc provide for employees is... poor. They seem to focus on quantity over quality, presumably so devs have lots of "relevant" training to pad CVs with.
  • nonethewiser 4y ago
    > If the latter, I’d say education is helping pull these people out of poverty. Is the school paying them? Its rich Western countries bringing India out of poverty.
  • thorin 4y ago
    I work for one of these services companies in the UK. They put huge investment in having their own training centres and universities and most of the recruits have already attended at least on university. You have to realise that the business is about selling time, not producing working or quality software. The more people you can bill, and the more skills on your CV the better. Once a large enterprise has pushed all their business into outsourcing, they can only go with it and try to make the best of it. Most businesses seem to have done this now, justifying some massive bonuses for their board staff and shareholder gains, due to the perceived "cost savings" going through a professional services business.
• pvsukale3 4y ago
  I have personally seen this transition. Some folks who started from tier 2 cities got access to white collar jobs because of MNCs like TCS, Infosys. Now they have improved skillset through Internet courses and are now working on much higher pay at product companies. MNCs are essentially doing what colleges fail to do in India. Teaching people how to code, talk to clients and bring them into formal employment.
• jbirer 4y ago
  >While the tech bodyshops (TCS, Infosys, etc.) might have a poor reputation in the US, these companies have been absolutely critical in helping move tens of millions into middle-class respectability. At the cost of Americans dealing with poorer tech support, buggier software (sometimes critical software that leads to million dollar losses), and employment fraud (like lip syncing in interviews where someone else answers the questions connected to the mic).
  • Fernicia 4y ago
    Kind of an irrelevant point given that none of these are externalities.
  • codegeek 4y ago
    You make it sound like every employee TCS/Infosys hires are like that. Yes there is fraud and issues with the bodyshops and I am not a shill for these companies but these companies hire tons of Americans as well and create 1000s of jobs in America for Americans. So a blanket statement doesn't add much value.
• codegeek 4y ago
  Not only tech jobs (which certainly have been the biggest factor in lifting tons of lower income to middle/higher income status) but overall due to globalization, lot of jobs have opened up in the past 25 or so years. I grew up in the 80s and 90s in India and moved to US in 2000. Now I am a US Citizen but when I do go back to visit, I literally know people who were poor/lower middle class and they all are now living upper middle class lifestyles (have a nice car, eat outside a lot , have their own home etc). Some factors: - Globalization of economy opening up in the 90s - Tech and other jobs (manufacturing etc) but more importantly, lot of global companies opening shop after the economy opened up in 90s. It is still not as friendly to outside companies as say China but things are changing even though slowly in a complex country like India - Rise of Internet especially since the introduction of Jio Data by Reliance. It has changed the game significantly. An average Indian may not have a Computer necessarily BUT they all have data and internet on their phones and almost everyone can order almost anything on their phone including paying for bills (UPI is amazing) - Mindset of young people is changing especially as more people are now exposed to other countries/culture through TV, youtube/internet, Movies, Travel. Capitalism is becoming more favorable compared to old school thinking of socialism and the whole "Raj" mentality that was left over by British and continued for decades by previous Govts. There is still a lot of extreme poverty in pure numbers (population size) but I have no doubts that overall, millions have moved from extreme poverty to lower or middle income status in last 2 decades.
  • newyankee 4y ago
    I have actually lived this myself so can attest.
• nonethewiser 4y ago
  Who are their customers?
• eunos 4y ago
  >While the tech bodyshops (TCS, Infosys, etc.) might have a poor reputation in the US, these companies have been absolutely critical in helping move tens of millions into middle-class respectability This is related to the Elephant Curve brought out by Globalization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Elephant_Curve https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Elephant_Curve That is more or less, middle classes from developing countries exploded in number. While for the developed countries, their middle class doesnt share the same fortune. The upper class however, reap heavy fortune. Unfortunately it seems the developed countries' middle class appetite to sustain this is waning. http://glineq.blogspot.com/2022/10/lets-go-back-to-mercantilism-and-trade.html http://glineq.blogspot.com/2022/10/lets-go-back-to-mercantil...
• tatpacc 4y ago
  > While the tech bodyshops (TCS, Infosys, etc.) might have a poor reputation in the US, these companies have been absolutely critical in helping move tens of millions into middle-class respectability. couldn't agree more. In my previous comments, I've criticized bodyshops for their business model but this is so true. While I never worked for any of the WITCH company but I worked with few product based and service based companies, In my case, we do not had our own house, in my 10 years of Software Engineer career, I was able to bought house and also paid my whole housing loan. Own a second hand car. I could also buy a new car but I decided to go ahead with used car instead. For those who don't know, car is necessity in US but in India it is considered a semi-luxury. Agreed, I would say, I am relatively good at what I do so it also translated in to comparatively higher salary (and still way less than what I could have made if I would have moved to Bengaluru - "Silicon Valley of India")
• lostlogin 4y ago
  This comment has spawned one of the most positive threads I’ve seen here in a long time.
• minusSeven 4y ago
  Thing is it hasn't moved as much as you think. People have moved from poverty to lower middle class not actually middle class. If consider middle class as between 20k to 40k a month and lower middle class at 10k to 20k a month and below 10k as poor then most poor people have only moved to lower middle class only.
• Abishek_Muthian 4y ago
  Those companies have also aided in increasing the participation of Women in the IT industry and thereby increasing their enrollment into STEM education; India probably has the largest population of women in STEM.