Devangshu Datta: Jobs for the lads

VIEWPOINT

Some months ago, I re-established contact with an old friend. A marine engineer, who settled in Sydney 15 years ago, he has returned to India to take up an assignment with one of the umpteen new private port facilities. I learnt from him that another half-dozen Indian mariners of our common acquaintance were coming back. There were plum jobs available at global market rates for experienced men.

A week or so after that, I met another old friend who was relocating from Brussels to Delhi. This chap is an architect. He had dumped a secure job with the European Union to try and establish an Indian practice.

Courtesy the architect, I met a couple of other chaps in the same profession. One was an NRI who had returned from Florida. He too, was establishing his own practice. The other was an American, who was consulting with one of the Indian realty majors. Their reason for coming East was simple. In their opinion, there were more big projects available in India than in the entire EU and US combined!

Last weekend, I had dinner with my nephew who is a commercial pilot with a private airline. He complained half-jokingly that communication inside the cockpit was becoming difficult. In the previous year, he has flown with Ukrainians, Nigerians, Frenchmen, Russians, etc. While English is the official language of civil aviation, most of his co-pilots could just about understand traffic control. Given the gap between demand and supply, he reckoned the situation would continue for several years. India can't produce pilots quickly enough to service the market and there are shortages in stewardesses, ground crew and other support personnel as well.

It may seem anecdotal, but there is every reason to believe that these encounters were indicative of secular trends. Growth across industries, that barely existed in the old Licence Raj era, has translated into mass employment opportunities. The people I mentioned are all in jobs and professions at the top end of the economic pecking order. Most sought employment abroad in earlier eras because there were no opportunities here. That has changed.

Every time one of these highly-qualified people is hired, there are 20 or more jobs created down the pecking order. Every time a project is developed, be it a mall, a port facility, or a township, there are hundred of skilled labourers and thousands of unskilled labourers contracted. Once it's up and running, there will be permanent jobs available as well.

There are other interesting spin-offs for professions that barely existed earlier. Amidst all the bally-hoo about SEZs and farmers being paid inadequate compensation, the non-controversial projects are overlooked. Dozens of industrial majors have started putting up greenfield facilities after paying market rates for land.

In their wake, financial planners have found new, challenging assignments. Thousands of farmers need to be taught to handle and invest their compensation. For a city-slicker planner used to dealing with a few white-collar clients, that's a big ask. The brighter planners have started to revamp their operations and scale up to address this new, and potentially huge vernacular segment.

All this has occurred more or less under the radar. The construction industry for example, employs over 32 million people and generates close to 15 per cent of GDP. It's growing at near 15 per cent per annum. It's a lot less glamorous than software, which employs 2 million. Retail has barely got off the ground and nobody outside aviation has tried to calculate how many jobs will be created there as traffic grows at 20 per cent.

True, there are farmers committing suicide in Vidarbha "" agriculture and its value chain have not been liberalised. Yes, the SEZ situation typifies crony capitalism at its worst. But where liberalisation has happened and the free market has been allowed to operate, the jobs are being created. Why has nobody tried to make political capital out of this?