Interested in comments from anyone who lives in India or has experience/familiarity with it as to whether reality on the ground matches the rosy picture painted in the article.
I can give me 2 cents (or paisa hah), apologies if it gets a little sentimental, I am drunk. Looks like I've ascended on the Maslow's hierarchy of needs.
Grew up in a poor family with my dad as the sole earner taking care of my mother and 3 kids. Mum used to do minor clothes repair work for neighbours for some extra money, but it wasn't much. One of my first memories is waddling along to the ration shop (cheap subsidized government shops) with my mother to buy rice and kerosene for cooking.
Things were hard for quite a while (I was about 12 or 13), it didn't really change until my oldest sibling got a job at Infosys after finishing university. Now that I look back on it, what they were paying him wasn't much, but for us it was a life changer. We could afford daily essentials without any hassle. No longer we needed to buy things on credit from the grocery stores, no longer we were worried about not being able to pay the electricity bills at the end of the month.
It did change the trajectory of our life dramatically, as it allowed me and my other sibling to afford university. I did a bachelors in Computer Science and eventually managed to move to Europe for work after a few years. We are in a much better position than we were 15 years ago.
I know people here tend to look down on these cheap curry-consultancies for their dogshit services but at the other end of the line there are real humans too. Same dreams and ambitions as you do. It's true that these companies pay their actual employees peanuts and treat them like shit, but sometimes that's good enough when the baseline of what life gave you to begin with was wayyyy less.
This is just anecdotal so take it with a grain of salt, but this was a similar story for many of my friends from childhood.
It's a little funny that people here assume that everyone on this forum is some FAANG engineer earning $400k in SF, there's also a small section of us little people hanging out in the corners :)
As a fellow Indian who has had a similar trajectory as yours, thank you for sharing your story.
The point you said about Infosys paying salary that is good enough to escape poverty trap can’t be emphasized enough. Infosys, TCS, and similar companies gave lifted hundreds of thousands of families out of poverty trap.
> One of my first memories is waddling along to the ration shop (cheap subsidized government shops) with my mother to buy rice and kerosene for cooking.
Man you just rekindled those memories. I still remember the dusty ration card book (from PV Narsimha Rao's times, I guess).
> people here tend to look down on these cheap curry-consultancies
HN is very parochial when it comes to outsourcing and the vitriol some people here have for H1-Bs is sad. Our stories are the other side of the coin which shows that these curry-consultancies are making some real dent in the universe for the rest of us.
Thank you for sharing your journey.
As a fellow Indian with a similar trajectory, I can totally relate to this.
Although I do fall in the FAANG engineer earning 300k+ in New York, I do believe most of us are the same(desi engineers in TCS/Infosys or on site FAANG) for whom programming/CS/tech is a passion and ambitious/adventurous/lucky to be able to get out of poverty/lower middle class, we hustle and make the best of the hand we are dealt, not everyone gets lucky to crack the FAANG lottery and clear the leetcode hoops FAANG companies throw at you. Personally I feel you should change your attitude to think the peanuts they give you is enough, of-course while keeping your humility and remembering your humble upbringing to appreciate the pay/privilege many others dont have/wont ever get just due to dumb luck, unless some crazy innovation like miniature nuclear fission reactors that give humanity potentially infinite energy and makes everyones life luxurious , in a world of finite resources and potential over population its inevitable there will some overpaid, some underpaid engineers, yet both these sets are paid significantly higher than many many others from a non engineering disciplines.
Background: I come from a non-UC, rural yeoman farmers family. I grew up in rural India and used to spend my summer and winter vacations working on our family farm along with my cousins. I was the first Engineer in my family and studied in a Government college, and most of my batchmates were from a similar background, with over 50% of them being lower classes.
I have witnessed India's progress from the front row and it is something my parents or grandparents could never have imagined. Many of my friends went on to achieve great prosperity, some being C-level at Unicorns, others helping build Indias nuclear submarines etc. There is substantial wealth in the hands of my 4th tier town folks and I can see the signs of (relative) prosperity. Most households have people working in the private sectors and the wealth does trickle down.
I visited a Govt. hospital recently and I was surprised to see that it is not an ugly damp place it used to be. Granted, it is not on par with NHS or US hospitals but neither is it a god forsaken place.
The infrastructure is also much better than it was in the 90s. My grandfather would be shocked to see the Nagpur Metro and would think Aliens built it.
I am also proud of the fact that India does take special care of wild life and is actively working to preserve the amazing biodiversity it has. Of course there will always be pressure from humans, but the heart is at the right place.
> The infrastructure is also much better than it was in the 90s. My grandfather would be shocked to see the Nagpur Metro and would think Aliens built it.
I think this is underappreciated. Yes, infra in India is still not Switzerland, but eg. airports are now unimaginably better compared to just 20 years ago, when you needed a biohazard suit to venture into the bathrooms at DEL.
Firstly, thanks for posting this. Everything done to help alleviate poverty is wonderful, no matter how it is achieved.
I'm American, but of Indian origin. Our family visited many major cities in India when I was a child (early 90s) and it was heartbreaking. We just kept wondering -- how does anyone begin to fix poverty that is so vast? We gave a lot of charity (esp schooling support) over the years but it always seemed like just scratching the surface of a vast problem.
We havent been back since -- but i'd say every family helped is a positive step. Solutions do not need to be 100% comprehensive at the start. I look forward to more economic success for the people of India, and for people everywhere.
Purely anecdotal, please don’t ask me for data, sources etc.
It seems to me the government is doing a good job of supporting those at or below abject poverty. There are food security programs, free medical aid, education, and I guess even housing. Of course the poor have to wade through bureaucratic and corrupt system. But with digitization it’s getting fixed to an extent.
That said, the huge challenge I see is in the so called middle class segment. For a reasonably educated person the jobs just don’t exist any more. So the mullion of people who join the work force every year have to fight for a few thousand jobs. And they live their life precariously, just one or two jolt away from falling back into poverty. For a vacancy of 10 clerical posts tens of thousands jobless people turn up, some of them way over qualified. This cohort is really getting disillusioned and is easy to manipulate and radicalize.
India is a hugely complicated, vast, and diverse country, it can’t be comprehend by one person or even group. So you will come across all kinds of contradicting views all of which could well be true simultaneously.
This seems more like propaganda. I come from a small village. No one in the village is jobless, or hard pressed to meet basic necessities. In fact there is acute labor shortage in agriculture.
I have a cousin who probably failed in his 10th grade. He picked up some driving skill, and works in one of the road construction companies. He recently got fired because he wanted to work from a different place, and the company didn't have an opening in that place. He found a similar job at his preferred place within a week. He has his own car, and saved enough to start a side gig setting up a pharmacy where he employs couple of people.
There is no dearth of work for people willing to work, and are flexible. It's a different matter if someone wants to find a cushy government job.
I can tell my experience. Not just me but everyone I know moved from poverty to lower-middle or middle class in just 20 years. When I was 5 years old, we were living in a village with no electricity. Having 2 square meals was a luxury only some house holds had. Many farmers & daily wage workers had only enough to eat one meal a day. My family's biggest fear while I was growing up was what will happen if my father felt sick and couldn't work. I am thankful those days are behind us.
It has changed a lot this holds very dear to me as I come from very poor Indian village and have seen what people go through.
My village had mountain on one side and river on all three other side, so when my maternal grandfather died I had to cross a river with my little brother on top of me to see him.
My family was so poor that they sold goats to somehow manage my fees and used to skip mills on Monday to manage finances.
In few decades we have solar powered borewell in that remote village and I am earning very good earning.
Not only my family but everyone in village has been uplifted. My ancestors will lose their mind if they see us now.
I think this also has network effect for example before current era no one knew about opportunities present outside as information was no easily accessible in village.
One guy getting a job leads to ripple effect on other families perusing better job and education.
I live in India. Well definitely there is a change in last 15-20 years. People have money to buy phones, bikes, tv along with DTH connection, etc even in poor villages. Electricity situation is much better. Roads are much much better now. Access to baking is much more prevalent. Digital services has brought much needed access and corruption is lesser. We have many brands, malls, restaurants etc. Air travel which was elite in 2005s is now common place and accessible to many more (but not all). Rail travel has improved marginally, I would say. Water and sanitation has improved marginally.
Education has though largely remained where it was i.e. cities have very very good schools, colleges (but expensive) etc and higher eduction (colleges etc) is much more prevalent but primary education in rural areas is still a concern. Same with healthcare. It has improved drastically in cities but not in rural areas.
However there is still a 20% population which lives below the poverty line. This, in Indian context is still a very large number (250-280mn). Government cannot put their foot off peddle here. Education, nutrition, healthcare, roads, safe drinking water, santitation, electricity, social equality etc are the goals that they need to continue focusing on.
In my parents generation, very few people finished high school and college degrees were rare. If we go back to the village now (in southern India), pretty much all the people my age go to college, have professional degrees and have generally moved away from the villages or abroad. But they all send money back and most everyone is visibly comfortable at this point.
India did make progress in lifting poverty. The numbers wary according to context but yes in absolute numbers India did make significant progress. Most of it is done by IT and pharma industry.
Grew up in a poor family with my dad as the sole earner taking care of my mother and 3 kids. Mum used to do minor clothes repair work for neighbours for some extra money, but it wasn't much. One of my first memories is waddling along to the ration shop (cheap subsidized government shops) with my mother to buy rice and kerosene for cooking.
Things were hard for quite a while (I was about 12 or 13), it didn't really change until my oldest sibling got a job at Infosys after finishing university. Now that I look back on it, what they were paying him wasn't much, but for us it was a life changer. We could afford daily essentials without any hassle. No longer we needed to buy things on credit from the grocery stores, no longer we were worried about not being able to pay the electricity bills at the end of the month.
It did change the trajectory of our life dramatically, as it allowed me and my other sibling to afford university. I did a bachelors in Computer Science and eventually managed to move to Europe for work after a few years. We are in a much better position than we were 15 years ago.
I know people here tend to look down on these cheap curry-consultancies for their dogshit services but at the other end of the line there are real humans too. Same dreams and ambitions as you do. It's true that these companies pay their actual employees peanuts and treat them like shit, but sometimes that's good enough when the baseline of what life gave you to begin with was wayyyy less.
This is just anecdotal so take it with a grain of salt, but this was a similar story for many of my friends from childhood.
It's a little funny that people here assume that everyone on this forum is some FAANG engineer earning $400k in SF, there's also a small section of us little people hanging out in the corners :)