India Poised

Interesting article from NYT on the changing nature of the Indian job market;

"Until recently, many Indian families would have frowned on the idea of a young woman dressing in a short skirt and serving strangers on a plane. But a rapidly expanding economy has helped to transform the ambitions, habits and incomes of India’s middle class in ways that would have been unimaginable just a generation ago, not least for young women...

Once entirely dependent on famous British-era railways, Indians are traveling by air more than ever before, so much so that last year, according to government figures, passenger traffic grew by a whopping 50 percent. The Civil Aviation Ministry projects growth of at least 20 percent a year for the next 10 years.

Four private carriers have started flying in just the past two years, doubling the number of private airlines. One headhunting firm estimated that India would need 40,000 cabin crew staff members in the next three to four years to meet the demand. Starting salaries are in the range of $500 a month, an astounding amount for a high school graduate, which is generally the educational prerequisite for a cabin crew position...

Frankfinn, which opened its first training center in 2003 in the commercial capital, Mumbai, formerly Bombay, has 65 centers today, with nearly 15,000 students. At $200 a month, the roughly 12-month course at Frankfinn is costly, by Indian standards. There is no guarantee of a job at the end of the course.

Training includes grooming and communication skills, along with swimming, first aid, and serving cocktails. It also includes a week of sitting in a hulk of an ancient Airbus, built sometime in the early 1970s, long before most of Frankfinn’s students were born..."

Related;
A five part documentary from BBC Radio- India Rising - New Wealth, India's Heart of Darkness, TV Nation, Can it all Hang Together?, India Rising Debate

The Hijras of India ;
This is the story of around one million people in India who, in the eyes of the society at large, have no real identity. The story of those who describe themselves as 'transgender'

Walk to Wisdom
Peter Day treks through Uttar Pradesh on a Shodh Yatra (Journey of Discovery) with Professor Anil Gupta of the Indian Institute of Management.

A discussion with Simon Long, South Asia bureau chief of The Economist

“The extraordinary wealth of English-speaking, technically adept graduate talent…has been the foundation of [India's] success in the past. But now that resource is beginning to run out, as it were—soon India will face a shortage there—and to find work for the far more significant portion of the Indian population that is not English-speaking, has not been to college, and works at the moment in the fields or is redundant, India needs to turn, in my view, to labour-intensive manufacturing.”

Mixing up a smash hit in Mumbai

India's economy- India on fire

Four outstanding recent books