Indian Economy: News and Discussion

[ezsasa]

Their YT channel has a few videos regarding it other than those ads.

this is like OFB's "state of art" trope, means nothing. third party validation matters.

 

[shade]

Isnt it funny how after more than 75 years of independence, not a single Indian company has set up a factory this big and it required a Chinese company to do so? Godrej, Voltas, Havells etc have been in the consumer goods market for decades, and yet this single factory is bigger than all of their individual factories by several magnitude. This factory is huge. It spans over 3 lakh square meters (~150 acres) and will eventually have $1 billion investment. I think they have invested >$500 million so far. This plant has the capacity to produce two million units of refrigerators, one million units of LED TVs, one million units of washing machines and air conditioners each year

Seth, Lala, Baniya companies don't have a 20 year vision of market dominance like Chinkus do.
That said even our govt doesn't have a 20 year vision and doesn't give a shit for the most part.

Your Haier, and even more famous Midea, also sells white-label appliances, upon which a brand can be stuck upon and can be sold under that brand, see this vid

Your baniya bawa companies here rather stash their profits by buying failing Bri'ish businesses like JLR on the cheap, take up Irish citizenship, etc than investing in India on a large scale, partly it's because they are pure capitalists and partly because the govt doesn't give a shit to remove any "hurdles" in the way of large scale Dhandho.

 

[Arjun Mk1A]

Is it even a good idea to introduce automated sliding doors in non AC coaches? IR is gradually pushing that tech in AC coaches and the way they are planning to phase out suburban/DEMU/MEMUs (to be replaced with VB metro) and general non AC coaches in express trains there is an even wider scope to phase out open doors in AC coaches. But to push it on non AC coaches.....

I remember the old non air conditioned rakes of the Kolkata Metro (equipped with sliding doors) - I don't think a lot of people on this forum would be willing to use that for their daily commute.....

Eventually, as Sudhanshu Mani said in the interview with News Station, IR shd be aiming to phase out non AC coaches altogether. A lot of not so rich nations have already done it. I understand you need capacity for the laborers and migrant workers and thus, it is not immediately doable (more capacity needed) but something worth attempting - say, 15-20 years down the line.

Bengaluru to Malda Town.

Normal Train
SL - 850
3E - 2100
3AC - 2205

Amrit Bharat
SL - 925.

Absurd pricing is the issue more than Blue collar workers spending power. 3E is the answer for the SL replacement and they priced it at 3AC level. Ideally the 3E should be in the range of 1500 - 1700 range. This amount is more or less than a migrant worker grocery bill for month.

Next issue ridiculous run time these trains were having. 38 Hrs (2328 Km chugging on ridiculous speed of 55 Kmph). IR proudly claim punctuality but in real time it is insane slack time they are allowing to run this trains.

Atleast these trains should be running on 90 Kmph as average speed since average MPS will be 100. So travel time will be respectable 25 -26 hrs.

Finally enforce fines on Spitting cobras of eastern states.

 

[warriorextreme]

I have met few cab drivers in Mumbai who have told me that jobs in the manufacturing companies had extremely long working hours that too only for 7k to 8k per month. Food was free but there is no future for them as those who are even slightly educated can earn a lot more by doing jobs like driving cabs.

We generally don’t seem to do well in mass manufacturing as we simply are not able to move farm labor to manufacturing after skilling them. Choinese forcibly moved millions from the rural areas to urban manufacturing clusters, very quickly and at large scale. No way India is getting that kind of productivity. Look at the number of youth roaming around UP towns doing low end retail or rickshaw driving - all unskilled work. In china, these youth would be rounded up, forcibly trained in a skill institute and put to to work on higher wage manufacturing. Can we do this? The answer is no. In Modi’s next term, UP and Bihar must be handled a bit more harshly like the Chinese do. The youth must be made to contribute well in these manufacturing clusters and not shout for government jobs.

 

[Arjun Mk1A]

Seth, Lala, Baniya companies don't have a 20 year vision of market dominance like Chinkus do.
That said even our govt doesn't have a 20 year vision and doesn't give a shit for the most part.

Your Haier, and even more famous Midea, also sells white-label appliances, upon which a brand can be stuck upon and can be sold under that brand, see this vid

Your baniya bawa companies here rather stash their profits by buying failing Bri'ish businesses like JLR on the cheap, take up Irish citizenship, etc than investing in India on a large scale, partly it's because they are pure capitalists and partly because the govt doesn't give a shit to remove any "hurdles" in the way of large scale Dhandho.

Even till 2-3years our bois importing AC compressor from Choinese.

Anand mahindra, Bhavesh Chest thumps a lot but nothing significant will come out.

Mahindra just jumped from BYD to Volkswagon for BEV cars. Ola decided to bring an European scooter without proper testing and fucked up after sales.

 

[Hari Sud]

Why is private investment in Indian economy lacking strength and stamina. There are two reports indicating the same. Most of 7.5% GDP growth with huge government spending. It will continue in 2024

Why Private Investment is Lagging in India? - Civilsdaily

Last month, Finance Minister asked captains of industry what was holding them back from investing in manufacturing.

www.civilsdaily.com

 

[warriorextreme]

I have met few cab drivers in Mumbai who have told me that jobs in the manufacturing companies had extremely long working hours that too only for 7k to 8k per month. Food was free but there is no future for them as those who are even slightly educated can earn a lot more by doing jobs like driving cabs.

We generally don’t seem to do well in mass manufacturing as we simply are not able to move farm labor to manufacturing after skilling them. Choinese forcibly moved millions from the rural areas to urban manufacturing clusters, very quickly and at large scale. No way India is getting that kind of productivity. Look at the number of youth roaming around UP towns doing low end retail or rickshaw driving - all unskilled work. In china, these youth would be rounded up, forcibly trained in a skill institute and put to to work on higher wage manufacturing. Can we do this? The answer is no. In Modi’s next term, UP and Bihar must be handled a bit more harshly like the Chinese do. The youth must be made to contribute well in these manufacturing clusters and not shout for government jobs.

 

[Jagattunga Govinda III]

this is like OFB's "state of art" trope, means nothing. third party validation matters.

That's the thing. Judging from the UI, it hardly looks any different from OpenAI's ChatGPT. According to themselves, their product is slightly better than GPT-4 product as far as analysing and responding to Indian languages go. They also claim to have built it up from scratch. Its first impression is unimpressive. They claim that they will make the product open for public use by next month so let's see how it goes. Personally, I think we are heading towards an AI bubble much like the case of the dot-com bubble back in the day.

 

[RoaringTigerHiddenDragon]

I have met few cab drivers in Mumbai who have told me that jobs in the manufacturing companies had extremely long working hours that too only for 7k to 8k per month. Food was free but there is no future for them as those who are even slightly educated can earn a lot more by doing jobs like driving cabs.

I have to say India’s mass manufacturing is not taking off despite successes in electronic. If the cab driver said that, they are voicing the same conditions in which chinese worked a decade ago. This is the problem I see - a villager migrates to a city and wants to do driving, laundry, household jobs etc - these are all services. In China rural to urban migration was largely to manufacturing clusters, staying in dorms and working their asses off. The other issue is there is overseas demand for Indian manufacturing workers at higher wages. And unlike China, india is an open labor movement country. In a way, market forces are making rural Indians take up manufacturing jobs less lucrative. This is interesting because in the one hand we cry about taking advantage of demographics and on the other hand we don’t seem to have workers for mass ,manufacturing - crazy stuff.

 

[ezsasa]

That's the thing. Judging from the UI, it hardly looks any different from OpenAI's ChatGPT. According to themselves, their product is slightly better than GPT-4 product as far as analysing and responding to Indian languages go. They also claim to have built it up from scratch. Its first impression is unimpressive. They claim that they will make the product open for public use by next month so let's see how it goes. Personally, I think we are heading towards an AI bubble much like the case of the dot-com bubble back in the day.

obviously we wish them well, that they get successful in creating a domestic ai model. what we don't wish to see is fake advertising. genuine failures are ok, fake advertising is not.

 

[notaname]

That's the thing. Judging from the UI, it hardly looks any different from OpenAI's ChatGPT. According to themselves, their product is slightly better than GPT-4 product as far as analysing and responding to Indian languages go. They also claim to have built it up from scratch. Its first impression is unimpressive. They claim that they will make the product open for public use by next month so let's see how it goes. Personally, I think we are heading towards an AI bubble much like the case of the dot-com bubble back in the day.

obviously we wish them well, that they get successful in creating a domestic ai model. what we don't wish to see is fake advertising. genuine failures are ok, fake advertising is not.

I just hope they are true in saying that their model is built from scratch, not like many companies are doing which is simply using ChatGPT API and changing the UI a bit with modifying the answer a bit and calling it a day.

Let's hope for the best and good luck to them, there are many companies working on integrating AI in their products and are asking Indian IT services companies to do that (my own Organization yesterday had a session on that specifically where some of our clients have requested to integrate some of the things which can help product in it's functionality) which will increase demand for all of these products and API's, there is going to be a sizable market in Industrial products.

 

[Crazywithmath]

Bengaluru to Malda Town.

Normal Train
SL - 850
3E - 2100
3AC - 2205

Amrit Bharat
SL - 925.

Absurd pricing is the issue more than Blue collar workers spending power. 3E is the answer for the SL replacement and they priced it at 3AC level. Ideally the 3E should be in the range of 1500 - 1700 range. This amount is more or less than a migrant worker grocery bill for month.

3E is a clownfest; even IR understood that.

Agree about the rest. For all their tall talks on removal of manned/unmanned railway crossings, electrification and VB; govt didn't pay enough attention to capacity expansion and safety (doubling, tripling and quadrupling of tracks, fencing, signalling upgrades, anti collision technologies etc) - with dedicated investment picking up only recently it will be years before IR can make all major routes 160 kmph capable. In most places it is a shitshow - an alternative route to connect North Bengal with South Bengal has been laguishing for over a decade where work restarted only recently - that route alone would go a long way decongesting IR netwroks for trains traveling down south from northeast India (and North Bengal) and vice versa. These works could have been completed a decade back if not for endless litigation. There are at least a few other major alternative routes suffering a similar fate in Bengal and I am talking about one state only....

 

[shade]

I have met few cab drivers in Mumbai who have told me that jobs in the manufacturing companies had extremely long working hours that too only for 7k to 8k per month. Food was free but there is no future for them as those who are even slightly educated can earn a lot more by doing jobs like driving cabs.

There are 1.4 billion people in this country.
There aren't enough jobs to go around though.

Labor for manufacturing isn't the bottleneck, everything else is, including training of the labour and the employment flexibility of the labor( i.e can you fire them easily or not ) and no, the jhumla method of having "temps" used by the industry is a band-aid fix used in place of proper labor reform.

I have to say India’s mass manufacturing is not taking off despite successes in electronic. If the cab driver said that, they are voicing the same conditions in which chinese worked a decade ago. This is the problem I see - a villager migrates to a city and wants to do driving, laundry, household jobs etc - these are all services. In China rural to urban migration was largely to manufacturing clusters, staying in dorms and working their asses off. The other issue is there is overseas demand for Indian manufacturing workers at higher wages. And unlike China, india is an open labor movement country. In a way, market forces are making rural Indians take up manufacturing jobs less lucrative. This is interesting because in the one hand we cry about taking advantage of demographics and on the other hand we don’t seem to have workers for mass ,manufacturing - crazy stuff.

There is no "mass manufacturing" here.
Even bangladesh has "mass manufacturing" of choddi and boniyan( made of indian cotton textile and synthetics ) that go to India, US, Europe big 5
Electronics is barely there, and only because of mobiles and only because of Apple..

Most of the "manufacturing" here is screwdrivergiri mainly because the electronics and car companies here want to juke the massive duties doing shameless imports would incur, some try to export because of PLI moneys but most don't want to move beyond the assembly stage.
The assembly stage also because the Govt does the import duty thing, what is expected of a normal, not-sold-out govt which the previous one was.

To go beyond this stage across all types of electronics, automobiles etc export, increase the local value addition of subcomponents is a tall order and Govt is working on this but it needs a lot of pieces and isn't fully in Govts hand.

However whatever the issue is, it's not like we have a labour shortage or anything, nation is made up of poor people who need jobs, but those aren't present in good quantities so it's back to being a farm hand for many.

 

[Jagattunga Govinda III]

obviously we wish them well, that they get successful in creating a domestic ai model. what we don't wish to see is fake advertising. genuine failures are ok, fake advertising is not.

Sure, I would love to see a reliable AI model that is locally built but I'm just saying that we must be prepared for the worst. Most AI-related startups are vaporware that oversells the abilities of their products if at all they manage to launch it for consumption. Perhaps this being Bhavish Aggarwal's firm could mean it could deliver a solid product given his reputation and credibility. Let's find out next month.

 

[another_armchair]

3E is a clownfest; even IR understood that.

Agree about the rest. For all their tall talks on removal of manned/unmanned railway crossings, electrification and VB; govt didn't pay enough attention to capacity expansion and safety (doubling, tripling and quadrupling of tracks, fencing, signalling upgrades, anti collision technologies etc) - with dedicated investment picking up only recently it will be years before IR can make all major routes 160 kmph capable. In most places it is a shitshow - an alternative route to connect North Bengal with South Bengal has been laguishing for over a decade where work restarted only recently - that route alone would go a long way decongesting IR netwroks for trains traveling down south from northeast India (and North Bengal) and vice versa. These works could have been completed a decade back if not for endless litigation. There are at least a few other major alternative routes suffering a similar fate in Bengal and I am talking about one state only....

This is what I have been lamenting about from day one.

Prioritizing spending given our limited budget.

A lot could have been achieved over the last 9+ years with the existing budget but no idea what decision makers have on their minds.

Forget 160 kmph, 80-120 kmph average journey speeds would suffice for most short to mid distance journeys that see maximum traffic.

Chennai-Bangalore, Chennai-Coimbatore, Chennai-Hyderabad trains run crammed like a can of sardines with people sitting on the steps. I have traveled standing for over 6 hours. If the damn train had an average speed of 120 kmph, I would have to stand for a shorter duration of time.. heh. They are spending thousands of crores on a new vanity express way project between Chennai-Bangalore.

God help us.

 

[Crazywithmath]

no, the jhumla method of having "temps" used by the industry is a band-aid fix used in place of proper labor reform.

Cheenis built (a major portion of) their system banking on "temps" and outsourcing; ours are just poorly trained, screened and inefficient. Periodically recruiting "temps" ahead of major launches and peak seasons and firing them them after a few months was a practice perfected by a lot of OEMs and ODMs out there; from Foxconn to Midea - everyone did it and the ccpbros gave zero effs.

 

[Crazywithmath]

This is what I have been lamenting about from day one.

Prioritizing spending with limited budget.

A lot could have been achieved over the last 9+ years with the existing budget but no idea what decision makers have on their minds.

Forget 160 kmph, 80-120 kmph average journey speeds would suffice for most short to mid distance journeys that see maximum traffic.

Chennai-Bangalore, Chennai-Coimbatore, Chennai-Hyderabad trains run crammed like a can of sardines with people sitting on the steps. I have traveled standing for over 6 hours. If the damn train had an average speed of 120 kmph, I would have to stand for a shorter duration of time.. heh. They are spending thousands of crores on a new vanity express way project between Chennai-Bangalore.

God help us.

Lalu and Mamata screwing up IR finances left the NDA admin petrified - they didn't dare to touch capex heavy projects until very very recently. They have understood it now (and hence jhulmas like Amrit Bharat etc) but shit has already hit the fan.

 

[shade]

Cheenis built (a major portion of) their system banking on "temps" and outsourcing; ours are just poorly trained, screened and inefficient. Periodically recruiting "temps" ahead of major launches and peak seasons and firing them them after a few months was a practice perfected by a lot of OEMs and ODMs out there; from Foxconn to Midea - everyone did it and the ccpbros gave zero effs.

Ye but they are legit employees in China.
here it's some jhol system where you outsource work to another company's employees, these guys work in your factories but technically aren't your employees so you can juke the socialist pro plus max labour laws.

Now because these people are recruited and put through work via jhol loophole methods, you have this

ours are just poorly trained, screened and inefficient.

Ofc the solution to this is fix the labour laws, but then there will be mobs of self proclaimed workers covering Dilli with shitty red flags with hammer and sickle and Modi having to REPEAL the reforms as per usual.

It is max irony but these Commier-than-Thou socialist labor laws end up doing more damage to the worker class instead of helping them.

 

[IndianHawk]

Bengaluru to Malda Town.

Normal Train
SL - 850
3E - 2100
3AC - 2205

Amrit Bharat
SL - 925.

Absurd pricing is the issue more than Blue collar workers spending power. 3E is the answer for the SL replacement and they priced it at 3AC level. Ideally the 3E should be in the range of 1500 - 1700 range. This amount is more or less than a migrant worker grocery bill for month.

Next issue ridiculous run time these trains were having. 38 Hrs (2328 Km chugging on ridiculous speed of 55 Kmph). IR proudly claim punctuality but in real time it is insane slack time they are allowing to run this trains.

Atleast these trains should be running on 90 Kmph as average speed since average MPS will be 100. So travel time will be respectable 25 -26 hrs.

Finally enforce fines on Spitting cobras of eastern states.

These fares are ridiculous in that they are too low. 2328km journey on your own bike with yourself as driver will cost much more than 3ac of Indian railways.

With these heavily subsidized faires railway has no money left for improvement. Subsidized rail faires have also destroyed bus transportation wherever railway is easily available.

 

[Arjun Mk1A]

These fares are ridiculous in that they are too low. 2328km journey on your own bike with yourself as driver will cost much more than 3ac of Indian railways.

With these heavily subsidized faires railway has no money left for improvement. Subsidized rail faires have also destroyed bus transportation wherever railway is easily available.

Yes. Fares needs to be increased as per today's norm. Take TN for example. Omni Buses and state transport becomes the major transport option. Railways started to loose simply due to lack of seats and no capacity expansion.

Bus tickets are expensive and people are dishing out 2k-4k per head during festive season. Ideally in few south, western states. Transition should start.