Indian Economy: News and Discussion

another_armchair

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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.
If NDA doesn't/can't do it, no other party can.

They need to pull their sock up and stop making cosmetic changes for the sake of optics.

Railways abysmal management, institutionalized corruption & inefficiency adds several more layers of complexity to the problem.
 

mamamia12

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Is there any capability in India to design Indigenous Accelerators like Nvidia just like we done for certain chips. The future is gonna be LLMs and India being nowhere.
 

RoaringTigerHiddenDragon

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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.



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.
Right. That is what is puzzling me. Before they said infrastructure is not there. Now that is largely fixed even if we are not in top 20 LPI. NSDC and Skill India is a decent program to gain skills for modern jobs. In fact NSDC is the one that advertised hiring of thousands of candidates for jobs in Israel at pretty high wages. It has attracted thousands of applications from India’s youth. So, the process to hire Indian employees for mass businesses like construction, manufacturing is there. The entire Delhi to Mumbai belt has plenty of land for industrialization. We do not have energy shortage anymore. All pieces of the puzzle are in place or lost getting there. So, why is it that manufacturing factories with good jobs is not sprouting everywhere?
Either poor Indian people prefer service jobs due to historical focus on service jobs or the wages offered by manufacturers is too low. Or there is simply a lack of incentive to work hard due to freebies culture which keeps people living but just barely but not enough incentive to work. TN is a classic example of this - freebies culture meant Tamils became old before they could even get to upper middle income. If UP and Bihar go this way, we will be caught in a middle income trap with jobless growth forever - becoming an Indonesia or Thailand.
 

RoaringTigerHiddenDragon

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If NDA doesn't/can't do it, no other party can.

They need to pull their sock up and stop making cosmetic changes for the sake of optics.

Railways abysmal management, institutionalized corruption & inefficiency adds several more layers of complexity to the problem.
For this, IR has to float infrastructure bonds in the market. And for that, IR finances has to be in top shape for a broker to recommend subscribing to them. No bank is going to touch it otherwise. Chinese infras is built with a lot of private investments in infra bonds. Without this engine of financing working, IR cannot rely on budgetary support alone to get to where it needs to be quickly.
 

another_armchair

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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.
Bike ride to train journey is an apples to oranges comparison. How can a single/double personal mode of transport prove to be more efficient than a mass transporter like a passenger train? Assuming 1500 people travel in a long distance non-ac train paying an average fare of Rs. 500(I know its more), that's 7,50,000. Then you have people spending money on food, water, refreshments, magazines itiyadi adding to railways topline and supporting livelihoods of hundreds of people enroute.

Heard running cost of an electric locomotive is Rs. 1.60 per km. Will confirm and update my info if found incorrect.

The catalog cost of the first set of Vande Bharat express trains were recovered in a year or so.

Course, costing as not as simple are there are multiple other overheads, charges etc involved that add to the final ticket price.

What happens when the cost of an asset has been written off completely by charging depreciation and the asset continues to make money for the owner for several years till it is sold off as scrap?
 

RoaringTigerHiddenDragon

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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.
Expressways are mostly for freight traffic - in this case connecting Bengaluru industry clusters to chennai ports. It has no relation to Railways investments. There actually needs to be a DFC for Bengaluru- GenAI-Coimbatore-Cochin cluster with several ICDs. Railways needs to focus in this DFC happening and moving freight to this so passenger trains can run faster on main lines.
 

RoaringTigerHiddenDragon

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Bike ride to train journey is an apples to oranges comparison. How can a single/double personal mode of transport prove to be more efficient than a mass transporter like a passenger train? Assuming 1500 people travel in a long distance non-ac train paying an average fare of Rs. 500(I know its more), that's 7,50,000. Then you have people spending money on food, water, refreshments, magazines itiyadi adding to railways topline and supporting livelihoods of hundreds of people enroute.

Heard running cost of an electric locomotive is Rs. 1.60 per km. Will confirm and update my info if found incorrect.

The catalog cost of the first set of Vande Bharat express trains were recovered in a year or so.

Course, costing as not as simple are there are multiple other overheads, charges etc involved that add to the final ticket price.

What happens when the cost of an asset has been written off completely by charging depreciation and the asset continues to make money for the owner for several years till it is sold off as scrap?
Railways does not get that you don’t have to book hotels for overnight stays by taking these trains. Basically overnight trains needed to be treated like hotels on wheels. If you want 5 star overnight comforts, pay for them. What is the lowest you can pay for a stay in a decent 3 star hotel? That plus markups could decide the fares. It is all about applying your mind to get to decent and fair fares. But world over passenger fares remain subsidized. Even in Japan, the ayodhya of trains, passenger trains ops are not profitable. The gain is had in other ways - retail complexes and hotels attached to train stations - transit oriented development. So, IR must focus on TODs and DFCs and keep the travel fares subsidized.
 

shade

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Right. That is what is puzzling me. Before they said infrastructure is not there. Now that is largely fixed even if we are not in top 20 LPI. NSDC and Skill India is a decent program to gain skills for modern jobs. In fact NSDC is the one that advertised hiring of thousands of candidates for jobs in Israel at pretty high wages. It has attracted thousands of applications from India’s youth. So, the process to hire Indian employees for mass businesses like construction, manufacturing is there. The entire Delhi to Mumbai belt has plenty of land for industrialization. We do not have energy shortage anymore. All pieces of the puzzle are in place or lost getting there. So, why is it that manufacturing factories with good jobs is not sprouting everywhere?
Either poor Indian people prefer service jobs due to historical focus on service jobs or the wages offered by manufacturers is too low. Or there is simply a lack of incentive to work hard due to freebies culture which keeps people living but just barely but not enough incentive to work. TN is a classic example of this - freebies culture meant Tamils became old before they could even get to upper middle income. If UP and Bihar go this way, we will be caught in a middle income trap with jobless growth forever - becoming an Indonesia or Thailand.
People will work for ToO LoW wages here, for the taxi driver anecdote that other user gave there are uncountable people doing mazdoori in construction, such people would prefer manufacturing jobs as a good upgrade but as compared to construction mazdoori, where are the manufacturing jobs? there are no much factories, not on the level of fucking Bangladesh's chaddi baniyan industry, leave alone Vietnam and Chinki.

We don't have pieces in place here, everything is inferior as compared to a one party dictatorship or one woman dictatorship like chaddi baniyistan next door.
Infra doesn't compare to China or Vietnam, Govt policy is viewed as unstable, Govt doesn't have much FTAs focusing on boosting our exports( not entirely in GoI's hands ), power supply can also be unstable, and i don't think they subsidize bijli here for Industries
There is a lot more but here it is.

Not enough manufacturing, especially fuck all in labour intensive sectors of kapda and joota and shipbuilding, so not enough demand for blue collar labour and so people languish doing shit jobs in the fields, construction or lusting for Govt jaab.

Lots of work has to be done to make the best use of our young people before they turn old and useless without the country becoming richer overall.

Unironically prayers are also needed since our best work still won't matter if gora sahebs prefer Vietnam and still take it in the ass from China, like those laptop, pc, server peddling companies do, they don't want to setup factories here and keep on importing, because market down hai :facepalm: Let alone choosing India as China+1 destination
 

another_armchair

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Railways does not get that you don’t have to book hotels for overnight stays by taking these trains. Basically overnight trains needed to be treated like hotels on wheels. If you want 5 star overnight comforts, pay for them. What is the lowest you can pay for a stay in a decent 3 star hotel? That plus markups could decide the fares. It is all about applying your mind to get to decent and fair fares. But world over passenger fares remain subsidized. Even in Japan, the ayodhya of trains, passenger trains ops are not profitable. The gain is had in other ways - retail complexes and hotels attached to train stations - transit oriented development. So, IR must focus on TODs and DFCs and keep the travel fares subsidized.
A 2nd a/c railway coach has 4 toilets for 46-54 passengers.

A 3rd a/c railway coach has 72-80 berths and the same 4 toilets.

Railway coaches can be at best compared to a dormitory with bunk beds.

For Gods sake, they are nowhere close to a 3 star hotel.

Careful what you wish for. Some Babu may actually try to push it through.
 

RoaringTigerHiddenDragon

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People will work for ToO LoW wages here, for the taxi driver anecdote that other user gave there are uncountable people doing mazdoori in construction, such people would prefer manufacturing jobs as a good upgrade but as compared to construction mazdoori, where are the manufacturing jobs? there are no much factories, not on the level of fucking Bangladesh's chaddi baniyan industry, leave alone Vietnam and Chinki.

We don't have pieces in place here, everything is inferior as compared to a one party dictatorship or one woman dictatorship like chaddi baniyistan next door.
Infra doesn't compare to China or Vietnam, Govt policy is viewed as unstable, Govt doesn't have much FTAs focusing on boosting our exports( not entirely in GoI's hands ), power supply can also be unstable, and i don't think they subsidize bijli here for Industries
There is a lot more but here it is.

Not enough manufacturing, especially fuck all in labour intensive sectors of kapda and joota and shipbuilding, so not enough demand for blue collar labour and so people languish doing shit jobs in the fields, construction or lusting for Govt jaab.

Lots of work has to be done to make the best use of our young people before they turn old and useless without the country becoming richer overall.

Unironically prayers are also needed since our best work still won't matter if gora sahebs prefer Vietnam and still take it in the ass from China, like those laptop, pc, server peddling companies do, they don't want to setup factories here and keep on importing, because market down hai :facepalm: Let alone choosing India as China+1 destination
Yes. Gigafactories with value added production is largely missing. A shenzhen like manufacturing city is completely missing - a whole city with a $1 trillion GDP like shenzhen is missing. That is scary. If we don’t get our act together, we are going to become stuck in middle income status forever with jobless growth. Kerala and TN are stuck here. UP at least must end up becoming more dictatorial in ushering in urban reforms and manufacturing. Let’s see what happens in Modi’s 3rd term. Urban Municipal bonds, infra financing reforms, Shenzhen like city happening, top grade logistics + energy grid, fast skilling of youth, farmers moving up agri value chain, food, water, health, human development - all need to happen at breakneck pace. All this needs tons of money raised quickly at lower costs and deployed quickly. Freebies must be tied to labor productivity.
 

another_armchair

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People will work for ToO LoW wages here, for the taxi driver anecdote that other user gave there are uncountable people doing mazdoori in construction, such people would prefer manufacturing jobs as a good upgrade but as compared to construction mazdoori, where are the manufacturing jobs? there are no much factories, not on the level of fucking Bangladesh's chaddi baniyan industry, leave alone Vietnam and Chinki.

We don't have pieces in place here, everything is inferior as compared to a one party dictatorship or one woman dictatorship like chaddi baniyistan next door.
Infra doesn't compare to China or Vietnam, Govt policy is viewed as unstable, Govt doesn't have much FTAs focusing on boosting our exports( not entirely in GoI's hands ), power supply can also be unstable, and i don't think they subsidize bijli here for Industries
There is a lot more but here it is.

Not enough manufacturing, especially fuck all in labour intensive sectors of kapda and joota and shipbuilding, so not enough demand for blue collar labour and so people languish doing shit jobs in the fields, construction or lusting for Govt jaab.

Lots of work has to be done to make the best use of our young people before they turn old and useless without the country becoming richer overall.

Unironically prayers are also needed since our best work still won't matter if gora sahebs prefer Vietnam and still take it in the ass from China, like those laptop, pc, server peddling companies do, they don't want to setup factories here and keep on importing, because market down hai :facepalm: Let alone choosing India as China+1 destination
Vietnam is just China with a different colored condom.
 

mamamia12

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Yes. Gigafactories with value added production is largely missing. A shenzhen like manufacturing city is completely missing - a whole city with a $1 trillion GDP like shenzhen is missing. That is scary. If we don’t get our act together, we are going to become stuck in middle income status forever with jobless growth. Kerala and TN are stuck here. UP at least must end up becoming more dictatorial in ushering in urban reforms and manufacturing. Let’s see what happens in Modi’s 3rd term. Urban Municipal bonds, infra financing reforms, Shenzhen like city happening, top grade logistics + energy grid, fast skilling of youth, farmers moving up agri value chain, food, water, health, human development - all need to happen at breakneck pace. All this needs tons of money raised quickly at lower costs and deployed quickly. Freebies must be tied to labor productivity.
I feel like we are not gonna replicate another China. We don't have any such raw materials available. We should first fill gaps in whatever PROCESSEd GOOds we are importing like batteries or such.
 

Suryavanshi

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People will work for ToO LoW wages here, for the taxi driver anecdote that other user gave there are uncountable people doing mazdoori in construction, such people would prefer manufacturing jobs as a good upgrade but as compared to construction mazdoori, where are the manufacturing jobs? there are no much factories, not on the level of fucking Bangladesh's chaddi baniyan industry, leave alone Vietnam and Chinki.

We don't have pieces in place here, everything is inferior as compared to a one party dictatorship or one woman dictatorship like chaddi baniyistan next door.
Infra doesn't compare to China or Vietnam, Govt policy is viewed as unstable, Govt doesn't have much FTAs focusing on boosting our exports( not entirely in GoI's hands ), power supply can also be unstable, and i don't think they subsidize bijli here for Industries
There is a lot more but here it is.

Not enough manufacturing, especially fuck all in labour intensive sectors of kapda and joota and shipbuilding, so not enough demand for blue collar labour and so people languish doing shit jobs in the fields, construction or lusting for Govt jaab.

Lots of work has to be done to make the best use of our young people before they turn old and useless without the country becoming richer overall.

Unironically prayers are also needed since our best work still won't matter if gora sahebs prefer Vietnam and still take it in the ass from China, like those laptop, pc, server peddling companies do, they don't want to setup factories here and keep on importing, because market down hai :facepalm: Let alone choosing India as China+1 destination
We do have economy of scales, FMCG is one of the bigger employers here.
While making consumer durables are more complex but cab be done.


Also can anyone explain what particular clauses under the current labour law are causing hindrance?
 

RoaringTigerHiddenDragon

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People will work for ToO LoW wages here, for the taxi driver anecdote that other user gave there are uncountable people doing mazdoori in construction, such people would prefer manufacturing jobs as a good upgrade but as compared to construction mazdoori, where are the manufacturing jobs? there are no much factories, not on the level of fucking Bangladesh's chaddi baniyan industry, leave alone Vietnam and Chinki.

We don't have pieces in place here, everything is inferior as compared to a one party dictatorship or one woman dictatorship like chaddi baniyistan next door.
Infra doesn't compare to China or Vietnam, Govt policy is viewed as unstable, Govt doesn't have much FTAs focusing on boosting our exports( not entirely in GoI's hands ), power supply can also be unstable, and i don't think they subsidize bijli here for Industries
There is a lot more but here it is.

Not enough manufacturing, especially fuck all in labour intensive sectors of kapda and joota and shipbuilding, so not enough demand for blue collar labour and so people languish doing shit jobs in the fields, construction or lusting for Govt jaab.

Lots of work has to be done to make the best use of our young people before they turn old and useless without the country becoming richer overall.

Unironically prayers are also needed since our best work still won't matter if gora sahebs prefer Vietnam and still take it in the ass from China, like those laptop, pc, server peddling companies do, they don't want to setup factories here and keep on importing, because market down hai :facepalm: Let alone choosing India as China+1 destination
Frankly, on LPI we are better than Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia. I am pretty sure we will be in top 20 soon. So Logistics Performance may no longer be a bottleneck. Goi needs to look at rapidly solving other things. I am still optimistic.
 

angryIndian

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Also can anyone explain what particular clauses under the current labour law are causing hindrance?

Chapter VB of the Industrial Disputes Act, 1947
that deals with the provisions related to layoffs, retrenchment, and closure in industrial establishments.

This regulation makes it difficult to scale up or scale down the work force in response to changing market dynamics.
 

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