A few days ago, I had the pleasure of coming across an Indian anomaly - a happy worker! He is a parking attendant who works for a restaurant in Chennai. He greeted every customer who parked his bike, helped him move out safely and comfortably when he came back, and did it all with a smile, with no unspoken agenda like earning a tip. This chap was genuinely happy! How can this be? This is India, where we take no pleasure in our jobs, where we think of customers are interruptions to our business, and for some reason, have simply forgotten to be happy.
But then, this chap is from Nepal. Oh, yes, he speaks Tamil, and it took him all of one year to learn, he told me in his own cheerful way - after all, this is his "success" story. He is very happy to be away from Nepal, where life is tough, and not going anywhere with the Maoists in power. He isn't alone, and I have met a big number of Nepali people of late, doing jobs at restaurants, in shops, and even the guy who sells momos at Citi Centre is of course, from Nepal. It is perfectly legal for them to cross the border and take up jobs in our country, and here is why we should welcome them, without reservations - they have the immigrant values of hard work, no complaints, and gratitude for what is genuinely better than the life they have known.
Nepalese people aren't the most industrious in their own country, especially the menfolk. But throw in genuine opportunity, and the mandated need for them to send money home every month, and put them in a place far away from home, and they rock and roll. They are here, and they are fast replacing all the Indian faces that did those jobs not long ago. I couldn't be happier. But elsewhere, unhappiness is brewing, and a lot of chaos is just round the corner.
A lot of Indian youngsters, particularly rural youth, have migrated to cities, in search of that elusive better life. With the Karunanidhi government providing rice at Re.1/kg, (which is promptly polished and sold at higher rates by a lot of people who get it), there is plenty of incentive to be lazy. There are no native workers to cut sugarcane at Rs.200/day! Who cares about agriculture these days? There is no vote bank there. A lot of government funds are earmarked for "free" schemes that are guaranteed to create a generation of laziness. Even youth who migrate to cities do not want to do the slightly more demanding physical labour, many of them choosing to be, for instance, security guards in an air conditioned mall at Rs.100/day, of which he will be able to save nothing, rather than do some hard work to make double that.
Nepalese youngsters who come to India have no such reservations. They jump right into whatever opportunity is thrown at them, and they work damn hard, for it is important for them to "keep" their jobs, and grow. We have a whole new supply of "steady" workers, and our employers, particularly in the retail sector and service sectors like restaurants, should be very happy. They are freaking delighted! Our agriculturalists are thrilled to have labour from Orissa, UP, and Bihar. This is a state of happiness for now, for many.
In a few years, there will be a widespread recognition of the hardworking, sincere, and happy migrant worker. The local population of youth won't have the attitudes, the experience, or the skills of the migrants. Slowly, but quietly and surely, migrants will take over all the jobs in every sector. When Karunanidhi runs out his hare-brained ideas of giving things free, or when the treasury runs out of funds, the latter of which is likely to occur first, it won't be all that profitable to be jobless or doing dumb jobs for small money. No education, no experience, no reputation of doing hard labour, no specialized skills, and no smile - NO job!
This is when the unrest will creep in. The "feeling" that bloody immigrants have taken over all our jobs will just about set in, when this issue will get politicized. It can get ugly on the street, especially when politically backed for violence and unrest to be unleashed. We, the consumers, who pay the retail sector handsomely, won't be amused. We just want our service, and we will get it.
But now, we will have to contend with a whole section of our society that has been marginalized by their own stupidity and laziness, but carrying with them the notion that they have been duped, not by the politicians who gave them free food, but by immigrants who stole their jobs! The easiest thing to indoctrinate and instigate to violence is a group of people who feel they are deserving and capable, but have been denied their manifest destinies! Keeping them good company will be our already corrupt law enforcement agencies. Rich, ripe ground for nurturing anti-social elements like thugs, terrorists, bandits, dacoits, and a host of vermin that will by no means look hungry or haggard or jungle tough, but will be riding bikes, getting drunk, using drugs, and carrying weapons ready to attack any sign of other people's well being.
Rich people will be targeted. Not the Ambanis or the Tatas, mind you, but the genuine entrepreneurs who have all grown to have two car families through the success of their honest efforts, helped along in some cases by the immigrant labour class. The local niggers versus the immigrants! Why does this have such a familiar ring to it. Look at the black neighbourhoods in the USA. They breed mostly thugs, drug dealers, pimps, and a host of useless, unemployed, lazy, fat, complaining whiners who won't take any job, and live on welfare. These are the lot we're fast breeding in India, particularly in "free" states like Tamilnadu.
Poor Nepali people have nowhere to go in their own country, with dwindling incomes, and lousy encouragement for true enterprise. The Maoists have always been complaining - as is the habit with all ideologists who don't have a clue how to run a functional country. Enterprise always dies under repression. Maoism is communism, and communism is repression - this is the end of Nepal as a free society and as a country with any hope to progress. Their biggest draw, Everest tourism, is bound to take a beating, when the Chinese complete their electric rope bridge project to the peak. And who bears the brunt of all this change? India! Right now, it is thanks to having a lot of jobs vacant that we can absorb Nepalese people quite easily. Two years back, we had 2.6 crore Nepali people in India, as opposed to the entire population of Nepal being 2.5 crores! Now, that number is going to swell.
When the showdown starts, most of our Indian niggers will not realize that it is perfectly legal for any Nepali citizen to come to India and settle down, find a job, or start a business. It is the same reciprocation we Indians have in Nepal. A completely open border! But none of us will want to go there, except on holiday, or to start a business with money already in the pocket. This is already the case. Instead of going to the root of the problem, our politicians will insist that we come up with new laws that prevent Nepalese people from coming to India and working! It would be very easy then, not to notice how none of the jobs the Nepalese people started doing were in high demand among the locals.
This is exactly like the whining that goes on in the USA. Every year, thousands of migrant workers rescue the apple crop, the restaurant industry and a host of other industries. They're just there in numbers to do the actual work, while the locals find it below their dignity to work hard in tough conditions. Apple picking isn't by any means hard, but it is not as easy as sitting in an air-conditioned office hitting a keyboard, sharing stupid jokes with co-nonworkers.
India will have a well defined, out in the open class war, very soon. We're adding 40 million to the middle class each year, but we're also losing 13 million from the bottom, going into the poor class. The 40 million may be better off, but the 13 million are going to be much worse than they have ever known. The problem is that we have unwittingly prepared a whole generation of our people on this "opportunity" hype, which people automatically assume means "easy money". There is no easy money, and the hard money is being made by immigrants, not the local bums.
With extremists like Kishenji heading our own Maoist movements, we can expect not the Nepali immigrants but the local newly bred thugs to join up, happy to be part of anything that is anti-government. The armed forces are already mad that they are not being treated right by the politics of Delhi, not even putting them on pay parity with civil services. We're already seeing examples of ex-army personnel helping the cause of violence by supporting the Maoists and Naxalites and other fringe groups. This will only get worse. We will have an armed uprising, and total sectarian violence. More questions than answers, and our media won't be able to help that cause either, since they're also breeding on their own incompetence.
In our cities, we now have a young generation, that has money to get cellphones and motorbikes - usually working in call centres and such light labour pigeon holes. One doesn't need an education for any of these jobs, just some speaking skills, some presentation, and some willingness to show up will suffice. This whole generation of kids isn't much fit for doing anything other than simple routine jobs. Jobs that can easily migrate to the Philippines, or even Bangladesh. An easy money, dumb business is always easy to copy, and a 5% advantage in another country will mean some management genius in the USA gets to keep his job and bonus! So, we won't have much of a point building an army of call centre workers, when our country needs people to harvest grain.
The various state governments have the hardest task on hand - use our current healthy economic situation to make people more competitive, hard edged, and India vastly more productive. Truth is, nobody knows how. This is a time for merrymaking, to drink deeper from the illusion that we're a great nation headed towards our destiny - the greatest nation in the world. Only Kishenji thinks his bunch of lunatics will be ruling it by 2050. I wonder how he will convince a whole generation of bums to do some hard work!
The middle class entrepreneur in India is seeing some success these days, but there is no protection for the money we may make, in the wake of armed gangs running loose like they already are in Telangana, West Bengal, parts of UP and West Bengal - all the states that Kishenji wants for himself and his harebrained ideas. We will have to put our money offshore, and prepare for the time when we leave a potentially godforsaken country for good, or carry guns to protect ourselves.
Violent thugs on the roads, attacking us at will is not a long, far fetched nightmare scenario. It is the ONLY thing that happens when things rot as much as India has allowed right now. The opportunity to make the fast buck is upon us. Usually, nothing matters when this is lubricated by lax enforcement of the law, a corrupt state level judiciary, and the politics of numbers. Our country is all about looting as much as possible, as soon as possible. Consequences, there are NONE to worry about.
Maybe India isn't worth worrying about. Let's ask the Nepalese people what they think. Maybe that will tell us what is worth preserving. It certainly can't be our patented apathy and laziness.
BSK.
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