The other effect of extremely cheap and plentiful labour I have observed is the relative safety of Indian cities for the upper class. In cities like London or Baltimore crime is pervasive enough that the average person needs to be worried about people breaking into their houses at night.
In at least the big cities in India, every single big enough building (apartments, malls, libraries, theatres, schools) will have at least one warm body (security guard) sitting outside it. He’s a security guard only in name since he looks too frail to fight a fly. We pay these people to sit around all day and watch Instagram reels while collecting Amazon packages and noting down visitor names into a register (purely security theatre, you can write whatever you want there, there is no verification) . There is a shift change every 12 hrs and the night guard sleeps at his post as well.
This dynamic pushes petty crime to other places where there aren’t warm bodies who are bound to notice if you are trying to break in. It makes most places with security guards relatively safe from petty crime.
The other effect of extremely cheap and plentiful labour I have observed is the relative safety of Indian cities for the upper class. In cities like London or Baltimore crime is pervasive enough that the average person needs to be worried about people breaking into their houses at night.
In at least the big cities in India, every single big enough building (apartments, malls, libraries, theatres, schools) will have at least one warm body (security guard) sitting outside it. He’s a security guard only in name since he looks too frail to fight a fly. We pay these people to sit around all day and watch Instagram reels while collecting Amazon packages and noting down visitor names into a register (purely security theatre, you can write whatever you want there, there is no verification) . There is a shift change every 12 hrs and the night guard sleeps at his post as well.
This dynamic pushes petty crime to other places where there aren’t warm bodies who are bound to notice if you are trying to break in. It makes most places with security guards relatively safe from petty crime.