Look who’s got jobs. Take a good look at the numbers ... Between 2011 and 2017 India’s urban population grew from 375 million to 450 million, rising from 31 per cent of 1.21 billion citizens to 34 per cent of 1.3 billion people, much of it on account of urban migration for lack of rural income opportunities. Even 10 years ago, most of these young (and not so young) folks would be whiling away their youth as goatherders, farm bumkins, akhara pehalwans (mudpit wrestlers) in the outback. Those already in the megapolises would be cast aside by you and me as despicable PLTs from the slums. It’s no longer so. Today, millions earn a living as courier boys (Amazon, Flipkart), online delivery assistants (Big Basket, Grofers, Urban Ladder), restaurant waiters and chefs ( haven’t you been eating out more often lately as dining out choices multiply in big cities and small towns?), grooming professionals (no longer the neighbourhood nai or barber), mobile repair technicians (have you noticed the proliferation of mobile repair counters at your community shopping complex what with a billion plus mobile phone subscribers), store assistants at giant shopping malls, security guards (did someone shout main bhi chowkidar (me too security guard. Aha!), as in-flight assistants, as gym trainers and night club bouncers, tradesmen on call (your plumber, carpenter, electrician, personal groomer, yoga instructor et al, through WhatsApp/UrbanClap), as Ola and Uber cab drivers, as e-rick drivers.
All of these require minimum skill training. Just look at the number of soft skills institutes all over smalltown India, training young people in culinary and hospitality art, hospital management services, air hostess and flight supervisory courses, hair dressing and personal grooming skills, body building, even body painting and body art courses. And the no of instructors they are employing to impart those skills, because the youth is literally on the run. Now, if you say all these people earning a living from a hard day’s work don’t count because they don’t show up in the official employment data, then you and I - the PLUs - are either wearing blinkers or idling in a fool’s paradise ourself.
Time to grow up and take note. For if we don’t, then come election day, and these gullyboyz will go out singing apna time ayega, while we toss the coin on whether to NOTA or not.
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