On Plumbing and Skilling

There are plumbers, and there are plumbers from Odisha.

A few years ago, frustrated with the number of times I had to pay for replacing ballcocks on our watertanks, I contacted a new plumber. He took one look at the the tanks and murmered, "Fir se nakli peetal!" (Fake brass, once again!). Turns out that the earlier plumber had been conning me by installing cheap ballcocks that actually corroded in water! 

Much like the puncther-repair guys who toss nails on the road to ensure a steady tyre servicing business, our plumber had been installing the cheapest stuff to ensure that he got called in frequently. The new plumber installed real brass ballcocks, and sure enough, water overflow and wastage became a of thing of the past.

Curious about this plumbers' unusual attitude, his Hindi accent, and to know why he was not the regular fly-by-night operator, I asked him where he was from. "Odisha", he said, "One of my brothers works in Dubai...a few cousins are plumbers in Bombay and Kerala."

After this exprience I have been seeking out Odia plumbers, not only for their aversion to cutting corners but also for a certain professional pride they all seem to take in doing a thorough job: using waterprood plastic tape instead of cotton threads for joints, insisting on getting 'heavy' quality spares because they would last longer.

How did men from rural Odisha decide to specialize in a skill-set - and thrive - in the plumbing profession all over India, and the world?

Turns out that there is a history to this. According to DTE, plumbing as a profession was once dominated by muslims. Following the partition of 1947, and the subsequent exodus to Bangladesh and Pakistan, a few Odiya plumbers based in Kolkata began to fill this vacuum with friends and relatives from their villages in Kendrapara district. The profession became so lucrative that an entire region came to be known as "Villages of Plumbers".

Look a bit closer, and as you would expect, it is just a few individuals who have changed the fortunes of these remote villages. One man picks up plumbing skills in Kolkata, hones it at a large company (Gammon-India), and then sets up his own contract-work firm. His nephews branch out to Delhi, set up a larger company (DD Pradhan & Co. PL), that not only takes up large plumbing contracts, but also serves as an agent to supply Odia plumbers to overseas employers. 

In 2006, the Odisha state goverment took the initiative of setting up the State Institute of Plumbing Technology (SIPT) at a village of the plumbing pioneers - Pattamundai. Formal training and certification now adds to their competitive edge. 

Are there lessons here for ongoing mission-mode programme for skill development in India? Our choices are quite stark. India would need 700 million skilled workers by 2022 to meet the demands of a growing economy, and yet, of the 15 million youngsters who join the workforce every year, more than 75% are not "job-ready". They simply do not have the knowledge or skills needed by various industries. With 54% of the population below 25 years,  the so called "Demographic Dividend" may turn out to be a nighmare haunted by unemployed youngsters.

Just as Odiyas from Kendrapara have built a reputation for themselves in the world of plumbing, what are the lessons we can draw here for the hundeds of other professions?

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LINKS

- Sahoo, Namrata (2016), Caravan: Flush with Cash - Inside the unofficial plumbing capital of India - http://www.caravanmagazine.in/lede/flush-with-cash-unofficial-plumbing-capital-india

- Duggal, Sanjeev (2016), The Hindu: Bridge the Skill Gap - http://www.thehindu.com/features/education/Bridge-the-skills-gap/article14556912.ece

- Ranganathan, Aruna (2013): Professionalization and Market Closure: The Case of Plumbing in India, ILR Review - http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/001979391306600407

- Indian Plumbing Association (IPA) - http://www.indianplumbing.org/home.php
-- also trains through PEEP : plumbing education and employment programme

- National Skill Development Corporation - http://www.skilldevelopment.gov.in/nationalskilldevelopmentcorporation.html

Skilling You Softly

By all accounts, India is sitting right now on a "once in a life-time" opportunity. For the next twenty years it will have the largest working-age population in the world. Most of them would be moving out of agriculture to seek jobs in construction, manufacturing or services.

The economists have a fancy term for this phenomenon - "demographic dividend". What this simply means is that the country stands to gain (dividends) if this transition takes place smoothly. That is, if farm-workers are able to learn new skills; If they are able to find better paying jobs, then we will all become prosperous and live happily ever after.

The problem with "if" is that it continues to remain in the realm of possibility unless we do something about it. So what has government of India done so far? A National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC) has been set up; Targets have been set for various ministries, to ensure that millions of jobs are created, at least on paper.

NSDC works with about 85 private-sector partners to provide skill-based training in 21 sectors, across the country. Most of this 'skilling' is for youngsters moving into the manufacturing sector.

However, as Megnad Desai pointed out recently (FE 5 Aug), merely liberalizing manufacturing will not help. The devil lies in the details and in this case, the details of the labor laws. "India has made its cheap labor expensive by saddling itself with scores of laws, which interfere with manufacturing and make the creation of large units uneconomical. So 90% of the labour force in the informal sector has no rights and has to work in small manufacturing units as contract labour or rot in the countryside in low-paid rural jobs or suffer NREGA".

We have tied ourselves in knots with so many labor-related laws that entrepreneurs are just not willing to expand capacity and create new jobs. In India there we have 45 laws at the national level and close to 200 the level of state governments that monitor the functioning of labour markets. Under the Industrial Disputes Act, 1947, firms employing more than 100 workers cannot fire workers without the government's permission!

So it is hardly surprising that as per the Economic Census 2005, India had 42 million enterprises with an average of less than three employees! In contrast, thanks to our labor laws, even today, we have less than a million registered companies (2012).

So now is a good time to wonder: Which is worse - to be unskilled and jobless or to be skilled and jobless?

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LINKS

* Mishra, Neelkanth (2013): THE HIDDEN GROWTH, IE 6 Aug 2013 --- http://www.indianexpress.com/news/the-hidden-growth/1151479/

* Desai, Megnad (2013): GETTING NOWHERE FAST, FE, 5Aug13 -- http://www.financialexpress.com/news/getting-nowhere-fast/1151155
- India has made its cheap labour expensive by saddling itself with scores of laws, which interfere with manufacturing and make the creation of large units uneconomical.
- So 90% of the labour force in the informal sector has no rights and has to work in small manufacturing units as contract labour or rot in the countryside in low-paid rural jobs or suffer NREGA.
-  Public money appears to the politicians and, hence, to all who work in the public sector as limitless and costless. This is why schemes come pouring out of the NAC and UPA to spend even more money. If you cannot solve a problem, spend money to smother it.

* National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC) -- http://www.nsdcindia.org/faq/about-nsdc.aspx#ac

* Srivastava, Mehul (2011): Why India Is Rethinking Its Labor Laws --http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/11_04/b4212013616117.htm
- Companies must keep 6 attendance logs and 10 separate accounts for overtime wages, and file 5 types of annual returns. There are at least 11 definitions of the word "wage."
- The success of the Software Technologies Parks of India Act—and of special economic zones in China—has spurred the revival of a 45-year-old plan that creates special enclaves with more infrastructure and fewer labor laws.

* Basu, Kaushik (2006): Why India's labour laws are a problem -- BBC -- http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/4984256.stm
- In India there are 45 laws at the national level and close to four times that at the level of state governments that monitor the functioning of labour markets.
- Industrial Disputes Act, 1947:  Formal sector employing more than 100 workers cannot fire workers
- Data from the Ministry of Labour reveal that in the year 2000 there were 533,038 disputes pending in India's labour courts; and of these 28,864 had been pending for over 10 years.
* Tokyo - largest zoomable photo - http://io9.com/the-largest-photo-ever-taken-of-tokyo-is-zoomable-and-975127382

- no worker can be made to work beyond 75 hours of overtime a quarter.
- a report by McKinsey, the consulting firm, estimated that if India overhauled its labor laws, its manufacturing exports could grow from $40 billion in 2002 to $300 billion by 2015.