When labour cost is less

Automation may truly change India, but it is surely going to leave more than half of India unemployed. People depend on petty works to earn bread for their families. I got a real picture of it when I were on a road trip with my family around 6 months back. We were driving through the remote villages of Karnataka where people were working on heavily sunny afternoons without any shelter. The temperature was soaring and I couldn't even let my eyes open for some seconds, but there were people who were doing hard work like separating hay from the corn.

I hopped on to a small makeshift barn and enquured if they were oblivious to the fact that there are machines that could do the work faster, but she told me that the machines are costly. The owner, a lady in her late 40's explained that the labour cost in those areas were much cheaper and they were efficient and hard-working. Buying machines would mean spending a few lakhs and that would also consume some space. The machine would need regular maintenance even during the times when they would have no corns to do the work.

She also said that this little work is running a family of 6, so she has no intentions to automate the work anytime soon until there are labourers available to do the same. I believe she is right, but kudos to those hard working people who don't care the sun. I mean, who can ignore the mighty sun?