Indian Economy and Workforce Ep-16

Hello and welcome back to returning listeners. And welcome to new listeners to the Skills Provision podcast. On today's episode, we are going to be discussing India as a country, but also with regards to the recruitment to and from India, the current state of play and other things associated with employment and recruitment. So on today's episode, we have myself, Francesca. We also have Pete. Hi. And we also have, for the first time today, joining us, Sha. Hello. Brilliant. So just for people listening out there, if you haven't already done so, don't forget to either, like share, subscribe, depending on what platform you're listening to this on. And yeah, let's get cracking. So obviously for listeners out there don't know they've not come across Shah before, but Shah, first of all, could you just introduce yourself a little bit, maybe a little bit about your background with regards to what you do and other things such as that? Yeah, sure. I'm basically associated with skills provision as a technical person and I am moreover, a full stack developer and working, have working experience with many companies and different clients all around my career so far. Okay, thank you. And for just everyone out there listening, where do you reside and where are you originally from, if you don't mind me asking? I live in Jaipur. This is quite popular and it is actually popular with the name Pink City and it is in Rajasthan, India. Rajasthan is a state that is culturally very rich and it attracts a lot of tourism every year. Brilliant. Thank you. So obviously India is one of the largest countries in the world and indian workers find themselves relocating to many different countries. We here in the UK have a lot of workers that have relocated and obviously there's mutual agreements with different countries around the world that India might have. From your perspective, Sha and I appreciate this is a more. You're going to have a potentially a different viewpoint than we are. But what do you find are the positives or the challenges for you as an indian worker either within India or on a global scale? Right. So I will start from the analysis of last ten years, specifically when the last government has came into this role. So after that, the main change that I have observed is that the lower and, and the middle class is growing and growing continuously every year and they are actually getting more, more chances to improve their skills because of the institutions continuously increasing here which are actually helping them in polishing their skills. And so they are actually, they are actually looking for more employment. And since as you know, that in India, in India population is a big factor, so people are still looking for the opportunities outside as well. Yeah, it's about 1.5 billion people, isn't it? Yeah, exactly. And. Yeah, and the issue we have at the moment is that, is that they are actually getting trained every year, but they are not getting that much of jobs in here. So they are actually looking for jobs outside of India as well. And I will let you know that two of the states which are actually quite popular, where people intend to go outside instead of staying in India. And the name of, of those states are Punjab and Gujarat. And in UK as well. In UK as well, you will see many people from Punjab and Gujarat. So they are mainly, mainly focused to get the jobs in some countries, which include Canada, UK, USA and Australia. So Commonwealth, Commonwealth countries and english speaking countries, primarily. Yeah, you can say. But now this trend is actually going to be wider as the people we have means the skilled persons we have are actually looking into other countries as well, especially gulf countries like Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, etcetera. And as they are actually getting chances, they are trying to move there. And in terms of employers, more of indian employers are actually focusing to place them outside of India. You're saying companies in India are actually looking to send their workers abroad? Yeah. Not countries, actually, the employment agencies, I would say specifically, they are actually trying to place them outside of India. And I will. And I would like to let you know that one of my friend has also started one agency like that, and I got a chance to actually talk to him and he's in Belarus and he's seeing the trend that Indians are coming there in terms of volume with their skills. So they are actually getting chances. Thank you, Pete. Did you want to add something to that? Possibly. Maybe the main part of this subject is the numbers game, really, where the indian population, there are 554 million people in India aged between 15 and 64. So of working age. And this will be a huge factor going forward, like, probably like the grand repopulation game that is playing out. And in terms of. On the Republican World website, it states the glowing skills gap study shows a growing demand for indian talent across diverse sectors worldwide. And projections indicate significant demand in regions such as UAE, Saudi Arabia. Shah mentioned earlier, Qatar, Germany, Netherlands, UK, Sweden, Switzerland, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, USA, Japan and Malaysia. That's what I was right. So it's, it's almost this, and we'll cover this as we go through the podcast where there's, there's plenty of chicken and egg situations going on. So you've got the positive and the negative, the massive growth in population compared to the shrinking populations in western Europe specifically, and skills the mathematical element of skills training, skills shortages, lack of interest in certain skilled areas, the. And being filled by India, which we will cover later. So very interesting subject. And obviously we have our own resident indian techie who I work with constantly and daily, which. So we can be interested to get his points of view as we work through the podcast. And just, just on that, I think it's something that, like you're saying there's. It's a numbers game, but I seen something and it's. I don't know how much the data has changed since then, but in 2022, about the fact that of the 900 million people, a workforce about stopping looking for jobs, according to the Indian Express, because they can't find. And I think this is kind of echoing what Shah was saying, is that a lot of people may be training in different areas or different jobs, different industries, but then they can't actually find a job to take up within the country, which is another reason why taking their skills abroad is something that out of necessity and financial benefit. I mean, a lot of people go working abroad from whatever country because of the value of the currency, where they go to work. So I used to. I used to live in a bedsit many years ago with a. It was an ex gerker in the military. So a Nepalese guy who worked, who had a security job, low level, they're really nice guy, used to smell the place out of his curries every night. But he badgery, he sent something like 75% of his wage home and that was massive. Small amounts. Small amounts to me. And in terms of the currency where he lived. So it was very much a. It was like a five year plan he had to, which would set him up for the rest of his life, really. The money that he came from rural, a rural, very much rural area. And I think there's a lot of that goes on where. Certainly in the remote. In remote working where you can arbitrate the differences of value of currency to your benefit and do very well out of it. Yeah, well, according to World bank, in 2020. So again, this might be slightly outdated. It was estimated that Indians working overseas sent back. What's your guess? How much do you reckon in 2020? What, in pounds or dollars? It's in dollars. It's in dollars. The statistic I have or the amount I have. What would you guess? 100 billion. You're not far off. 76 billion in 2020, which was a 9% drop. Obviously, pandemic didn't help around that sort of time. India is the largest, the world's largest recipient of foreign remittances. Bit of a tongue twister, which actually really, it becomes this. And this is probably where partly, and I know we're going to get on this in the podcast, the actual economic growth of India. So if you consider that all this money is traveling back to India by people who are not living there, it's massively improving the financial state of the country because the people that are sending it there are not a burden. They're not, yeah, they're not buying the goods, but people are buying the goods on their behalf. And they're just, it's almost like it probably causes false economies in some aspects where the economic state of a country would be dependent on the money that the people of that country generate, then spend, and the money that they save. But when you get people at countries like India, where say like $75 billion per year inflow that that can and the value of that money. So if you said that $1 equal is equal to like, so they say five to one. So $5 equals $1 when it's translated into rupees or whatever it is that you're starting to call what you can produce is high growth. And I think that's where we're seeing in India, where they're moving that far ahead, that it's the value of the people. The money that the people, the money that the workers can generate far outweighs the economic state of the country. Isn't it like sort of on the reverse in Europe where you've got Bulgaria? Where we had a place in Bulgaria, didn't work out particularly well, but we did. And the average wage at the time in Bulgaria was €400. That was highly skilled as well, four to €450 per month. And when we went shopping, we probably saw that most of the goods were half the price of the UK. But the average wage in the UK may have been like 1500 to 2000. So you've got this discrepancy which was almost killing the country in that respect, because there they couldn't afford to go to the supermarkets and shop. They had to grow their own food in the gardens and probably still do, and all this kind of stuff. So it becomes very great for people like expats that take their pensions over there and all this kind of stuff, but for the locals, and almost like the reverse is occurring in India, where people are able to generate vast sums of money from overseas and move it back into a country like India, where it's still relatively poor, but I believe it will change. You probably see GDP's on the rise constantly. Their prices are going to go up in India. I think Shah's complained to me certainly many times that the exchange rate is not as favorable as it once was. So you probably find in that this anomaly of it was great times. Earning a lot of money, pumping it back into the indian system and able to spend it live like lords is probably. The balance is probably shifting slightly and contracting. It was interesting. Very interesting. Yeah. Something else I wanted to ask Sharp. Something I see about being that I deal with workers from all over the world. I'm connected with a lot of people on LinkedIn, of which there's a lot of workers from India. And something I see a lot of them talk about, especially those that are still within India, is the work life balance struggles and the expectations from the companies within India and not being necessarily treated in the best way. Obviously, I appreciate you work for various different organizations and different things like that, but I don't know. Can you comment on what it's like in terms of is there real pressure for workers with regards to how the companies treat them? Is that really like a high expectation and very low reward? Yeah, about that. I will say my experience so far was actually good, but in the initial days when I actually work for some small scale companies, I will say in small scale companies where you have a small team and a lot of work, yes, there is a lot of pressure to actually deliver the things and as I am in it, so that specifically needs to work some extra time apart from your schedule. And that is also a point which we need to actually consider that if people are actually working in technical world, there is a time zone issue. But other than that, I did not see any kind of pressure in large level companies. But in small scale companies, yes, there is a pressure. And that comment that you've just said in terms of the time zone thing, I think I'm going to slightly change the order of where we were going with this, is that with those with regards to remote work, it obviously is a big resource that India is used for. There's a lot of companies that outsource customer service, it various different aspects of their business. They outsource. I know someone that works within the food industry and supermarket industry and they have outsourced now all of their customer service to India, meaning that loads of workers within the UK have lost their jobs because of being able to save money and other things like that. From your experience working remotely, char, obviously you've touched on the time zone issues. Are there any other challenges that you personally find with regards to the remote working. The remote working. Before commenting on that, I would like to point on a change which I have observed in jobs recently, especially after COVID. There were very less remote jobs in India before COVID but after that, a trend has come that initially indian companies have allowed their workers to work from home. And this trend has now picked up by the companies which are working outside of India. Means the means the foreign companies are now quite open to give remote job, remote jobs in India. And. And indian people are actually working for many, many companies which. Which are not in India, but they. They have trust in indian workers which are working from the remote locations. I think COVID probably helped encourage that in some ways because remote working globally became so much more of a thing. And it's something that had been done before, but perhaps it reinforced it as an option. Yes, exactly. And I agree with you on that part that the companies are now more open. And the main advantage of that, in the small, small towns like I am in, even indian companies are also allowing them to work from home for all their life. So. So people are getting more, uh, exposure to the companies means they are actually getting more job offers, allowing them to work from home. And hence they can naturally maintain their work life balance because they are actually working from home, so they can take care of their family as well. But while actually working from home, there are a few, few constraints as well that companies have seen, which is one was the efficiency in the initial days, it was good. It was actually good. But then it started getting dropped by some percentage that I have seen. And now companies have started asking them to join the office maybe in a week for to it. Yeah. So hybrid working pattern, which has been adopted a lot. Yes, yeah, exactly. But the advantage that I have seen is that, yes. Means people are getting more chances from the international employers in India. And that's a good thing for India. And I also think the remote working opens up opportunities where people can't afford to relocate, but really want to further develop their career in whatever industry that they're in. By having those remote opportunities, it allows them to do that, but without having to worry about issues such as visas, which are something that for most places, if you're relocating, is something you have to consider. And not all employers are willing to go down that route. Pete, did you want to add anything with regards to the remote working within India? Yeah, I think that. And not just India as well. I believe that where this originates start or the starting point, whether it be migrant workers, remote workers, whatever type of workers, it's the pursuit, or was the pursuit of low paid, low, low cost labor. So they probably started with the Indians, then into Pakistan, Malaysia, and whereas North Africa and this worldwide, almost like moving around, where the indian workers, you could, ten years ago, techies, you could get working at $3 an hour, and it's now a lot more than that. And then you sort of move around and then, like saying to Pakistan, Malaysia, Africa. So from the employer, from the employer's point of view, generically looking in, seems to be that they view, let's say, remote workers from overseas primarily as a low cost solution, where I think that's drying up or will dry up or is going to dry up eventually, and which will be fair. And the yardstick measuring stick will become more quality based, where if you've got a remote workforce in the United States, the United Kingdom, Scandinavia and India, the pay should be related to the quality of service and the delivery, not so much. We pay you less because where you live, and that balance is as certainly in India, as India becomes more powerful in the world market, and they are. And they're going to be even more then looking in their direction for cheap labor, it's. It's going to be a straw looking at that, looking at that country for a solid skilled labor workforce. Yeah, they've got the numbers. So it. Remotes. There are certain anomalies with remote workforces. When you could use India, an example where you have a remote worker in Norway, India, United Kingdom, United States. Do they all get paid the same when the cost of living in Norway can be 30 times that of India? Maybe less than that, maybe like 15 something. Massively different. Because I've lived in Norway, it could be a ten pound a pint, eight pound for a small coffee, that kind of thing. So there are factors, I guess, that employers of remote workers need to take into account. And as remote becomes more popular, skill labor becomes more in demand, regardless of location. Quality is quality wherever it's delivered from, really. Then the yardstick starts to change, and it's almost like attitudes need to change with it. And we see that constantly. You deal with this constantly, Francesca, where you're trying to educate employers as to, you know, you pay peanuts, you get nothing. Yeah, yeah. Nowadays, you won't get anybody. No, you get low end, you won't get anybody. Exactly. You pay for what you get. You pay for what you get. And it's. It's on the remote worker side. It's also, like you say, I think it will come down to the quality aspect, and I think everything's going to be industry dependent because there will be norms and more and more, I think remote work is going to be. Obviously, you can't be a mechanic from a remote stance, but anything that can be done remotely, any of the jobs where perhaps they were having people come over on visas for whatever, regardless of country, with more and more countries looking at potentially reducing the physical migration. Because going back to one of our very first points, many workers maybe not actually investing, and this isn't just India, this is anyone but many workers not necessarily investing their money in country, but sending it back. That I think remote working will become more and more popular because it's a solution to fill the skill shortages that people can't have and can't fill locally. But I do think. I agree with you that there will be some sort of balancing of the scales. But how far that will go, I don't have a crystal ball. And I suppose with anything, anything can change, can't it? And you just don't know. But in terms of quality, an interesting fact that I saw from times of India was saying, and this was 2022, that Indians hold the top positions in the top IT companies in the USA as well as other countries in the world. And thanks to that indian talent, the IT industry has gone from about 0.4% of the country's gdp in the 1990s to now 8% and more. So it shows the value of the workers and the quality of workers and what they can bring to the economy. Yeah, I'm pretty sure some of the, some, some of the heads of Google are indian origin, and why not, if they've got the quality? The fact that you said that about your dog, the crystal ball, one thing is absolutely clear in terms of remote workers, and it's probably exciting, I guess, and difficult to predict where it's going, is AI in conjunction with remote working. And the part is going to play, going forward is massive, massive subject in terms of the training of people, the fact you can use robots to deliver human services, which we cost effective, and then the fact of using AI to you come into a meeting, you've missed half the meeting that the bots will be able to inform you what you've missed. Training delivered by bots. It's almost at the sort of like a new generational shift with AI, part of this technological era. It's almost like a new era which is going to be bot derived, um, incorporated into our lives, automated driving or everything it's gonna have as. It's almost like you look at something, the traditional subject and you can. You can introduce the robot element to it in some aspects. It's just not easy at this moment in time. It's complicated, it's costly. You don't know whether it saves anything. It could be. It can actually be produced negatives or in time, but it, like with the Internet and, you know, imagine 25, 30 years ago, pumping your credit card into a website, you'd be like, whoa. What? Like crazy to do anything like this. Now people are just winging that. They just point the phone in any direction and it works. So it's. With the bots. It'll be exactly the same. There'll be a lot of apprehension. It'll be a lot of pussy footing about. It'll be Tenderfoot. It's unsure as to. As to where it's going. Especially in the corporate land. They smell opportunity. And the opportunity is not just the reduction of manpower. There's a lot of opportunity with AI, remote workers, AI normal workers, AI full stop. And where there is this opportunity, clever people, and we have some in our place, see financial gain for their companies, and it will come. It's. It's almost like the trains you get aboard the train or you don't. But it is leaving soon. If not, it's already left. That's going to be an interesting part of the whole mix as well. And obviously, remote is one option. But obviously, if we kind of circle back and go back to physically relocating to countries, the Middle east has been somewhere. That Shah you touched on is becoming more and more popular also, but it does come with its challenges. So more than now, again, Char, you might need to interpret this a bit for me because I'm never quite sure what this actually translates to. That there's about 88.8 luck. I'm not sure if I'm pronouncing that correctly, so please do correct me if I'm not. Yes, that is correct. What does that translate to, if you don't mind me asking? What is 88.8 lucky? Just a second. Let me write it here. Then I will tell you. It will translate you to 8.8 million. Thank you. Thank you. And of which of that? About 34.1 live in the UAE. So of those people that are going overseas, it's estimated that about 34.1. So 3.4 million. Is that correct, sir? No, it's actually 0.34 million .34. Million. Okay. Not as many as I thought. That live in the U of A. And then 25.9 in Saudi Arabia. And then there's various different ones within the further countries, within Qatar, Oman, et cetera. The Middle east obviously comes with its benefits, one of the biggest things being the tax free salaries. But what I have noticed a lot of the time when we are approached by companies in the Middle east is the real disparity, again, in terms of what they pay people, not necessarily based on the skillset, but based more so on where they come from geographically. So not too dissimilar necessarily with the remote work, but the fact that there is this massive difference in how the workers are treated from a financial perspective. Now, Shah, you've never worked in the Middle east, have you? No, I don't have experience working, working there, but some of my friends actually work there. And what have you found there, if you don't mind me sharing? And obviously no naming of names or anything, but what do you, have you heard about their experience with regards to working in the Middle east? It's always good to get more perspectives, more hands on perspectives, if you will. Yeah. The main advantage to work in the Middle east is one of them is it is actually near by India. So the, so the traveling time is lesser and, and people are actually finding the environment is a bit similar as India. So, so that is another factor. And obviously, obviously their currency value is higher than India, especially in Kuwait. So it is attracting more and more people from India. And especially in the southern states of India, which include Tamiladu, Kerala and Andhra, medical field related persons are getting placed in those countries specifically like nurses and doctors. Yes, yes, exactly. Because in the southern states specific, especially in Kerala, they have a means environment of training in the field of healthcare. So they are exporting people outside for those specific services and they are actually working good, really good. So they are in demand as well, including, including arab countries. They are also getting placed in Malaysia, Indonesia and Australia as well. And about the. Yeah, no, after you, Shah, you carry on and about. And as I, as I mentioned about the flight time as it is, lesser people are going to prefer the nearby countries so that they can come back easily to their mainland at the time of holidays or in case of any event, because indian families are quite bind to each family member. So we have many, many festivals throughout the year and in that people from India specifically try to be there with their family. So that is a driving factor. If you are getting placed nearby India people actually prefer that. And I've also been seeing that there's been a shift or an increase in people pursuing the Middle east student wise. More enrollments in student or, sorry, universities within the UAE starting to kind of potentially outperform the US and UK as target destinations from an education point of view. From education point of view, I don't think that is a train right now, but if you have seen that, maybe you have studied there, studied something in the news. But the main train that I can see about the education is that in India itself, premier institutions are growing day by day and they are actually generating more and more skilled people. And if people are actually looking to get education outside, in my point of view, they are actually still looking into three countries, UK, USA and Canada. And after that, Australia comes. Interesting. Yeah. Again, like you said, you don't necessarily can't always take everything you see online or in the news as fact or it's always good to see actually what people are finding on the ground themselves. I just. I've got a few questions for Bashar myself. The Indian Gulf migration corridor is one of the world's busiest. Obviously, millions of people moving through that corridor, mainly to the Middle east. One thing I noticed when I started working at skills provision and do a lot of technical stuff, deal with a lot of the data in the back end is that the. The massive number of indian people that reside in the Middle east, which was initially a surprise to me because I wasn't educated in these things, but the question I asked, because I see, like I said, I work in this area constantly. A lot of these people that we have registered on the bookshelf are looking to move to the UK or Europe, away from the Middle east. Now, if the Middle east is a oil rich, resource rich country affording strong wages for the migrating Indians, why is there such a strong appetite to move to the UK, and certainly under the visa sponsorship ticket, or mainland Europe? Do you have any ideas why? I don't have an exact idea about that, but the possible reason that I can think of is to have a better life. Because in the Middle east, you just have money, not a whole working environment or the good environment to live the wider quality of life. Yeah, exactly. So, on to my next point. So the corridor is very busy. Why are. Why are companies in the Middle east actively recruiting, seeking workers from many locations, Europe, Africa or wherever? And we see a lot of this. We deal with a lot of these companies when they have the indian tab at their disposal. Is this because of discrimination or is this because of the Indians lack specific skills in certain areas, which probably doubts, or is it something else? Why. Why are the Middle east companies actively recruiting when they can get all their manpower from India? So for that, I will give the credit to indian economy, which is actually growing at the rate of more than 6%, if I have the right facts. So, as I said, in the last ten years, it has raised the level of life in India. So people are expecting a better life or payment. And this might be the reason that. Why those Gulf country related companies are actually looking in other countries, especially in african countries, because they're struggling to find the people in India. If I may end up. I was going to say, I think it comes down to now they've got so used to having things in a certain way, which comes back to say, like the remote working conversation about, well, we used to be able to pay this person this amount from this country, and they don't necessarily think that now the value of these people have changed, but people's, the workers perceptions have changed because they know that they can potentially go somewhere else and get more money, or whatever it may be, or the better quality of life, like Shah was saying. So from their perspective, they're not so easily obtainable, perhaps. I don't know if that's necessarily the right word. Yes, I think that was. I wanted to say. So thank you, Pran, for correcting me. So that is the reason, I think, why they are actually looking for other options to get the manpower. It's from the other countries. Yeah. Something else that I also know from, like when I speak, Pete, for you, for your kind of the feedback that we get a lot of the time, and obviously I can't comment because I've never been educated in India. My education has always been in the UK. Is that a lot of companies. Again, I can't speak for lower end skills where maybe a university degree is not needed, but they like to see education from a european or western university because they consider the quality and the delivery of the course that is being given as higher than that within India. The question I wanted to ask you, Shah, actually, on that is, do you get many international students from other countries come to India for education? Yes, we get that, but not from the countries like UK, US, Canada also, but from the african countries and some specific european countries as well. But not from the american countries and those rich countries. But yes, from the other part of what, yes, we get that, especially from Nigeria. We have a lot of students here who are actually getting their education here in their colleges and universities. Interesting. Thank you. I didn't know that. Pete, did you have another question? No, no, no, that was fine. Thank you, Sia. And just one more question. On the education side of things, do you have any personal experience or anyone around you that. Do you feel that is a fair statement when the Middle Eastern companies make this assumption that the quality of education is better at, say, an australian university versus a university in India? Do you have anyone that's been to university abroad that they can comment? Maybe they've done a bachelor's at home and then done the masters abroad or whatever. Do you have any kind of thoughts on that? Yes, still actually we have some universities and those are called Indian Institute of Technology, or in short, we actually call them iits. So they are there, but they are actually quite less. And as you know, the number of students we have is quite high. So all of them don't get admission in those premier institutes. So actually people are looking to get education from outside. And yes, from my point of view, the education of some top colleges in US UK is better than India. Although. Although we have means quite a similar level of institutes, which I mentioned as IIT is here, but still the number of colleges are quite less, which are as good as those iits. So people are actually looking to go outside and comes to your question, I did not see any companies yet. I mean, so far, who is actually looking to get, who is actually looking to see an education from outside country and not from indian institute, but if you have a degree from outside college like MIT or Cambridge, that actually makes a difference if that is in your resume that I have seen. So you do note. Yeah. Okay. So I suppose it all depends on what you're able to get access to, whether it is considered a premier university within India or whether it's not viewed as that. That maybe there is some disparity between how employers might view. And do you, would you say you notice that difference? Sorry if I've misinterpreted that. Do you also notice that difference in country? If someone has been educated in country versus educated abroad and then come home, do you notice a difference in how they're treated in that respect? It was the case earlier, but not now, after the startup culture has started here in India. And, and that was also in, in these last years, I was actually coming to that topic of a startup ecosystem. So now the, if you are aware that indian startup ecosystem is quite growing at this moment and they are consuming all those talents from those top institutions in India, so most of them are actually working in one of the top startups in India and they are actually paying equivalent to the international companies like Google or Facebook or Microsoft and. And top companies, I think. So brain training problem from India has started to actually slow down now. Okay. And that is helping indian companies to actually provide talent to employers who are actually looking for some specific skills. And, and indian companies have, have those candidates with that skill set now. So that's good in terms of that. Thank you. In terms of the next sort of point I have on here was to do with the economy, which you've sort of touched on already, but then also noted about climate change. This is not something that I necessarily have too much to say myself on. Char, have you noticed that with regards to climate change, has it impacted the roles that people do, do within India or about them relocating out of the country? Because I know, I have seen statistics or things about, say, pollution within the country and things such as that. Has this affected anything or changed anything in terms of migration? I don't think it has affected anything yet other than the people. And the government of India has started putting efforts to actually solve this because it is a major problem here in the big cities and in the entire two cities as well. And one of the major change that they are adopting is about solar energy and electric vehicles. And that is going on at the moment and India. And in the coming time it will show the results because, because they are doing efforts at a bigger scale. So it will solve the issues. So I'm not aware, but it's interesting you say that because it's then if electric vehicles and other things are things that are going to be increased, I suppose, that are, opens up new opportunities or different areas and different skill sets that might be needed in the country in order to facilitate those, those needs and to try and become a more green and renewable environment. Yeah. Yeah, that's completely true. They are actually, they are actually looking for the talent from labor to the, from labor to the top technical person and top administration as well. So job openings are there. Pete, did you want to comment as far as the climate change aspect? I don't have a lot to say. I mean, it's, it's obviously a problem. And this is one of the issues that I was saying about the chicken and egg situation where you get the positive side. Lots of workers, the chance of strong economic growth, and then India, like with China and other asian countries, is there. And how do you wrap all that up into a green energy solution when the power is derived from coal power stations? There's, there's millions upon millions of vehicles on the road which you just can't click your fingers and it's the. So, well, I mean, they've got the elections going on at this moment time in India and it's this game of. And it's like, it really is like the ultimate can kicking game that's been played out of this one in time where we've sort of gone from 2030 to now, 2040 extensions. Countries like Bangladesh are saying we're not going to be anywhere near ready. So they're looking at extending now to 2040. And in India, part of the manifesto for the. I'm not sure how to pronounce this one. Shah Barry Baratiya Janta Party part of their manifesto is we're working towards zero emissions by 2070. So you're like, 2070, we'll all be gone by then. So it's, it's almost like slow time. Wealthy countries can, with drop in populations, can not with ease, but can start moving, migrating towards zero emissions and improving climate, less damage to the ozone layer. But there's other countries where it's laughable, to be honest. And I spent time in Kosovo living under a coal fed power station. I mean, right underneath it. Couldn't see your hand in front of your face in the morning, only for six months. Breathing that crap in is this, um, thing that countries where people are struggling to put food on the table, to heat their homes or to secure it from the weather, not overly bothered about climate or anything to do with it, when just surviving is difficult enough. So it's almost like you have to be. My own opinion is you've got to find this economic balance which is not there. You know, it's, it's all right. The Apple exploiting countries in the, in Asia for the production of iPhones and the clothing and the sweatshops and in Malaysia and all this kind of stuff. And then, but obviously then the power needed to produce these is growing and growing and growing, and then that's like. And they're having outages all the time. Bangladesh is having outages of power constantly. It's becoming the norm because they just can't cope. So that's with coal primarily in the gas. They're having to loan the money to pay for the gas, to produce, for the gas, fuel, gas powered power stations. So there's this massive disconnect between affordability, the size of the task, how long it's actually going to take. And I. You probably look at it and think, in certain countries, certain areas, we probably moving closer now. And in some, it could be hundreds of years until everything's. And because you're gonna have to. It's almost like you've got to solve the economics of the places before you can truly start talking about green environmentally friendly. You know, these people get themselves down to rural India or rural Bangladesh or Bulgaria right in the sticks and it's like you're having a laugh that there's still horse and cat in it. When we're out in Bulgaria, there was vehicles from the war from like communist, communist vehicles who were like, how old is that? And what's that doing on the, like, how is it still moving? And it's unbelievable. Vehicles getting washed in the rivers and all this kind of stuff. We have this blinkered people in and shall pay testament to this. You know, the people traveling on trains, on the roof and all this kind of stuff where that the west and America and the rich, powerful countries really don't see what's the real world in terms of out there and this climate in India. It's a laughable subject. So much laughable that the main part is touting words like 2070, that far into the future, they'll all be dead. They're like, yeah, let's. We'll kick that can right as far down that road as we can because we can't cope with the situation with produce, the fossil fuels and all this kind of stuff is like, how does it just can't just flick your switch and everything become nuclear fusion or something like that. And everyone in India's got an environment, mentally friendly vehicle and disposing of waste in a proper way and all this kind of stuff. When thinking some areas in India, they throw the bodies into dead bodies going the river or the water system. It's like crazy. So long way to go. And the british press, as well as a lot of the westerners like to jump on board this one. They really get. Need to get on the plane and get themselves out into some of these right out the way asian rural countries and places and sample what life is really like for those living there. Yeah, commenting from afar is one thing. Living it is a completely different. When I went to Iraq and I once had calmed down from the, how, how hot is this? 55 degrees. Getting off the plane must have been 1012 degrees and on the plane to 55 degrees and I'm like, wow. And they were talking about, like, back then, weapons of mass destruction and all this kind of like, stuff. And you're like, there's houses down there, haven't even got a roof on, like, where people are people living or what they're talking about looks like no one's got a pot to piss in. And it was like, yeah, it's. It's this false, this media type circus, this and if Shah was to talk, he can talk and take pick it up and talk about like where he lives. What's it really like? Really like in terms of like environmentally friendly probably most instances, zero. No one's interested. The more interested in feeding the families and trying to survive on that soapbox moment. I'll step aside and let Shah tell us about what it's really like in India on his. Because he's been on the honest travels as well. In terms of the environment. You actually point to the right thing about the manifesto of that party which is actually ruling at the moment in India. Bharti Janata Party or BJP, we call that 2070 is the target that they had set up. That is because of the, because of the population and the scale of the problem that we have. And that is correct about the life. I would say it actually varies and it is good at some places, it is bad at other and worst in some, some of the remote areas where people actually still live just below the poverty line. But overall I would say life is actually better as compared to the image India has. Means still has that image of actually people traveling on the roof of the train. That is not the situation at the moment in India that I can see. It is going good and in future as the efforts are being put on by the, by the, by the government to get the clean energy it is bringing better life. And I can actually confirm that that recent changes have actually shown the results. But still for us the thing is, the first thing is how we get the, how we get the monthly earning to actually survive in the life. Instead of thinking about the other things that, that you people or the other people in 100% developed countries that can actually think of that is still not a hundred percent priority for us because the first thing is the survival and after that everything comes but we are actually getting there. Thank you. Okay. What I was going to move on to now was a bit about our experience and I'm going to talk primarily from the recruitment side in terms of indian workers and how again I found my experience so over. I would say especially over the last five years I've seen and it had the pleasure of interacting with more workers from India than I had done previously. My experience has been overwhelmingly positive and in terms of our clients that we work with we have placed a lot of workers utilising the skilled worker visa here in the UK where they were not finding the workers locally and therefore opened up opportunities for international workers. And it just happened. A large cohort did come from India and the challenges that came with it. Of course, like with anything, with any people coming from any different country, the adjustment to life in a different country, it does take some changing and it does take some adapting. But in terms of my experience with them on a personal level, dealing with them in, with regards to do they have the skill sets, are they capable of doing the tasks that are being asked to? I didn't necessarily find there have been any major red flags. I do think there is differences in the way of working, perhaps. And again, it might come down from a cultural perspective in terms of maybe being slightly more relaxed in terms of the work, the workers I'm talking about now working in a production environment, the level of expectation here in the west being a bit more rigorous than perhaps these guys were used to, coming from a more relaxed environment of the pace and everything being a bit slower, but the transferable skills and the want to come and better themselves and in turn better their families as we touched on earlier and better life for people back home, they want to be here and they want to make the effort and want to please all that are involved free that us that have helped him find the opportunity, the employers, but also be able to set a positive experience and knock on effect for all of those involved and surrounding them in that when they come here, they can say proudly, I'm working in either the UK, Australia, wherever it may be, but there's a sense of pride that they want to come and work abroad to then be able to tell their families back home that I've done it, I've made it, and being given opportunities to further develop themselves and we've had workers that have come over on to do a certain role and then they've exceeded expectations. So they've then been promoted into other roles within the business. So taking that step up in terms of worker registrations, Pete, you might be able to comment a bit more accurately on this, but there's several thousand indian nationals or people either located in India as well, not necessarily from India, that are looking for opportunities globally. What do you see in terms of the profiles? Are you noticing any changes, trends? I know you've mentioned obviously people wanting to leave the Middle east, but are you seeing anything else? I don't know if the, the inflow is sporadic so it can move around the numbers wise, but it seems like it's constant. We. There are a lot of indian workers looking for overseas employment. There are a lot of other nationalities looking for overseas employment. It's. I think that the biggest issue. Issue. I see trends. I'll go back to that. So what I've learned, my own opinion, I guess it would be more important to say that, is that there's a natural underestimation, don't know why. Or maybe it's a thing in the west, knock on from colonialism. Colonialism or whatever it was called the, of the looking down on certain groups of people naturally without realizing you're doing it. So this Indians, the Pakistanis, the Africans, naturally sort of like screw your face up and think they're all rubbish. They haven't got a clue. They were, they were educated under a rock and we're only looking for workers in those, in those areas because we can't find anyone else. And I probably. I guess I had similar, slightly different from my history of work being forces primarily when I was younger. The. Yeah. So went along with it. Not worth a, like, don't know. There wouldn't no hard work of it, him in the face, that kind of thing, to actually dealing with these people, actually seeing firsthand, one, their level of English two, their skill levels and experience three, the qualifications or their desire and motivation. That's, that's India. Like I say, India, Asia. Asia and Africa is. It's then sort of like dawning on me as time's going on that these people are actually better, you know, in a sort of generic sense than the Europeans, the Americans and the, and certainly those in the Middle east. So, you know, you look at the profiles and think, out of 100 profiles produced by Indians, we will get x amount of problems. You know, this. It could be mathematically formalized so you would see what we generated. And I can tell you now, absolutely hundred percent that the Middle east, not indian, Middle east workers, it's, it's horrendous, almost like this. There's no, they've not, they've not developed at the same speed of the countries where they've been less fortunate, there were less opportunities. And as crackers as it sounds, the english ones are not good, but the african ones, probably the Africa stands in front of India. The african ones are like unbelievable, unbelievable people with unbelievable skills and the numbers because probably because they didn't. There's not much opportunity. So these people, the ones that we're involved with, I've had to fight for what they have and I've had to, like, not waste their education, absolutely absorb it and take, and it mean everything to them. And you can see that. And then after that, the Indians were. And in time, when you get these shifts, not just watching what I see, which is literacy mainly in terms of the production of cv's profiles and registration documents. It then translated to actual skill levels where we'll start to see the traditional skill levels of the low paid the Indians, the Malaysians, such like get to a level where they're actually better than the people that get paid four, five, six times more, which is traditionally the european ones. And it's like this thing of it's coming and it's already happening. And if I was setting up a business of size, yeah, I'm happy to employ all Africans and all India and all Indians, no problem at all, zero. And I've no one from anywhere else because they will be highly motivated, highly skilled and get the job done. So that's what I see in profiles. It's almost like it's. It gives me a snapshot of reality across huge demographics and geographical locations and the results are quite staggering and will take time to play out into actual, which is what we say that where a work is from is irrelevant. The location, the nationality of work is irrelevant. It's about their skill levels, their desire, their determination, their motivation. Yeah, and if an employer can consider them on a visa, work permit, whatever the status is, it's a good. In an ideal world, you'd love to be able to have a world where visas and stuff and things didn't exist and anyone could kind of go and work anywhere providing they could prove they had the skill sets. I suppose that's the only. But this is a. This is not necessarily just workers or applicants from India, but also you've touched on Africa and other countries such as that. Is that candidates applying from outside of a country applying for roles where they have no or none of the requisite skills for a role. I know that there's a lot of people that come from, and obviously India being such a voluminous country, it naturally is going to have more people that apply for jobs. But you do get a lot of workers applying that perhaps have none of the requisite skills or it could be that they're a chef and they apply for an engineering job and you struggle to see why they're applying in terms of do they really think they have the skill set or is it that they're. So that they want the opportunity, they want the opportunity to go abroad. Do you have any other comments, either of you, in terms of what you see for the future then maybe with indian workers? I know we kind of, we've been touching on things as we've been going, but are there any other sort of closing statements or remarks you have as far as where you see either workers within India, workers into India, workers out from India, remote working, anything we've talked on, where do you see the future as far as India goes? I'll jump in there. Shall probably fall asleep. By 2027, India is predicted to be the third strongest country in the world, surpassing Germany and Japan. And basically, due to the subjects that we've discussed in this podcast, I can understand why, and I can understand why they'll kick on and. And whether they'll ever get as strong as the United States and China. Debatable. But. But they'll give them a good run for their money. They could be the most powerful country in the world in time and likely so. Probably been looked down on for too long. And like Shah saying that people have this perception that everyone's traveling around on the roof of trains, which did make me laugh when he said it. That is all false and it's not like it's perceived. Yeah, that's what the media. There's a reason why there's this perception. It's this. This natural looking down. And we. We have it. It's in our. It's in the psyche. We. We were born with it, we were educated with it. To look down on these people and these countries, we go to the indian takeaway, we got the chinese takeaway, that kind of thing. It's almost like subservient people. And having worked with Shah for I don't know how long, six, seven years maybe. You're to guess that I'm more respectful and impressed by indian people and trusting of indian people and friendly to indian people. Someone showed me my wife may go over there, make one visit, shower over there in Walker, walker land where the big snakes live and the big spiders, and go out hiking and have a bit of a laugh with the wife jumping up trees and all that kind of stuff, running away from her own shadow. So it could be. Yeah, it's. It's changing. The world's changing. And so my attitude towards it, I guess, and long may that continue, I think, on that. I think obviously, with the economy growing, I think there'll be more stronger relationships between countries and more of the agreements and maybe more reciprocal things. I know there's already ones that exist between, say, the UK and India for different things, but I think there will be more, hopefully a more awareness that with regards to workers, if you cannot find them, India is a good or good place to potentially look for people. So those agreements or relationships or perhaps special visas or special work permits, whatever it may be, if the job physically needs to be done within that country that it's a good option to look at and it's something that would hopefully alleviate the challenges that those businesses are facing. I do think remote working as far as that goes, I do think that will still become or still be one of the largest factors or largest parts, and businesses will still utilize that, whether more and more different roles. And like you say, the use of AI, whether it will have an impact positively or negatively, only time will tell. Shah, did you want to add your thoughts? I just want to say to every person that if you are looking for any person from any skill set, this is India that you can actually, that you can actually look into, and you will find the right person at whatever scale of education or skills you are looking for. So with that, I will close my comments. Okay. Well, as I said, if you haven't already done so, and if you're able to please like share, subscribe, follow, whatever you can do on the platform, you're listening to this podcast. Podcast on. We will see you all soon on the next one. So from me, Francesca, it's goodbye from me, Pete. See you later. And from Nisha, thank you. See you later. Take care, everyone.