I think we can see the glass as either being half empty or half full. Yes, there are problems for the poor, but the poor had problems for last hundreds of years. The point is that today, a lot more of the poor can find a job, due to the trickle down effect. The IT professionals need to go to the malls and multiplexes, they need housing, domestic help etc, and all these activities generate jobs for the poor. Yes retail will destroy several petty traders, but it also has the potential to expand the market, provide additional income to farmers and provide cheaper goods to the consumer. But I must admit, I am not sure whether the benefits of organised retail will outweigh its implications for the traditional retailers. Besides, though corruption is still there, and infrastructure is still poor in India, there has been a marked improvement in both these areas in the last decade. Now the poor also have tools like RTI which can help them a lot. On outsourcing, I doubt that anyone except china can challenge us. Phillipines, eastern europe etc simply dont have the manpower to scale BPOs the way India can. Their attrition and pay hikes will be much worse, if they had half as many people employed in these services as India presently does.
