Workers with narrow job descriptions

We are struck by how many people are employed to do narrow and limited tasks, tasks that could be aggregated and handled by fewer people. When you walk into a store, there can be a guard at the door, another person opening the door for you, and another person greeting you. It is a good thing to create more employment opportunities for more people. But there seems to be “real” work that could be done, leveraging the same number of people or even more. The same store with multiple people opening doors and greeting you might also have broken front steps and animal waste, right outside. It seems that some of the people employed unnecessarily inside the store can do more for the aesthetics outside the store. Someone at work commented that Indians place a high value on keeping the insides of their home scrupulously clean, but there is less concern about what is outside. I see that when I go on walks as well. Our relatively affluent neighborhood has debris strewn everywhere. Often it appears that people dump their household trash in neighborhood parks. And there is always a lot of the day-to-day debris too, such as bags from snack food. Jordan has commented that packaged goods (with all of their associated waste) arrived in India before the country had developed a well-planned sanitation system. I have asked people here why they don’t have trash bins in public places (which could at least eliminate the snack bag wrappers in the park). I was told that they have tried making trash bins available, but people end up stealing the trash bins.

(photos below of the park right outside our apartment; and a photo that shows some of the trash around the periphery)