The production and maintenance of goods in India has in general not progressed past what may be called as "artisanship". The same is true in the realm of services (that's changing though), but in this essay we shall focus on manufactured goods.

Let me first elaborate on what I mean by artisanship. I do not mean here a focus on artistic and aesthetic expression. In my language, a worker is an artisan if his process of making an object does not sufficiently exploit the fact that he routinely makes very similar objects. Each object created by an artisan is rather unique.

To fully appreciate the enormity of what artisanship implies, it helps to know the broad history of manufacturing. One of the oldest manufacturing companies still operating is the weapons company Beretta. When Beretta began making handguns, each piece was individually handcrafted, with its components being filed to fit with each other (Artisanship). With the American Civil War came the discovery that if gun designs and part dimensions were standardized, broken guns could easily be repaired by substituting the broken parts (Part Standardization). This also helped in manufacturing, since machines could be set once and made to produce a large quantity of pieces. A further advance was the realization that one could never exactly reproduce a certain dimension on a part, hence it was necessary to know what the acceptable range of errors was for each dimension (Tolerancing). Then came the concept of "time and motion analysis" wherein the work of each operator was systematically broken down and analyzed to see how it could be done most efficiently; and then the work procedure was standardized. And the dozens of years since then have seen many further advances in philosophy and implementations, including statistical quality control, total quality management, quick changeover principles, flexible automation, computer integrated manufacturing and so on.

Where is the bulk of Indian manufacturing today? Right at square one - artisanship - as you will see through the examples below. 

Let us take housing. The degree of sophistication of the process can be gauged from surrogate measures. What is the amount of training or experience to work in a housing construction project in India? Very little: a man can usually just walk in to work off the streets. What are the instructions he gets when he joins? A few minutes worth, probably. What are the tools he uses? Mostly very primitive tools - an iron basket, a spade, a piece of cloth rolled on his head. Is standardization used to the benefit of productivity? Well, for example, the size of windows is standardized in apartment complexes. But seldom (read never) can a prefabricated window frame be brought in and fitted into the hole in the wall, since there is no concept of tolerancing. It would never fit. Hence, each window is painfully constructed on-site. Each piece of wood (if the frame is made of wood) is cut by measuring it against the particular hole in the wall that it is to be married to. Even the use of a tape measure is unusual. The railings, if there are any, are created by laboriously cutting iron bars on-site and then welding them one by one without the use of any fixtures at all. Of course they are all assembled crooked. So it is no surprise that the construction worker gets just 40 rupees a day. I know that the services provided by construction workers are not internationally traded and hence the difference in the productivity of, say, a US construction worker and an Indian construction worker is not the multiple of 100 that the difference in their wages suggests. But I will be very surprised if the multiple is less than 20.

It's not just a matter of tools, it's a lack of procedures and procedural inclination. The fixtures I am talking about will cost next to nothing. Well trained manpower will actually prove cheaper (as appears to have been realized belatedly by some of the companies building bridges and flyovers after the Japanese put them to shame while constructing a bridge in record time over the Yamuna at Delhi). The US construction worker will build his own simple tools if he is not given any.

The shoddiness of Indian construction is not restricted to the government and "cooperative" housing sectors. I recently happened to inspect for personal reasons a brand new DLF apartment building in Gurgaon. The architect had designed an arched entrance made of an iron framework covered with transverse fiberglass panels, and elaborate iron railings. The execution however a wicked mockery of the architect's vision. The entire cross section was badly skewed to one side - by several inches, almost a foot. The ends of the fiberglass panels, which were to extend beyond the arch on either side, were typically a couple of inches out of line. The railings were crooked, especially the smaller vertical elements that were to provide a tapestry-style look... for these a smaller displacement error resulted in larger angular errors. Some were at perhaps 15 degrees to the vertical. The tiles in the lobby were at an angle to the main frontal wall; a row of tiles which began strongly at one end of the wall petered out to almost nothing at the other end. That's the story everywhere in India (with the exception of some better constructed buildings in South India). Even the spanking new IBM Research building in the Indian Institute of Technology campus at Delhi has some corridor walls that curve like lenses.

This sort of construction creates a chain of problems. In early 2000, we moved into an apartment in Delhi and ordered custom curtains for the French window that opened onto a balcony. When we hung them over the window, we found that the longest was about six inches longer than the shortest. However, a "trend" in the curtain lengths was apparent, from one side of the window to the other, and we found that the curtain rod was itself a few degrees off-kilter to the "horizontal". We thought of fixing it, but when we found that the ceiling itself sloped with respect to the floor and the curtain rod was probably - accidentally or intentionally - in a good position of compromise, bisecting the angle in a manner of speaking, we let it be.

Flip through TV channels in the US and you may come across shows like "How to rebuild your staircase". Each step is meticulously described in terms like: "Using x tool, do this starting at the top step and working your way downwards. At each step, begin from the back corner next to the wall and move towards the railing. Then advance the tool perhaps 5 cm and repeat..... This should take about 30 minutes for 10 steps ....etc. etc... Then use the tool with the smaller wheel etc. etc.... Be careful not to do so and so because that might result in the breaking of the corner of the step...." We need videos like this for every construction activity, for increasing productivity manifold and for increasing quality.

OK, I'm done with construction. Let us take some other major sector - say, transport. Take trucks. All truck bodies are more or less hand built, with each panel reflecting the individuality of the owner, driver, or the guy who is putting the whole thing together. Even no two bus bodies are alike. And how would they be? That industry has been reserved for the small scale sector, and the only consolation is that workers can express their artistic side while building each patchwork vehicle body over weeks or months.

Or take roads. Despite the presence of the Road Research Institute (yes, one really exists. ...very close to it, the left lane and half of the middle lane of the Mathura Road suddenly disappear without warning for a distance, with the purposeful lane markings leading you deceitfully into the ditch), the only institutionalized knowledge in the road building implementation business seems to be: "First the stones, then the tar, then the roller". Thus the few roads that are built fall apart in months. A key road near where I lived in Delhi had to be rebuilt about 5 times in three years.

Apart from the quality of road building is the very apparent lack of productivity. The workers sit on their haunches and pick up each stone, one at a time, examine its unique contours, then bang a hammer a few times at it while still holding it to split it, and then throw the pieces back onto the road - as the rest of their family watches.

It is only in recent years, and with the entry of Western, Japanese and now Korean companies, that some semblance of manufacturing advance has been brought into some industries like the auto industry. It was common till the early 1990s when buying a car or a motorcycle to try various new vehicles of the same make and model to find "a good piece". Very often an expert uncle would come along to help. There were in fact obvious differences between vehicles of the same make, model and perhaps even batch. Another form of "artisanship".

OK, so we've talked of the transport sector. Let's dredge around for other instances. Take.... furniture. Again, I'll approach the subject indirectly with the help of a couple of questions. If you asked for a desk that was 49 and 1/8 inches long instead of a standard 48 inches, how much more would it cost you (apart from the increased cost of materials)? Nothing. How many types of standard metal components are used while making a wooden desk? Perhaps two - one type of nail and one type of lock. Contrast this with the "assemble yourself" furniture in the US, with dozens of specialized, yet standard, fasteners, knobs and sliding rails, available at a very competitive price. Standardized goods will be cheaper than non-standard goods, except when the latter are made by people avoiding taxes and not paying electricity bills. (In this connection, milk has been rather successful in India. It is one product that is cheaper to buy in a packet than getting it in native form.)

Now there is a narrow niche where artisanship is desirable. A significant part of Indian exports is of the kind where uniqueness and artisanship is valued. In the apparel industry, this translates into the tie-and-dye blouses, the unique prints. In such cases the imperfectness of manufacture may actually be an asset. ("The imperfections in this fabric create the uniqueness of the garment and are not to be considered as defects".) But being forced to address only such a niche market of uncontrollably unique products is being forced to scrounge for crumbs.

In short: We should be asking, "Can I standardize this part? Can I standardize this process?" This can lead to great increases in Indian productivity and hence wealth.

Footnotes:

1. You will note that I am using the stereotypical masculine gender for the manufacturer. This is for vividness of description, because most manufacturing in India is done by men. Incidentally, Indian housewives appear to be far more systematic and standardized in their housework.