This is nitpicking, but no middle-class family can afford to spend 2k on a night out in India. Hell, I was earning a boatload (relatively of course) of money, and I wasn't comfortable spending more than 1k or so on a night out.
Completely agree. Right now I am in US and earn in dollars and support my family back home, even then my dad would never spend 1700 rupees on a night out. Also, if someone can afford to spend that kind of money for a night out, I am very sure they can afford a higher quality tablet.
I think this is for someone like the maid who works at our home and makes around 3000 rupees a month. She can save money and buy this for her kid so that they are better educated.
Wait.. you're saying by working in US, you can support yourself here AND support your family back home including hiring a maid!? I wish I could work there with a global pay salary...
> Wait.. you're saying by working in US, you can support yourself here AND support your family back home
Considering that 1 USD is 49.5 INR, why does this come as a surprise to you? For context, 1000 USD will be around 49000 INR at current conversion(it will be less but for argument's sake) which is more than what a software engineer with 3 years of experience makes in a month.
> including hiring a maid!?
I pay my maid 800 INR to do my dishes and clean the house. Manual labor in India is dirt cheap.
> I wish I could work there with a global pay salary...
It's easy. Find a contract job in the US which allows you to work remotely from outside the US, move to a country where the currency conversion makes you rich and cost of living is low. Places like Singapore won't work - currency conversion doesn't buy you much, and cost of living is high.
Ah, the benefits of not making low-pay jobs illegal: the maid _has_ a job, and a middle-class family can afford to hire her for what the work is worth to them.
This in contrast to the USA, where it is illegal to pay her what the work is worth (thanks to "minimum wage" laws), so she doesn't have a job and must be given some form of welfare, which the middle-class family which wants to hire her ends up paying without the benefit of a clean house in return.
My maid does the job because the job is pretty light weight and takes about half an hour on an average day. This setup enables her to work at other places.
Maids aren't paid highly here because there is no welfare, the general income is quite low, and my maid can either make those 800 bucks working for me, or has to find another job. Depending on the situation, it might or might not be working well for her.
I am saying since there is no welfare, and she needs money, she might be going through a job which doesn't pay enough.
I don't know how does the minimum wage calculation work, and it might be more than 800 INR for about half an hour of work(+/- 10 minutes - most of the days I don't cook, so no dishes. Sometimes I use almost every dish in my house) per day.
But consider the minimum wage were much higher and enforced say 5000 INR. I don't need her - I don't cook very often and I can clean the house once in a while. In that case, she would lose the job she has now, and would be eligible for welfare. Depending on the amount, she might be better off with this scenario.
This is all hypothetical though. She does multiple jobs, and works for me because it's convenient for her. She gets some cash for light weight work. That spares her time for her own home and other jobs. A minimum wage and welfare system might result in a scenario where she makes slightly more than she does now, but might prove more demanding in terms of time spent and labor.
My father - who is a retired bank officer which means he is relatively well off - wouldn't be comfortable spending more than something like Rs. 300 or so on a night out.
Depends on the time frame that you have in mind. If you've been there in the last year or so, you could see yourself spending more than 3-5K for the 1K night out you're referring to.
wait!! you are saying a family night out in India would cost more than 1700 INR? Unless you are going to a five star restaurant, I am pretty sure this is not the case.
This would be awesome if they don't allow the cost to increase, down the road.
I went to India last year and an average Indian restaurant meal at a non-high end restaurant was about 200INR for 2 people.
For a group of 8-10 people it was about 1000INR to eat.
On the other hand - if i went out to Dominoes and got a medium pie which basically only fed me - it cost 300-400INR. Quite the price difference. I noticed that most families got the single serve pizza and split it with their kids which cost about 50INR (that was the size of a personal pan pizza).
Now we stayed about decent hotels time to time on our travels and the cost varied as well. We stayed at a decent hotel (probably 2-3star - not even) in mumbai and that cost us 2000INR a night; in goa we paid about 1200INR a night for even a crappier room but it had AC. But on average a hotel room cost about 1000INR/night. If we stayed at a high-end we would pay 5000+INR a night.
