Comments by "HomerOJSimpson" (@Homer-OJ-Simpson) on "India: The New “Factory” of the World? - VisualPolitik EN" video.

You are right that western companies won’t put all their eggs in one basket but I will say “factory” doesn’t fit India aa well. They may eventually have half the factories as say China does now but India will also have lots of international service jobs that China doesn’t have in large part because *many Indians speak English. Call centers, IT, customer service for international companies, purchasing, etc. I have a manufacturing client in the US that has most of their accounting and Purchsing teams in India. That’s where much of Indias future is at. Edit: added “many” to the “many Indians speak English to clarify not all Indians but about 150 million Indians speak English
13
Western companies won’t put all their eggs in one basket but I will say “factory” doesn’t fit India aa well. They may eventually have half the factories as say China does now but India will also have lots of international service jobs that China doesn’t have in large part because Indians speak English. Call centers, IT, customer service for international companies, purchasing, etc. I have a manufacturing client in the US that has most of their accounting and Purchsing teams in India. That’s where much of Indias future is at.
13
@HimanshuSharma-oe4mk great point. India doesn’t need all 1.4b to speak English to have major impact. If 150 million speak English and most young educated people are growing up speaking English, that will mean the number of educated Indians able to speak English will continue to grow and could surpass the US with most English speakers. In comparison, young people in China do learn some English but most of them speak it very terribly unless they are from a rich family. I’m not sure how accurate Indian movies are but I watch many of them and what I noticed is how often people switch to English y on occasion. It’s far more prevalent in Indian movies than movies from any other countries. Even if it’s not accurate (that many Indians switch to English on occasion) it demonstrates the importance of English none the less. Watch a movie from Latin America and they will almost never switch to English even for a moment unless they are dealing with a character that only speaks English. It might have a lot to do with india having a diverse group of people speaking so many languages that English is often used as a commons language. In Latin America or east Asia or most countries there is just one main language that almost all the people speak so learning the international language of English isn’t that important.
9
@bldomain yeah, I should have said 140 million speak English. That is the country with the 2nd most English speakers. They don’t need to speak perfect English to do IT or purchasing or accounting work. And if only half of those speak English well, that’s still 70 million which is more than UK and double Canada.
5
@Liboch so looked it up on Wikipedia. The countries you listed have a higher percentage of English speakers (I’m surprised Malaysia is so high at 62% but the others I knew where higher) but total population of English speakers, India is second the world and more than all the countries you listed combined. Wikipedia says India has 130 million speakers and China only has 10 million. They even note that that there is a often a cited “300 million” but that is for learners, on 10 million can actually speak it. I’ve been to China many times - almost nobody speaks more than a few broken words in English though the youth from good schools in in major cities seemed to have a much higher rate of English.
2
@Liboch Singapore for sure has big English rate. I’ve seen videos from there and almost everyone speaks English. I’m still surprised with Malaysia. China — it’s tough to get around if you don’t speak Chinese. I don’t feel China is going to have a huge population of good English speakers anytime soon. They are very closed off and nationalistic compared to other counties. And with 1.4 billion people, they have a big enough local market to not be forced to speak English. In fact all of east Asia seems to have very low numbers of English speakers.
2
@BruceWayne-qe7bs that’s explains it! It’s always a educated people In the movies or even reality shows I’ve seen where Indians throw in a lot of English. They will randomly say a sentence in English.
1
@blokin5039 service sector is 62% of Indians GDP and only 52% or Chinas. China does have nearly twice the labor force (people working). But it’s clear indias growth is going to be service while Chinas was manufacturing.
1
@whysoserious7553 that’s makes sense and I never thought about it out. I knew that English was often used between people of different languages in India but never realized a major reason many speak English is to have a language to speak with others. Sure they could all learn Hindi as well as a second language but there probably a couple reasons English is often chosen. The biggest is that if you learn English, you are also learning THE international language. The second is just a guess but perhaps someone say speaking Bengali wouldn’t want Hindi forced on them in order to protect their Bengali language and culture.
1