Are You Being Served

An enterprising startup in Lajpat Nagar offers a “shopping assistant” to help one navigate Central Market, crammed with tiny shops selling everything from Pakistani suits to antique mirrors. CarryMen promises a “stress free shopping experience” for as little as Rs 79 for a 30-minute package. Besides carrying bags, assistants provide guidance on the best chhola kulchas in the locality and stand in queues to buy them. They produce foldable chairs for tired customers and shoppers may rent a pram for children. In a story on BBC India, opinions on this service had bemused reactions. Some were scathing, saying that India’s youth have no better options than becoming “coolies”. Another comment on X read, “Love how startups constantly innovate in the slavery space.”

This service is not much different from Paid Porters at the airport or delivery agents working for Swiggy or Amazon so it’s a tad unfair to cast the proprietor of CarryMen as specifically exploitative. It could be said, government failure at a macro level to create meaningful employment has led to the burgeoning of all kinds of part-time gigs. Alas, we all have to choose the best among the options available in front of us. Having a job is better than no job. Seen from a different perspective, Lajpat Nagar isn’t exactly swarming with octogenarians needing assistance. It’s the young or able-bodied people in their 40s and 50s out for retail therapy and what’s shocking is, they’re not embarrassed to hire someone to carry their shopping for them.

The creature comforts available in a poor country have made the rich Indian fat, unfit and chronically lazy, unwilling to lift a finger to do the simplest of chores. Go to any wedding, there’ll be an endless buildup of traffic to the entrance. God forbid that any aunty should have to get out of her car and walk the last 50 yards in her finery, no, she will only disembark on the steps. It was a national embarrassment some years ago when statistics emerged that 30% of Indian passengers on India-US flights ask for wheelchairs, unscrupulously scamming the priority boarding system. The lame excuse in their defence was that when you’re not a regular traveller, international airports are endlessly confusing, and this way, the responsibility of making a connecting flight is on the airline. Well, the answer to that is, fine the hell out of them and they’ll learn their way around terminals mighty fast.

If airlines charged for a chaperone service, there’s no chance Indians would pay. They’re jugaadu enough to extract privileges where they can but cannily circumspect when it comes to wasting money. Make no mistake, there is a cost to slothful inactivity. Over a 100 million adults live with diabetes here. Simple household chores burn calories too but if you’re too posh to mow, vacuum or dust — or simply don’t move — you risk rapid physical decline over time. Compare a Western woman in her 60s with her Indian counterpart from the same economic strata, no prizes for guessing, the Westerner wins hands down in strength. The Indian is likely to be waddling breathlessly, with a minion holding her purse.