>You can pretend that the Indiaserfs are happy low paid workers who just love the flies and filth. But they are not.>
They are comparatively lower paid workers because agriculture has been devalued as a profession. 72 percent of indian population is rural. Due to population pressures, the family farm is split further and further, until there is no economy of scale.
By empires conquering continents worth of prime agriculture lands in the world between 17th century to 20th century, the agricultural farms in Iowa, Argentina, Brazil, and Ukraine have much better economy of scale. Add the control of fossil fuel such as petroleum in the 20th century, the productivity of the farm in those countries is much higher. Therefore agricultural commodity prices around the world are so low, that the farmer in third world countries is losing badly in a profession that he has been working hard at for centuries. In addition, farm subsidies in billions of dollars keep the small percentage of farmers in developed countries to survive.
Another modern phenomenon that decreases the bargaining power of the rural population is the spread of national currency. Currency flows from the federal government to government employees and contractors to urban economies to the rural economy. The rural economy is always the last one to get the currency and has to work the hardest to get it. Also, currency is very scalable thing and concentrates all wealth to centralized organizations such as governments, financial sector, and large corporations. Therefore, the rural enterprise loses more and more of its bargaining power. Similarly, residents of the country with a reserve currency get more and more advantages.
Now,the landless rural poor flee to the cities. Also, the relatively well off landed families, that are not doing much better than subsistence living, find that sending one of their family members to the city gets much more "currency" for much less work, although the relative social position of the rural migrant is at the bottom of the urban pyramid. Therefore the migration. Similarly, urban dwellers in the third world find that their hard work as teachers and engineers does not get them the goodies that the western world produces. To get those goodies, they need to earn their money in the western world currencies. So the middle class sends a few of their family members to the western countries or middle east although the relative social position of the immigrants is initially lower. The countries with the reserve currency (dollar or oil in modern society, seem to get the maximum immigrants. When the reserve currency was the British pound, Indians used to prefer UK, since the 1960s, the migration has shifted more towards the larger United States.
-Arun
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