Be it a leaking roof, blocked drainage, stagnating water, or faulty electrical, it is a big headache for those affected in homes and offices in India to get them fixed properly and in time. Reason, the basic service sector in India continues to be a casual and informal field where the semi -skilled floating workers are not only difficult to trace and locate, but rely more on time-consuming muscle power unaided by time saving and efficient power tools and techniques. The supply side of the basic service sector suffers from lack of a formal approach to make it march with the times to meet the huge gap between supply and demand in this important field.

The growth of the service sector in a country has a positive correlation to the emergence of a strong and growing middle class that has the purchasing power to buy a variety of services needed by them. It has also a lot to do with the level of liaison between the universities and colleges on the one hand and the leaders of industry and business on the other in planning and providing skilled and certified technicians of all types for rendering these services. Countries with a high standard of living have a large percentage of their workforce, as high as 50% in some of them, engaged in the service sector, indicating a definite positive correlation between economic prosperity and the dominant place of the service sector in the economy. In India, even after 50 years of independence, the primary and secondary sectors account for more than 80% of the workforce whereas the service sector accounts for less than 10%. This explains as to why the middle class households as well as business concerns in India are facing the severe problem of procuring some of the basic services they need.

There is, no doubt, a quantum upsurge of small workshops in some selected fields like scooter and car servicing which have mushroomed in every city including Chennai. But most of them have sprung up mainly to cash in on the spurt in demand rather than the result of any organized effort to provide quality services. In fact, there is no guarantee of quality in their services since they mostly employ unskilled workers and even cheap child labor. The supply position is much worse in other essential household and office maintenance needs relating to plumbing, electrical, plastering, painting, roof repairs, water works, sanitation, etc. Under the circumstances, those who are in dire need of these services get exploited by the 'jack of all trade, master of none' type of bogus operators.

Despite the fact that India has a variety of technical training institutions, the provision of basic technical education in India is neither balanced nor comprehensive. The high level engineers in the civil, mechanical and electrical fields who come out of the universities quickly get absorbed by the major industrial concerns in various new construction and other projects. While the supply of top-level engineering personnel has come to match demand, little attention is being paid to plan and provide for the middle and basic level technicians who are required in thousands to meet the demand not only during the construction stage, but also for the proper maintenance of millions of new and aged buildings in metros like Chennai.

Even at the construction stage, except for the supervising engineer, it is doubtful whether there are any certified technicians involved in the various branches of building construction that are apparently left to the unprofessional 'maistries' who in turn rely on an army of unskilled and low paid workers, male and female, to 'complete' the job! Another stumbling block in proper building construction and maintenance is the lack or non-enforcement of building codes, quality and standardization of building materials, components, parts and spares.

In contrast, every North American city, big or small, has an adequate supply of a whole range of certified basic technicians to meet the needs of industries, building contractors and home owners. After high school anyone who is not keen to pursue higher education can get technical professional training at the diploma or certificate level for a short-term training of one or two years from one of the many community colleges and be ready to start a thriving small business career in building construction and maintenance. The leaders from the local building and other industries who are also co-opted members of the college boards are actively involved in designing technical courses as dictated by the 'market', thereby not only creating self-employment for thousands of school leavers but enabling the service sector to play a major role in the economy.