Two major contributors for India's economic success

India is a vast country where plenty of land is available for different uses. For a long time up to the independence and a short while later, the country depended on agriculture to earn its livelihood and it occupied the major chunk of the Gross national Income. Ever since independence, the founding fathers laid stress on Industrialization and automation of various jobs in order to lessen and divert the burden on agriculture and to generate employment opportunities to various sections of the population in rural and Urban India. The quantity of land available for sale was quite less, as people did not prefer to sell land even in their worst situations partly because they perceived it to be a goddess and thus had a sentimental attachment towards it and partly because they had practical approach to life with a feeling that their life depended on the possession of land. This was the situation until the advent of Software boom in the year 2000.

Origin of the software boom and the consequential birth of real estate growth:-
With the advent of software industries and their sparklingly well laid out wage structure, there was a huge surplus for young minds and their parents. The reason for this was that from the year 2000 onwards the Western countries had a big requirement for well trained, Mathematics oriented people with an inclination to work at a great speed on the computer. As India had a ‘big ocean’ of such young people, they could acquit themselves very well in these jobs. Thus, with the increase in overseas job opportunities, there was a lot of inflation of the pockets of these people due to a difference in value of the currencies. All these meant that there should be some place where the surpluses can be parked and the interest rates were very low for them to invest in the financial hubs and therefore, converting the liquid asset into a fixed asset was the best option. Thus whenever two people met, be it in a public place or a moving train, the first topic or the starting point for discussion was about either sale or purchase of land or news relating to it in the town. Thus with each and every day, the cost of land increased in a spiral fashion.

Immediate effects of the software boom:-
Thus every parent wished that their children became software experts and to make it a reality, they had to sell away their landholdings. There was also quick money for those who had an urgent need like big hospital expenses, daughter’s marriage etc.

The real estate brokers and landholders benefited a lot from this new found avenue of income and from their seemingly poor living conditions earlier, most of them became millionaires with the passage of time and they started purchasing new vehicles and constructing posh houses for the display of their newly acquired wealth. This led to lateral increase in production activity and generation of employment opportunities by leaps and bounds, thus leading to spreading of wealth to some extent.

Real estate sale led to an exponential increase of construction activity and the poor Agriculturist had a chance to earn money even in un-season as he participated in construction activity and some of his urgent needs could be met with in style.

Complementary effects of real estate activity on the society in general:-
Wide roads were laid for better connectivity as the real estate dealers brought pressure on the concerned authorities to make the real estate activity easily accessible to one and all and also to market it as an attractive feature. This indirectly helped in increase of business through transportation. The immediate result of this change was that the image of the country as predominantly rural, medieval, and struggling to come to grips with poverty changed dramatically to that of modern, urbane, wealthy and wonderfully aesthetic and thus revived the golden images of the past. This led to a huge tourist influx as they had a number of beautifully constructed houses to stay upon their visit to the country.

For a change, people started thinking in terms of earning money and petty differences were buried and some of the previous quarrels began to subside by themselves and thus the societal relations underwent a sea change. For many rural folks, the long cherished dream of having a house in cities and towns got realised. This is because of the growth in the culture of building apartments instead of individual houses due to the necessity of compensating the exorbitant cost of land.

Thus in the future, when books are written on economic revolution, the glorious contribution of the software industry and the real estate activity to the growth of the economy will have to be placed on a high pedestal.