'I left home as a teenager to carve out my own identity'

In the earlier parts of our series on How Young India earns, spends and saves, we spoke to Aakash Sharma, a 21-year-old call centre employee to find out how he is trying to change his life for the better and a millworker's son who has struggled his way up and dreams of becoming a nuclear scientist one day.

In the third part we speak to a 30-year-old driver and a father of two children in Hyderabad who left his home in Warangal district of Andhra Pradesh as a teenager to carve out his own identity.

Fifteen years ago, when Bala Raju, 15, left his family on a hot April morning, he had only one thing in mind: he wanted to carve out his own identity as distinct from what he would have been had he decided to stay back and till his father's 5-acre farm in Andhra Pradesh's Warangal district.

The approximately 142-km journey that he undertook from his hometown brought him to the capital city of Hyderabad. The city was on the cusp of an information and technology revolution that was to gradually seep throughout the country providing jobs to millions of Indians directly, and in allied activities, and help India scorch a near-double digit growth rate in the years to come.

Bala, a class XII dropout (he studied while he worked in Hyderabad before he dropped out) who grew chillies and rice in his father's farm, was aware that with his academic qualifications the IT revolution didn't mean much to him. At the same time, he was conscious that his future was linked to how Hyderabad would emerge as an IT hub.

But in 1995, however, it was a matter of survival for him.

Not that he came from a poor family or his father would not have provided for his food and accommodation in a new city. It was Bala's independent streak that discouraged him from asking for money from his father.

"The Rs 50,000 that we earned from our ancestral land every six months was more than enough to sustain the five of us -- one brother, one sister, my parents and myself," Bala says, keeping his eyes on the road ahead, hands firmly on the wheel as he whizzes at 100 km/hr on a road that has sparse traffic from Hyderabad's Rajiv Gandhi International Airport towards Gachibowli, a hub of multinational companies some 24 km away.

It seems like this road has been exclusively built for those commuting between Gachibowli and the international airport," quips Bala when asked about sparse traffic on the road.

Bala works as a driver with a local transport company that ferries executives -- both desi and foreign -- between the airport and scores of IT, finance and banking companies that line Gachibowli's neatly manicured landscape.

"I earn Rs 12,000 per month as fixed salary," says Bala who spends Rs 3,000 per month as school and tuition fees on his 8-year-old son and 5-year-old daughter.

His wife, who he married in 1999, is a class VII dropout but very good with numbers, he says. Together the couple have managed to not only buy Bima Gold and Jeevan Anand insurance policies for each of their two kids' future, but have also been servicing them for the last two years without missing their premium.

Interestingly, Bala manages to save Rs 6,000 every month apart from the amount he saves after discounting his household expenses. But for this Bala puts in a few hours of overtime, come rain or sunshine, whenever he gets an opportunity.

His employer pays him Rs 41 per hour as overtime for the extra hours he works after 6 pm on a day that, for him, begins at 9 am.

"I, and others like me, easily tot up 70 hours of overtime every month," says Bala who's wearing a thick jacket to protect himself from the cold airconditioner because he has been running a mild fever since the previous night.

"Nothing much, but the fever's because of the rains, I think," he says adding that it had rained incessantly in Hyderabad on the previous three days.

Ask him if it's worth doing overtime for as little as Rs 41 for every extra hour he chips in and he says with a mischievous smile: "We make good money in generous tips from saheblog (foreign executives). They don't think twice before flipping out dollars," he says and you understand the reason behind his chuckle and why he doesn't bother too much about his mild fever.

However, life was not so easy for Bala when he first landed in Hyderabad.

With just Rs 50 in his pocket and without any job, Bala managed to spend a couple of weeks with his relatives before he got a waiter's job at a beer bar.

"I would come across all type of people at this bar. Some really coarse men, some of them real pearls," he says reminiscing about those days when he almost got arrested during a raid on this illegal bar on the outskirts of the city.

After that incident Bala decided he would be better off working someplace else after two years at this seedy bar. As luck would have it, a gentleman who was a regular visitor at the bar knew somebody who ran a wine shop and offered to help Bala find a job there.

"He told me it was a decent job where the money would be less but there would be no fear of harassment or getting jailed.

"I immediately accepted that job with a fixed salary of Rs 3,000," he adds.

This was some time in 2001, when Bala's wife was expecting their first kid and the medical costs had started ballooning. Bala knew quite well that managing a family of three would be quite difficult with just Rs 3,000 as the couple would have to spend a good deal of money on their new-born's medicines and vaccinations.

To tide over this financial crunch, Bala decided to learn driving and get employed in one of the many IT and ITeS companies that had mushroomed under Chandrababu Naidu's (Andhra Pradesh's former chief minister credited for the conversion of Hyderabad into cyberabad) regime in Hyderabad. He knew this move would help him salvage his financial condition.

This bold move not only helped Bala get out of jobs that were not looked at with respect (a waiter at the beer bar and then at the wine shop) back then but also enter a sector that would grow by leaps and bounds in the years to come.

This growth reflected in Bala's salary as he graduated from earning Rs 3,000 in 2001 to Rs 12,000 plus tips and overtime in 2010, a jump of 300 per cent in nine years.

Bala, however, is not satisfied.

Some time in the distant future Bala reckons to buy a couple of his own vehicles and lease it out to "BPOs and IT companies."

"I know it's a remunerative business," he says confidently, having spent almost a decade in this sector.

But for now he is happy with what he is earning for himself and his family's welfare.

"I left home as a teenager to carve out my own identity. I know my father is proud about what I am doing today without any financial help from him. But now I wish to do something that will make my kids feel proud of me when they grow up," he says as we reach Gachibowli and the din of traffic once again begin to whir outside.

For the record, Bala wants to earn Rs 50 lakh (Rs 5 million) before he retires and leave half the sum for his son and daughter.