New Delhi, Oct. 29 -- Imagine a young woman walking into a gleaming office tower in Bengaluru. She has an offer letter to join a top company in India's celebrated information technology industry, which earned revenues of about $283 billion in 2024-25 and employs 5.8 million Indians. Her starting salary is Rs.3.6 lakh a year. Given India's notoriously difficult job market, she counts herself lucky.

What she probably doesn't know is that in 2010, the same company offered freshers Rs.3.25 lakh a year. Her pay is marginally higher than what her predecessors earned 15 years ago. Prices, meanwhile, have more than doubled. In real terms, her starting salary is half of what it was in 2010.

Stagnant real wages for large sections of India's workf...