Movie studios and night schools: Inside India's growing economy

The U.S. workforce — and a lot of other developed economies’ — are aging. But India’s prime age working population is growing and is projected to hit nearly 70% in just a few years.

For a deeper look at what that looks like on the ground, “Marketplace” host Kai Ryssdal and ADP Chief Economist Nela Richardson, our project partner for the “Age of Work” series, visited two very different locations in Mumbai: a visual effects studio, and a night school 12 miles away.

First was DNEG. The studio isn’t a household name, but it has won eight Oscars for its work on movies like “Dune” and “The Odyssey,” and it has thousands of workers across the globe. The majority of those employees work from its studios in India, which Merzin Tavaria, the co-founder and president of DNEG, sees as an advantage.

“You're always the underdog trying to do the next best thing, and that's, I think, the biggest competitive edge for sure,” Tavaria said.

Part of that “next best thing” is a two-part film coming out in November. It tells the story of the “Ramayana,” one of India’s oldest epics. Putting together such a huge project calls for lots of hiring — Tavaria says he’s brought on an extra 1,200 people over the last six months — as well as some creativity.

“Coming from India as a culture, it's not like we've always had everything,” Tavaria said. “So you're always trying to figure out as you go because you need to get ahead. I started in a garage, not knowing anything, and you're literally learning on the job, figuring out, getting depressed, disappointed, finding solutions, and that's where if I had to do something, either I could say I don't have it, so let's just sit back, or you start pushing harder.”

Twelve miles away, Ryssdal and Richardson encountered a different kind of pushing harder. They visited a night school that teaches grades 8 through 10 for students of all ages, including current school-age children who can’t attend school during the day because they need to work.

There are more than 100 night schools just like this across Maharashtra, the state Mumbai is in, but this particular school is an English school. The principal, Animesh Singh, says that’s because they’re teaching with an eye toward the future.

“Everything is in English, so, obviously, English is the future for the working class people you can say,” Singh said.

For these students, completing an education is about improving their economic status, but there are other economic challenges that stand in their way.

“Sometimes what happens is parents do not allow them to come,” Singh said. “If you don't have earning members in your house, and if you are literally economically weak, naturally the child would not come into school rather than working.”

Click the audio player above to hear more.