Food prices; a bricks and mortar problem for Indian economy

GURGAON, India: Three months since journeying more than 700 milesfrom his village incentral India to take a job in this bustling city near the capital, New Delhi, Charan is already looking forward to a 10 percent pay rise. He isn't an engineer or programmer. He hauls bricks and sand at a local construction site for less than $100 a month.

India's biggest cities face a worsening shortage of migrant manual laborers like 26-year-old Charan, who goes by only one name. While India has long suffered from a dearth of workers with vocational skills like plumbers and electricians, efforts to alleviate poverty in poor, rural areas have helped stifle what was once a flood of cheap, unskilled labor from India's poorest states.