Reborn In 17th century India with Black Technology

8th February 1659

Akhand Bharatiya Empire

Two days after the tender conference was held, the results were officially announced through the *Bharatam Daily* newspaper.

The article written about the projects attracted a lot of attention and unsurprisingly caused a huge wave of repercussions throughout the empire.

The reaction from all walks of life to the megaprojects was intense and exciting to witness. For the projects, all the resources of the empire were mobilized without any reservation, including crucial support from the Ministries of Finance, Transportation, and Communication.

With the tender conference officially completed and all the construction companies formally receiving their contracts, several measures were immediately implemented by the ministries to ensure the smooth execution of the megaprojects. For a limited time until the projects were completed, the emergency lane on highways throughout the empire was designated for the transportation of construction materials. The emergency lane was shifted to the third lane, and the number of lanes available for civilian transportation was decreased. Although this led to short-term congestion, it did not cause significant adverse effects. In fact, in the long run, this move increased the speed of construction and prevented catastrophic traffic jams.

The Ministry of Communication immediately reduced the cost of communication between different Arkha Dristhi communication stations to facilitate project coordination. Meanwhile, the Finance Department set up a dedicated response team and assigned separate personnel to each large company to handle financial matters related to the projects.

The Mega Project Management Department had officially become the highest governing body overseeing both the canal construction project and the railway network project.

With all these changes happening right before their eyes, the migrants were overjoyed. They finally realized that coming to the South had not been a mistake.

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The city of Mumbai

A huge wave of recruitment is underway in a corner of the city, with migrants from all over the urban region pouring into these recruitment points established by various construction companies.

"JD Construction Company is looking for 3,000 workers. Boarding and lodging provided, along with a salary of 150 Varaha per month. Please sign up quickly."

"SMG Construction Company is looking for 900 laborers. Boarding and lodging are provided, along with a salary of 150 Varaha per month."

"Frontier Construction Firm is looking for skilled craftsmen, whether in carpentry, woodworking, masonry, or any other practical construction skill. Boarding and lodging are provided, with only three people per room and high-quality food three times a day. The salary ranges from 250 to 400 Varaha per month. Interested individuals, please sign up and participate in the interview."

The representatives from the companies shouted at the top of their lungs, trying their best to be heard over the shouts of the migrants swarming towards them. If someone were to witness this scene, they might mistake it for a gang violence incident. Fortunately, the chaotic atmosphere was soon brought under control by the police officers, who were promptly informed of the situation by the locals.

This excitement was present not only in Mumbai but also in various major cities in the southern part of the empire, as most of the migrants were concentrated in the cities looking for jobs.

Various construction companies took this opportunity to snap up as much labour force as possible, especially considering that they were still unsure if the southern part of the empire would continue to receive the massive influx of labour like it had over the past few months.

The construction companies that had won tenders for various sections of the railway construction project mainly recruited strong and illiterate migrants, as not much skill was involved. However, ambitious companies like the Frontier Construction Firm recruited skilled labour from the north, as they had won tenders for some of the more challenging sectors of the project—especially for tasks such as building bridges, tunnelling for the railway tracks, or participating in the construction of water infrastructure projects for the Great Tri-Nadhi Canal Project.

With the hundreds of construction companies going out in full force, the eight-plus-million excessive labour force that had been acting as a hindrance and friction to society was immediately absorbed by the construction industry, like a sponge absorbing water. The Bharatiya Empire's economy, which had been lagging slightly due to friction in the joints like a big block engine without lubrication, transformed into a pristine supercharged engine working at full efficiency without any hiccups.

The people living in the city also felt much better walking around, as they no longer had to see hundreds of people propping up tents and lying on their beautiful roadways.

Even the economy was hugely stimulated by these construction projects and by the nearly 1.1 billion Varaha that had been poured into them.

The profits of various cement companies skyrocketed almost immediately. A massive expansion took place in the construction materials industry, and the same occurred for the steel industry. Bhaskaracharya, the general manager of the royal family's assets, noticing the changes in the market situation, decisively invested 25 million Varaha to expand the scale of iron and steel production into the Raya Steel Company. Almost immediately, the construction of 50 blast furnaces was initiated.

Construction tools like hammers, screwdrivers, wrenches, measuring tapes, utility knives, hand saws, hand-operated drills, circular saws, chisels, concrete mixers, ladders, sledgehammers, wheelbarrows, rails, hand-operated angle grinders, and other items were selling like hotcakes.

As a consequence, companies manufacturing professional construction tools experienced unprecedented growth as the market's demand for construction machinery surged to levels never seen before.

The demand was so large that the prices of construction equipment shot up by 30% almost immediately, showing a trend of continuing to rise.

To bring this under control, the Raya Mining Company and Bhonsle Mining Company had to increase the rate at which iron ore was mined and processed. Fortunately, with the expansion of the Raya Steel Company, prices soon began to return to normal, and due to the increased scale, prices even decreased by 3 to 6 percent.

The carriage-building industry also experienced a huge boom as the demand for reinforced carriages required for construction increased exponentially.

Within the span of February alone, 35,000 military-grade reinforced carriages were sold by the Aakash Carriages Company, one of the top-ranking carriage companies in the empire.

Putting aside the direct beneficiaries of the mega projects, the sub-industries involved in the projects also gained significant benefits. One of the main examples in this scenario is the timber industry. Due to the demand for high-quality wood required by the carriages, the sleepers on the railway tracks, the tools in the construction industry, and the naval industry, which was also in a state of rapid expansion, the timber industry experienced blowout growth.

The whole state of Ahom in particular, experienced unprecedented economic stimulation. The prices of timber rose by almost 50% in the month of February alone. Unfortunately, unlike iron ore, timber cannot be mined indefinitely, so Vijay couldn't push Ahom's timber merchants to expand production scales by a few hundred percent to bring down the price.

However, despite not being able to expand the scale of timber production indefinitely, the timber merchants of Ahom made significant profits for themselves.

Aside from the heavy industries that benefited greatly from the mega-scale infrastructure project, the light industries and local economies were also hugely stimulated.

According to the regulations stipulated by the Ministry of Standards, every labourer was required to identify themselves in bright yellow clothes to avoid accidents and to wear hard hats as a safety precaution.

Due to yellow fabric being relatively more expensive than cheaper alternatives, and a hard hat requiring precision machining on a large scale, a full kit for a laborer cost upwards of 50 Varaha. Given that millions of laborers were already employed for the megaprojects, the textile industry experienced a significant surge in profits.

This was especially true for the top players in the industry, such as Bakshi Textiles, Gauri Shankar Textiles, and Singh Textiles, who all had both financial resources and the means to take advantage of this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for expansion.

Apart from the textile industry, the catering industry was one of the industries that experienced unexpected growth. Before the mega construction projects started, the catering industry was not even considered an industry; there wasn't a formal or structured development path for it.n/o/vel/b//in dot c//om

However, with the two megaprojects starting simultaneously, professionals in the field, like Deshmukh Industrial Caterers, Anna Datha Catering Service, Bheema Caterers, M and M Fast Food, and a dozen or so other catering companies who were accustomed to small-scale catering for events or special occasions in various companies, immediately seized the opportunity to come together and provide catering services in a unified manner. An organisation called Southern Bharat Catering Collective Organisation was also formed.

Previously, construction company owners used to hire their own cooks and maintain a kitchen department within their companies to serve food to their employees. However, after the Frontier Construction Firm took the initiative to completely disband its kitchen department and fully outsource food preparation to an outside catering service, it was found that this approach not only eliminated the need to comply with food safety requirements mandated by the BSO but also saved the hassle of managing an additional safety hazard within the company. This meant one less department falling under the radar of the stringent BSO inspections. Although these requirements are not difficult to meet under normal circumstances, the nature of construction work often requires personnel to stay in areas where maintaining hygiene is particularly challenging.

Even if the various construction company owners locate their kitchens elsewhere, their lack of control over these kitchens further increases the risks associated with unsupervised kitchens. Adding to this, when the workers of the Frontier Construction Firm began to praise the quality of their food, and outsiders observed that these workers had clearly higher efficiency, the industrial model of the catering industry as a supporting sector to the construction industry gradually took root.

To further make their product more appealing, the catering industry began offering monthly packages to construction companies, with payments made on a monthly basis and only upon consumer satisfaction. The prices were also very affordable, costing just 5 Varaha per meal per worker, which was much lower than the cost of cooking meals in-house.

This further prompted the construction companies to transition to outside catering services and completely disband the internal kitchen departments.

The low prices were made possible because various catering companies unified their kitchens, enabling bulk procurement from local agricultural companies at reduced costs. Moreover, a single logistics channel was established to handle the delivery of goods for all the catering companies. Additionally, cooking was done in batches of thousands of portions, which further reduced production costs.

All of the food was cooked by professional chefs employed by the catering group from the infamous Booka Yuddha Street in Hampi. To reassure construction company owners about food safety, the catering group employed an inspector from the Bharatiya Standards Organisation, who was permanently stationed in the unified kitchen areas at various construction sites to ensure hygiene in food preparation.

With all these advantages, the Southern Bharat Catering Collective Organization, an entity composed of various catering companies from the southern part of the empire, had become a behemoth in the catering industry, leaving no room for competition.

Originally, things were not like this. It all began with the brilliant mind of Purusottam Deshmukh, a young graduate from the Bharatiya Institute of Technology with a major in industrial production. After graduating, Purusottam took over the hotel established by his father and expanded it, making it bigger and more efficient by applying the industrial production methods he had learned at the university. He successfully transformed the small hotel into a catering company serving small-scale industrial enterprises on special occasions.

The company was on a stable growth trajectory from then but nothing too drastic,

However, as luck would have it, on February 7th, the full details of the Mega Projects were announced in the newspaper. While reading the newspaper, Purusottam immediately sensed an opportunity for growth. He instinctively realized that the feeding capabilities of construction companies would not be able to keep up with the rapidly growing workforce. He knew this was his opportunity, but unfortunately, he lacked both the capital and resources to take advantage of it.

He knew that he needed some help, so he went on a hunt that lasted for a whole week, in the end, after extensive research, he came across two brothers from Baluchistan, Matheen and Masthan, who owned multiple fast food restaurants in the city of Mangaluru under the name M and M Fast Food. Purusottam felt that the brothers' expertise in industrialized food production would greatly benefit his cause. Fortunately, when he reached out, he was met with enthusiasm rather than rejection. The brothers found his idea intriguing and agreed to collaborate.

Combining the brothers' practical expertise in fast food preparation and with his knowledge of industrial production, Purusottam devised a more comprehensive plan.

But his plan was too big for him to do alone. Even adding the M and M food company wasn't enough, so he made up his mind and invited all the catering companies he knew, proposing a deal to combine all the labour capabilities and open unified kitchens for the construction sites.

Although many people were unwilling to do this initially, as time went by, those who did not agree to the plan saw their orders decreasing, while the orders for Purusottam's and the M and M food company's orders continued to increase. So in the end, they had no choice but to join the shared resource plan.

This phenomenon was immediately brought to the attention of Vijay, and after looking through the details of the Southern Bharat Catering Collective, Vijay was left immediately impressed.

This was the first time he had seen such a model of catering service, even from his last life. In this inquiry, Vijay also discovered the M and M food company, a company that had the most similarity with KFC, Burger King, McDonald's, and other fast-food giants from his last life.

So Vijay decisively made an investment in the M and M food company and helped the brothers Matheen and Masthan in their expansion.

Overall, as a consequence of the Mega Projects, whether directly or indirectly, the Bharatiya Empire was experiencing breakout growth in all sectors of society.

The disaster of excess labor suddenly turned into the greatest blessing and the strongest foundation for the Bharatiya Empire to officially kick off the process of the Industrial Revolution.

P.S. Watched the movie Kanguva Today,

Review: 3/10, It Gave me a fking Headache so only 1