i dont think life in india is that much cheaper than in the US where $40k has you living like a US multimillionaire... ive heard houses there are still like a $100k+. I guess what I'm saying is these servants are probably more like slaves.
Tech pays significantly more than $40k in india (at least in cities like Bengaluru) if levels.fyi is anything to go by. 25th percentile of sr software developers is $38k, 90th % is $108k. So seems like a typical mid-career white collar worker could be making in the $40k+ range? These people are probably a very small % of the overall population though.
most Indian people would jump at the chance to make even $10,000 annually, meaning there's still a 1.2 billion-man opportunity for firms to take advantage of in the future