Day #7: Real subsidy to the competitive economy...

26th March 2020: The biggest news is that the Economic Package from the Central Government got announced today finally, details are yet to be clear and I guess there will be many details in the coming days that will clear the air. The State government in Tamilnadu too has come up with several clarifications that is finally moving upstream from the market-middle-class oriented approach to talk about farming sector and farm produce movements. So, today I am reading a lot and hence a longer write-up

The last few days has generated several economic sector debates, interviews, write-ups online. WE HAVE THE WORLD’S LARGEST THINKING FORCE SITTING AND WONDERING HOW TO SOLVE IT JUST NOW!!! I never could have thought there can be so many write-ups on this by so many diverse voices — from the quick stringing of facts to detailed data analysis to random solutions to more localized solutions, FINALLY INDIANS ARE FORGETTING CLASS, RELIGION AND CASTE TO TALK ABOUT ECONOMIC ISSUES. This is a great development. But, yet, there is a catch to it and that is my post today in 3 portions -

1) WHAT DOES THE ‘ALTERNATE ECONOMY’ LOOK LIKE? DO WE HAVE A VISUAL? CAN WE WORK OUT THE DETAIL?

2) LET THE SOLUTIONS / SOLACE MEASURES NOT FURTHER THE STATUS QUO.

3) ENVIRONMENTALISTS ARE HAPPY NOW, CAN THEY SUSTAIN IT?

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1) WHAT DOES THE ‘ALTERNATE ECONOMY’ LOOK LIKE? DO WE HAVE A VISUAL? CAN WE WORK OUT THE DETAIL? — 2.5 millions people went out of job in the US last 1 week, they say it is the single largest unemployment registered in the last 100 years. We in India don’t know how many went out of job. With more than half the population counted as working age population, we have one of the world’s largest working population. We had a few months ago suppressed a report on the alarming unemployment in the country because it didn’t agree with our loud opinion. Bulk of our population is employed in the unorganized sector (or cash economy) which offers zero-social-security services and products to the organized sector.

The much celebrated IT sector is dependent on security people, house keeping staff, machinery maintenance staff, canteen, transportation, etc., These are often outsourced to the lowest contracting bidder. Many of them employ people on daily / weekly / monthly wage contract basis. These people are in turn serviced by food suppliers, suppliers of several ‘cleaning’ products, mop makers, security uniform stitching tailors and small fancy looking but cheap badge makers,etc., A canteen in an IT company doesn’t ‘produce’ all food, it sources it from even smaller enterprises who are basically smaller establishments run by the entrepreneur directly, they may employ people primarily on daily wage based or weekly wage.

So, a young man from Bihar is employed by a small producer of food to make samosas every day that is in turn supplied by him to a IT canteen contractor (or he himself could be the contractor in smaller cases) to cater to the IT company. While the IT company shuts down for Corona virus and permits its employees to work from home, the canteen is shut down, the food producer is out of business and the Bihari youth is unceremoniously sent home. The IT company will make a grand gesture of providing support to its staff and if the staff are valuable even give them a bonus health cover, they don’t extend any courtesies to their canteen contractor and the cascading effect is that the Bihari youth has no social security cover. It is he who was crowding the MGR Central Station and whose images crowded our social media pages few days ago in the verge of lock down, to be heckled and cursed online by our middle class, perhaps people employed in the IT company itself. The IT companies don’t extend the courtesy to the canteen contractor because, that is where they cut corner to ensure that they can be ‘competitive’ to their international clientele. The contractor is ‘competitive’ by not cooking everything himself, the food supplier is ‘competitive’ by ensuring that he doesn’t employ the Bihari youth on a monthly salary or extending him any social security. THE BIHARI YOUTH SUBSIDIZES THE GLOBAL ‘COMPETITIVE’ ECONOMY THROUGH HIS LIFE. He is poor and his life is dispensable in the large global competitive market.

MULTIPLY THE BIHARI YOUTH BY A 100 MILLION — THAT IS THE SIZE OF THE MIGRANT POPULATION IN INDIA. Thankfully not all of them are servicing the heartless IT or similar major corporates. Bulk of them who are employed as farm labourers will find better social security or at least they will not be abandoned at the first sneeze of the global market. But the rest of them need to be employed.

FOR A LONG TIME NOW, ‘ALTERNATIVE ECONOMY’ PROPOSALS HAVE BEEN LARGELY WORKING AT THE CONCEPTUAL LEVEL OF TALKING ABOUT ‘LOCAL’ VS. ‘GLOBAL’. NOW IS THE TIME TO WORK THE SAME INTO DETAILS. THE PERSON TO THINK OF WHILE TALKING ABOUT THE LOCAL ECONOMY IS NOT THE UTOPIAN IDEA OF I-PRODUCE-YOU-CONSUME WE-ARE-JOINED-DIRECTLY SO-LET’S-LOVE-LA-LA KIND. IT HAS TO GO BEYOND THIS SIMPLISTIC NOTIONS INTO ACCOMMODATING THESE 100 MILLION PEOPLE, THEY ARE NOT GOING TO STOP MIGRATING JUST BECAUSE YOU ARE A STRONG LOCAL ECONOMY TODAY — INDEED, THEY WILL COME TO YOU BECAUSE YOU ARE A STRONG LOCAL ECONOMY. That’s how we started Colonization remember? Several poor people from other places coming in search of riches and jobs!? IT IS HIGH TIME WE GOT INTO WORKING THE DETAILS AS THOUGH IT IS NO LONGER ‘ALTERNATIVE’ BUT THE MAIN STREAM.

2) LET THE SOLUTIONS / SOLACE MEASURES NOT FURTHER THE STATUS QUO — There are many measures to overcome the immediate economic challenge being proposed, some have been announced by the GoI today, including, depositing money in the 2 Crore plus Jan Dhan Yojna (JDY) and extending further collateral free loan to the SHG groups across the country. Unfortunately, the JDY has the most inactive accounts in the poorer states, which means, after returning home from a metropolis, the poor youth from Bihar is likely to find that the govt. will deposit money in his account if only he had operated it for 2 yrs., and he may have forgotten all about it. Now, multiply him by 70 million more such people and you have another problem coming up of how to actually reach it to those deserving in time. The temporary and short term pain relief measures in the Economic Package announced today seem to be all aiming for a maximum of 3 months and surprisingly devoid of implementation detailing. One can only hope that these are to follow quickly and there will be further follow-up.

More critical for us to understand is after this lock down period is over, and perhaps we step out of the corona virus pendamic let’s say in 6 months. The global market will still not have recovered, the IT sector and other sectors that are dependent on global markets are still not going to have enough business that will create the jobs for the Bihari youth to make samosas. What does he do now? Wait for the same to regain in 12 months, 18 maybe? WHY SHOULD HE BE GIVEN SUCH A JOB IN THE FIRST PLACE? THIS VIRUS’ BIGGEST CONTRIBUTION IS THAT IT HAS MADE THE NATION-STATES AND MARKETS, THE TWO BIGGEST PERPETRATORS OF THERE-IS-NO-ALTERNATIVE (TINA) MINDSET OF GROWTH, STEP ASIDE FROM IT. None of us would have imagined 6 months ago that countries that think of any statement against FDI as sacrilege can actually cancel foreign visas ‘until further notice’, governments that permitted foreign businessmen to get away with murder (remember Anderson of Bhopal) actually quarantine them, say no to China, even dare to talk about local economy!!! IF ANY OF THE MEASURES ARE REVIVING THE SAME ECONOMY, THAT IS NOT LEARNING FROM THIS DISASTER. Let’s be clear about it and let’s raise a flag even if it sounds in-human at this time to oppose moves that will recreate the monster economy that devours and destroy’s human dignity, relationship with land and other humans.

3) ENVIRONMENTALISTS ARE HAPPY NOW, CAN THEY SUSTAIN IT? — Civet cat appeared in a road in Kerala in the day time, other animals have appeared in the spaces recently emptied by scared humans in self-imposed lock down mode. Animals unlike humans have fixed turf and migratory pattern and perhaps have started to view the lack of noise, lights and human encroachment as a sign of planet improving to their benefit. And it is. I can hear the birds in the trees besides my window, the mynahs, seven sisters, doves, crows and parrots that abound the city seem to be chirpier and happier with the turn of events. Air quality has improved in places as well as reported in the media, water quality in rivers in some parts of europe are improving. Fundamentally, environment is getting healthier, maybe the virus was curing the one bigger virus to the planet — us, humans.

Now, I have some experience in working in the suspicious domain called, “sustainability”, a domain that can honestly be defined as a “compromise”. As we know, all development efforts have been to tailored to ensure that the “Developed nations” don’t lose their economic superiority and retain the right to continue to critique, mine, pollute, de-humanize,tax, wage war on, dictate terms, educate, intimidate or insult those people they have declared as “Under Developed”. Sustainable Development as a non-critical and apologetic corollary to “Development” itself and has shifted the entire focus of saving the environment to what a few men in European formal wear agree in closed door meetings in fancy locations across the world. The written word often a dilution of the podium speeches, further weakened by trade agreements and even further by poorer implementation mechanisms and corrupt Nation States. So, it has had questionable impact across the world and the unidirectional presentation of the world’s environmental problem as merely to do with carbon footprint and its reduction being paraded as the sole path to claim “sustainability” is nothing short of sleigh of hand trick by the men in suits.

This moment in history presents A POSSIBILITY OF A NEWER DEFINITION OF SUSTAINABILITY! LET’S TRY AND RE-NEGOTIATE THE POST LOCK DOWN WORLD IN WHICH THE ANIMALS, BIRDS, WATERS, AIR AND LAND ARE HAPPY AS THE NEW NORM. HOW DO WE START TO THINK IN THAT DIRECTION NOW? TO GO BACK TO THE PRE-CORONA VIRUS ENVIRONMENT WILL ONLY SHOW US AS INCAPABLE OF LEARNING FROM EXPERIENCE — THE VERY FUNDAMENTAL ANIMAL QUALITY THAT MAKES US HUMANS. DO WE LEARN? After all not every day do we get so many people sitting in their homes and thinking about collective economic problems!