Lessons Covid Taught

Context: Given the precarious state of India’s informal sector, it is high time to explore the alternative pathways that will reduce the pressure on the informal sector.

Precarious state of India’s informal sector:

• Huge dependence: Existence of massive pool of cheap labours due to the movement of people moving long-distance markets and jobs from rural India on account of the following reasons-
  • Since 1991, about 15 million farmers have moved out of agriculture, many because the economic system simply does not make farming (pastoralism, fisheries and forestry) remunerative enough.
  • 60 million people have been physically displaced by dams, mining, expressways, ports, statues, industries, with mostly poor or no rehabilitation.
  • Caste and gender discrimination in traditional occupation.
• Highly exploited: As a result of the exploitation of informal sector workers, the richest 5 % of Indians now earn as much as the remaining 95 %.
  • The three farm laws introduced by the government last year will further hand agricultural control to corporates, creating an even bigger pool of exploitable labour.
• Highly vulnerable: People in this sector have insecure jobs that they can lose overnight, with no alternative or safety net.
  • Jobless growth in the formal sector, meaning those leaving villages end up in some other informal work, mostly very insecure.
  • An economy that promotes mass vulnerability only increases social strife, creating an atmosphere ripe for communal, class and caste violence.

Way Forward:

• Promoting community-led initiatives: Stopping outmigration from rural India for long-distance markets and jobs by securing rural livelihoods through replication of successful examples:
  • Ensuring food security: Deccan Development Society (DDS) of Telangana and tribal women of North-East Network of Nagaland ensured complete food security for dozens of villages throughout 2020.
  • Promoting tourism: In the western Himalaya, Titli Trust, Birds of Kashmir, CEDAR, and Snow Leopard Conservancy India Trust continued nature guided activities with local communities.
  • Creating safety nets: The youth group, Pranthakatha in Kolkata, created a local neighbourhood safety net for 32 widows who had been forced to beg for a living.
  • Supporting rural economy: E.g. Beejotsav Nagpur ensured that farm produce reached a (mostly local) consumer base, averting economic collapse for thousands of farmers.
  • Enabling dignified livelihoods: E.g. Kerala’s Kudumbashree programme enables dignified livelihoods to several million women.
• Achieve local self-reliance for basic needs: Rather than incentivising big industry to take over most production things like soaps, footwear etc. Such a production method will reduce expenses and create full local livelihood security.
• Diversification of jobs in rural areas: Shortage of purely agriculture-based livelihoods can be made up by crafts, small-scale manufacturing, and services needed by their own or surrounding populations.
• Enable political and economic empowerment: By enabling worker control over the means of production, more direct forms of democracy (swaraj), and eliminating casteism and gender discrimination.
  • For e.g. In central India, communities that have successfully claimed collective legal control over surrounding forests survived the COVID lockdown much better than their counterparts.
  • This warrants full-hearted implementation of 73rd and 74th constitutional amendments, meant to empower village and city assemblies, and laws like the Forest Rights Act.