Comments on: Migrant: The Light Infantry of Capitalism

By: vineet kaul

vineet kaul — Thu, 23 Jul 2020 06:44:05 +0000

Dear Vivek, Thanks for your painstaking efforts and research on the subject. Your article is full of learnings. Migration is a global issue and takes various forms and shapes in seminars whether at UN/ILO or even at the local levels.
Coming directly to the issues and challenges in India ..Our Constitution places ‘right to work’ in Directive Principles of State Policy with quite some riders , as I recall . That keep the legal minds and the ” pot” boiling …….
On UBI -is a very good proposal and must be the Objective. However, often our Policy makers and experts are in a different Orbit. You may recall some years back, the Planning Commission said that those who consume more than Rs 32 per day in a metro are not poor?? Just a mention of a National minimum wage of Rs 15000 pm a few years back, created a furore in the Organised sector …am not even speaking of the unorganised sectors

Today, the images of the migrants suffering has spurred awareness and also some knee jerk actions. It will be good if the subject of living wage/UBI gets the due focus and attention it deserves
My concern is that if not acted upon now -the events will overtake us.

By: VJ Rao

VJ Rao — Thu, 23 Jul 2020 04:26:08 +0000

Dear Vivek, Very insightful. Very often I consider myself as a migrant. My father was a central government servant and would be transferred every few years. Came to Bombay in 1957 and fortunately for us managed to stay in Bombay and Maharashtra all our lives. I tell every one very proudly that Vile Parle is my native place as we had nothing anywhere else and there too were living in a 400 sq.ft government allotted house. This was before Maharashtra became a state. My mother too took up a job to support the family. We did not study local languages as we could be transferred every few years.We studied,lived,worked and “Settled”now, in Pune. Every time I am therefor asked where do you “belong”to I say “where I am now.” But honestly being in Mumbai one never felt it. This was just 10 years after Independence and the government colony was cosmopolitan. But the REAL plight of the not so fortunate hit me during this pandemic, the visuals, the non acceptance, the misery, the “rootlessness”. ( I do not know whether such a word exists). Got me thinking of why we need roots and need to be grounded. On the economy I completely agree that we need a universal basic income.Today unfortunately even diploma engineers are not paid a “living wage “of Rs 23000 per month. Imagine the plight of unorganized and contract labour. More power to you for raising these issues.

By: Joseph George A

Joseph George A — Wed, 22 Jul 2020 22:10:02 +0000

Vivek Sir, As usual well founded reasoning through this piece too. Question about living wage. Should it not be the lowest wage which should enable the worker to provide for himself and his family not merely the basic essentials of food, clothing and shelter but a measure of frugal comfort including education for children, protection against ill health, requirements of essential social needs and a measure of insurance against more important misfortunes including old age? Highest wage even Mukesh Ambani will not settle for, in this manner of speaking!

On another plane, does not demographics play into the economics of migration? In the sense, more the people, lesser the bargaining power or value per person on wages. So, in classic retail industry examples, or even for e-commerce led delivery businesses, supply exceeds demand. So, ‘light infantry’ is an apt term in that sense too. That’s why scale trumps quality in developing economies that have large populations. Sociologically, it is known that families reproduce children to share the burdens of earning. In formal economies, such labour is least invested on in terms of training or opportunities for career advancement, as the scale of supply makes it possible to replace the accretion in talent than to persist with augmented circles of inclusion of people in newer forms of value addition. Vicious cycle if seen merely as static economic relationships.

Triggering a virtuous cycle, even if eddy current like in India, may be the counter-current to capitalism required. I thought the AMUL and IRMA experiments represented that model. Making these models anti-fragile and robust may mean newer forms of agility that senses the moves of the powerful with access to resources or nexus with pliant administrations and translates these as signals that can foster valuable interdependence.

The aches of exploitation has stirred your conscience to this blog as well.

Keep these notes coming!