Rozi, roti and rozgaar for we, the people of India

After a prolonged spell in the electoral clock of India, rozi, roti and rozgaar matters have taken precedence over political personalities and emotive issues, in deciding the voting preferences of the people of India. As per Axis- My India exit poll, rozi, roti and rozgaar issues have got 83% preference in deciding the voting pattern of the electorate of Bihar in the just concluded Assembly elections. Development (42%), unemployment (30%) and inflation (11%) were the key electoral issues for the voters.

Bihar alone accounted for 1.5 million or 14.3% of over 10.6 million migrant workers who returned to their home states, after the imposition of nationwide lockdown on March 24 to contain the spread of COVID-19. Over 10.6 million migrant workers returned to their home states during the period between March to June, the Government of India said on September 22.

The central government, however, may not have counted all the returnee migrants to Bihar, say some experts. Bihar had approximately three million – double the government figure – migrant workers returning, Nikhil RG of the United Nations Children’s Fund, who has been working closely with the Bihar government on returnee migrants, told IndiaSpend. In May and June, return migration pushed up the demand for work under the MGNREGS to its highest level since 2013-14. Up to 24.2 million rural households were demanding work in August 2020, a 66% increase from August 2019, data from the MGNREGS portal show.

A collaborative study done by The Aga Khan Rural Support Programme (India), Action for Social Advancement, Grameen Sahara, i-Saksham, PRADAN, SAATHI-UP, SeSTA, Seva Mandir and Transform Rural India Foundation, estimated that over 25% migrant workers were still searching for work in their villages as late as July. Nearly half the total of MGNREGS revised budget for 2020-21 had already been spent in the first four months of the financial year, a report by the People's Action for Employment Guarantee said.

To tackle the increased demand for work in rural areas, the Government of India launched the Garib Kalyan Rojgar Yojana on June 20 to provide work under 25 categories to skilled returning migrants. The Rs 50,000 crore project aims to build rural infrastructure, provide internet facilities in villages and map the skills of rural migrant labour. Under the project, 116 districts - in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Odisha and Jharkhand - were identified as beneficiaries. The funds allocated to this project are not enough to deal with a crisis of this magnitude.

“Unemployment or the status of returned migrant workers” was the most important issue in Bihar’s Assembly elections for around 25% of respondents, found a survey conducted by the polling agency Cvoter in September. The fact that "unemployment" was indeed the key issue in the Bihar Assembly elections was corroborated by another finding of the Axis- My India exit poll. According to the exit poll predictions, 47 per cent of young voters aged between 18 to 35 years voted for the Mahagathbandhan, 12% higher than those who voted for the NDA.

Elections in Bihar are always complex, where more than one issue including identity politics is at play. Local caste equations cannot be discounted as per the observers. But anti-incumbency is palpable and the migrant crisis and unemployment seems to have played a crucial role in the Bihar Assembly elections this time around.

In a youthful country like India - employment creation, inclusive economic growth and prosperity of all people should matter the most. Jobs got destroyed by the premature and unplanned nationwide lockdown. Informal sector of the economy got severely damaged by the so-called fight against black money such as the Demonetisation exercise. The fight against black money should have been restricted to the big-time black money stashed away abroad in tax havens. Instead of focusing on the big-time black money stashed away abroad, all high-value currency notes were banned overnight, which at best could have brought out some petty black money held in the form of cash in the domestic economy. In the process, Demonetisation has not just cleaned up the black money held in the form of cash, but has also wiped out the cash-based segment of the Indian economy.

In a low-middle income country like India, rapid inclusive growth is the need of the hour. Right now, there is neither growth, nor the economy is inclusive. The pandemic has disproportionately affected the Indian economy more than any other developing country. As per official data released by the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation, the Indian economy contracted by 23.9% in the April-June quarter of this fiscal year, the worst decline ever recorded since India started compiling GDP statistics on a quarterly basis in 1996. As per IMF’s projection, India’s real GDP growth is expected to contract 10.3 per cent in 2020, which is the highest contraction among the 10 emerging economies. India is also the only economy with a double-digit contraction. On the other hand, China is expected to see 1.9 per cent growth, the highest among all of them.

The New Indian economy has become less inclusive because of the depletion of informal sector and emergence of monopolies in a range of sectors like telecom, retail, e-commerce, sea ports, airports, green energy etc. Due to the rise of monopolies, the real losers are certainly the Indian public and the Indian economy at large, whose fate is being decided by a handful of billionaires. By appropriate regulatory feats, the government should ensure a more competitive and balanced economic growth. Cash-based economic activities per se are not wrongful deeds. Cash-based informal economy, which provides livelihoods to millions of people at the bottom of the pyramid, should not be sacrificed for the sake of transparency and some marginal increase in tax collections.

India’s billionaires reported a rise in their combined net worth by more than a third during the first four months of the coronavirus-induced nationwide lockdown, defying the impact of the global economic fallout of the pandemic. According to the Billionaires Insights Report 2020 published by UBS and PwC, the net worth of Indian billionaires increased by 35% to $423 billion between April and July. As India heads for its worst recession, the tax revenues of government are bound to fall drastically. The government would do well to levy a special tax on these billionaires to make up for the loss in revenues due to the pandemic, instead of worrying the common people.

Utilitarianism is an ethical system that determines morality on the basis of the greatest good for the greatest number. Utilitarianism is a relatively simple ethical system to apply. To determine whether an action is moral, one has to merely calculate the good and bad consequences that will result from a particular action. If the good consequences outweigh the bad, then the action is moral.

(V Venkateswara Rao is an alumnus of IIM, Ahmedabad and a retired corporate professional)