Govt schemes empower workers, but critics fear declining labour participation. Is welfare creating dependency or restoring dignity?
Should you give a man a fish and you feed him for a day, or teach him to fish and you feed him for a lifetime, as per the Chinese proverb. In an ideal situation, it’s always better to skill the man to earn his daily bread, and fish, too. But hunger is not something that can wait for the skill to come by him and hence the second best option, that of charity. Is it becoming the first option now is the new question, which a bench of the Supreme Court asked the other day. Instead of mainstreaming the beneficiaries, “are we not creating a class of parasites”, wondered the learned judge. “Unfortunately, because of these freebies, which are declared just on the anvil of elections, such as the Ladki Bahin and other schemes, people are not willing to work,” he added, basing his observation on personal experience.
A similar worry of high attrition and difficulty in finding people to replace the dropouts in the construction industry was aired by the engineering major L&T’s chief executive officer. The sops that governments rain on the people stop them from coming to work in the industry and worse, they refuse to be relocated, he had complained.
The Ladki Bahin scheme of the Maharashtra government, which the judge mentioned, offers Rs 1,500 a month to women aged between 21 and 65 years with an annual family income of less than Rs 2.5 lakhs. The money the scheme offers the woman cannot buy her a coffee and snacks in a five-star hotel the wealthy in the country, including the corporate czars, would frequent but the women labourers feel it is sufficient for them not to want to return to work.
The primary inference one can draw from the anguish expressed by the judge and the L&T CEO is that those who ensured a steady supply of cheap labour have ceased to do what they have been doing for generations and instead chose to stay back home, tending their families as the government sops kept the home fire burning. A construction worker is paid Rs 350 a day while an agricultural labourer is paid Rs 300, if we were to go by the record. How much they take home in real terms remains unaddressed but they do not find it to be an offer that they cannot refuse.
These critics must realise, however, that there is nothing in the industrial or agricultural sectors that motivates the labourer to go to work, earn a bit more and live a better life. The government doles have now empowered those who have nothing to sell but physical labour to make a hard bargain of their product. In fact, it has helped them realise the value of their offering, and hence added to their dignity as human beings.
Yes, it can have an impact on those who so far profited from labour arbitrage. They must now think on the ways to incentivise human labour and make them come back to work instead of lamenting a bygone era of mindless exploitation. The very same corporate boss who aired this view had recently wondered why people cannot work 90 hours a week, which would translate into 15 hours a day in a six-day week and 18 hours a day in a five-day week. Such proposals cannot work as human beings discover their worth, albeit in small measures.
“Parasites” are those who indulge in the luxury of titles, power and pelf and still do not do justice to their calling; those who do domestic labour and help raise the future citizens of the country for Rs 1,500 a month by no means fall in that category. They would, at some point in the future, refuse to feed the real parasites. We should welcome it rather than complain about that outcome.