Topic 1 : Turning the spotlight on the urban poor
Context
The India Employment Report (IER) 2024 by the Institute for Human Development and International Labour Organization poses questions on the trickle-down effect of benefits to the working class in the backdrop of a 5.4% average real economic growth, from 2015-16 to 2022-23.
Divergent trend
- It shows a divergent trend between rural and urban areas in terms of employment and income.
- It demonstrates a relatively higher unemployment rate in urban areas, at 4.8% in 2000 over the 1.5% in rural areas.
- However, average monthly earnings are higher by 76% for self-employed, 44% for regular employed and 22% for casual labour in urban areas in 2022.
- The higher income in urban areas and a better life have prompted rural-urban migration in the past.
- As in the IER 2024, although overall migration has increased, the migration of males has declined by 1.2% during 2000-08, and further marginally in 2021. This implies that migration for economic mobility is losing its sheen.
- Rural poor households migrate to slums instead of formal settlements.
- Hence, an analysis of income and employment trends of slum dwellers would reveal the prospects of economic mobility and decent work for the poor in urban India.
Income trends
- The average monthly income in 2012 was around ₹4,900. It decreased by 5% at constant prices (2012) in 2019.
- Income was the highest for government employees in the slums in both periods. However, at constant prices in 2012, their monthly income decreased by 5% in 2019.
- On the other hand, the monthly income of domestic servants and unskilled workers has remained the lowest.
- The highest decline in real income is observed for construction and related work (51%), followed by petty business or small shop (32%) and government service (32%) in 2019 as compared to 2012.
The economic transition
- The fall in slum income of the highest income earners, government servants, is accompanied by a doubling of the real income of the lowest income earners, domestic servants.
- This implies that there was a general downfall in income, along with a reduction in the differences in income from 2012-19. Other statistical measures also show a fall in inequality in slums.
- The IER 2024 shows a 1.6% increase in women’s workforce participation during 2012 and 2022. This may be due to an increase in female workforce participation in non-slum areas rather than in slum areas.
Rise in casual work
- The IER 2024 and survey data shows that the rise of casual work, especially labour work, has happened due to increasing wages.
- However, casual work offers a sub-standard work condition without any social security.
- On the contrary, self-employment such as businesses, is rising but without a commensurate rise in income.
- It projects a groundswell of low-earning petty businesspeople in slums.
- With the reduction of inequality, income also fell leading the urban poor to deeper poverty.
- Hence, the higher income in urban areas compared to rural India does not delineate the urban poor’s economic mobility and quality of work.
- Hence, more public support is required in urban areas for access to cheap food and gainful employment. It also explains the declining male migration during 2000-08.
Conclusion
As the Gross Value Added in agriculture, forestry and fishing grew at the slowest rate (3.03%) compared to other sectors during 2000-19, along with a negative employment growth (1.05%), focusing more on rural non-farm would be imperative.
Topic 2 : Systems science for a better future
Context
Rather than specialised sciences focused on parts, a higher-level science is required — one of holistic, self-adaptive systems.
Trust in democracy
- Citizens of democratic countries have lost trust in their governments’ economic policies.
- Average incomes may be rising but the very rich are becoming much richer, faster.
- Large corporations and financial institutions are compelling governments to set the rules of the game in their favour by reducing taxes for them, emasculating labour institutions, and exploiting the natural environment for their profit.
- Moreover, the growth of the global economy and human population has brought humanity to the brink.
- Scientists predict that the overuse of fossil energy for fuelling modern consumptive lifestyles will make life on earth impossible beyond this century.
- Water, fundamental for life, is also running out. India is among the most water stressed large countries in the world.
Scenario in India
- India has 17.5% of the world’s population living on only 2.4% of the world’s land. In 2014,
- India ranked 155 out of 178 countries in the global Environment Performance Index, meanwhile, in 2022, India slipped to the very bottom — 180 out of 180.
- India, also the world’s most populous country, has an additional problem, viz. to increase the incomes of its citizens faster.
- While economists chase GDP targets, inequality is increasing and we are spoiling the earth which supports the economy and sustains our lives.
The science of systems
- Keeping the forest in sight, do not get lost in the trees, is good advice.
- All sciences — social, medical, and natural — are fragmented into narrow silos.
- It is moot whether the weakening of democratic institutions empowers large capitalist institutions or whether capitalist institutions corrode democracy.
- Systems’ knowledge has been devalued by specialisation.
- Heart specialists can keep the heart alive with amazing technologies. Brain specialists delve deeper into the biology of the brain. They lose sight of the whole human being.
- Climate scientists research how to remove carbon from the atmosphere, but the effects of their solutions on the livelihoods of citizens are not in their science’s scope.
- High-tech solutions can improve parts of complex systems while reducing overall health and well-being.
- Modern science gave human beings hubris that they could conquer unruly nature.
- The arrogant scientific man thought he could change the system that had created him. His scientific fixes of the world, and scientific improvements of his own genes, are threatening humanity’s existence.
- Rather than specialised sciences focused on parts, a higher-level science is required: a science of holistic, self-adaptive systems which include human egos in them.
- Complex self-adaptive systems have three components: systems being, systems thinking, and systems acting.
- Systems being requires humility. Systems thinking requires the mind of the “hedgehog-fox” to see patterns among the details.
Way forward
- Systems acting to improve the world for everyone must be driven by organisations whose purpose is cooperation, not by organisations driven by competition.
- The world needs more caring, less competition. Women are natural family builders and systems facilitators whereas men are brought up to compete.
- Rather than men teaching women to think like men and compete with them in hierarchies of the formal labour force, men must learn the caring ways of women to make the world better for everyone.