The long dark tea time of the soul

<!– @page { size: 8.5in 11in; margin: 0.79in } P { margin-bottom: 0.08in } –>

Kuffir and I had a minor discussion on his blog on the issues of internal migration on India, its root causes and possible remedy. The gist of Kufr’s post is that the problem begins with under development of the backward areas, and for that the respective state governments should take most of the blame. Yet he stands firmly against any kind of priority attention given by the state to develop those regions. More particularly, Kuffir is against unsymmetrical diversion of central funds across regions, and development done by the state as the main conduit. Knowing that the 40 years of Nehruvian socialism did not yield any results in reducing poverty, he advocates a complete u-turn, a turn towards market based solutions, and marginal government role.

Some of his points are absolutely right. Socialism, as it was practiced in India before the pro-market reforms in 1991, is the classic punching bag that is used by all new-liberals/neo-conservatives to attack the liberals. These straw man arguments often take the form of, “since we were not doing great under socialism, hence socialism/socialists are bad and neo-liberal economics is the only way of emancipation of the masses”. What the proponents overlook is the fact that right from the day of independence, the Indian liberals have been in direct conflict with the state and the policies as espoused by Nehru. How and where is Nehru’s economics not a best case scenario for liberal socialism will need a more detailed analysis. While feudalism never truly disappeared from India, in the current phase of capitalism, the state has dropped any pretense of being a welfare state, the chief minister feels proud to be called a ceo, and the business executives are the only ones in the minds of policy planners. Combine this with class and caste dynamics, and you have a plutocracy run in the name of democracy.

Coming back to the original point of this post. Kuffir is right when he claims that people moving from rural areas to the cities is at least a 60 year old phenomenon. However his choice of examples, and more importantly, the trigger for his arguments are eerie. The context was Raj Thackeray’s attacks on the people from Bihar and UP who are working as unorganized labour in Mumbai. The last week also saw large scale attacks by South African poor on equally desperate immigrants to that country. Without justifying the xenophobic attacks, Kuffir tries to deflect some of the criticism on the respective state governments, from the places from where people migrate the most. But does it warrant criticism of state led development, of backward areas or otherwise?

Migration is a complex phenomenon. All migration can be classified into two broad pattens. Those due to aspiration, and those due to desperation. When the skilled labour (like engineers or doctors of India) migrates from one country to the other, he/she does so in hope of better returns for his skills. It is purely a market driven phenomenon. Similarly, when the people of Kerala go to the gulf or those from Punjab move to the west, or the marwaris open their shops in different parts of the country, they are doing so to get the maximum value for their skills. Although there is a social costs associated with such immigration, there is a net benefit for the economy and is usually not discouraged.

The other kind of migration occurs when life becomes so hard for someone, that he/she has no option other than to move. This can be through political, social or economic oppression. Ignoring the natural causes like floods and droughts, this category includes the East Germans moving to West Germany during the offensive communist period, Iraqis going to Syria after US invasion, Afghans going to Pakistan to escape the Taliban and Hindus moving from erstwhile Pakistan to India. There are the direct state driven displacement due to construction of dams and large public sector companies, and then there are those whose income shrink with time and have little or no social security net and are indirectly forced to leave their homes. These economic migrants should be understood and discussed within the same framework as we do for those displaced forcefully by the state.

As noted elsewhere, population statistics regarding migration is never reliable. NSS data, although implying an increased migration due to poverty, has its own limitations, as it does not take into account the seasonal migration. To understand the role of the state, we need to define the kind of rights guaranteed to every individual in the country. If we recognize food, health, education and dignified labour as basic human rights, there is a role of state in each of these areas. These rights have to be guaranteed not in selected physical locations, but in every inch of the country wherever there are social rural or urban structures. No matter where an individual lives in the country, he/she must have affordable (and if possible free) access to schools and hospitals. The state must protect the individual from going destitute by not only skill improvement, but also ensuring minimum availability of well-paying work. The market can fulfill some of this role. But the market, when means of production are in a few hands, has an inbuilt advantage of over-supply of labour. That ensures not only lower wages and thus reducing the input costs, but also snatches from the workers any means to get organized and bargain collectively. A destitute population (and a lot of money in few hands) is a boon for market efficiency.

A large section of rural youth migrate to the cities in search of work during the dry months. As Kuffir notes, a 12 year old assistant to a chaiwala earns more than his parents in the village, employed in traditional jobs. The role of the state is to end this kind of anomaly. That’s why the national rural guarantee act is a shining example of legislation in recent history. NREGA not only allocate funds and defines the precise nature of the job, but also goes a long way in improving the delivery system by decentralization. By giving power to the gram panchayats in selecting jobs, and doing away from the contractor based delivery system, NREGA has a lot of potential.The legislation for creating avenues to ensure minimum wages to the masses also gives them an added bargaining advantage, which is then reflected in increased wages given to the construction labour in the cities. There are some just critics of the scheme, and the cag report did compile large evidences of leakage, albeit the performance of NREGA is far better than most other targeted government schemes. The role of the state does not end with mere legislation. Law is just the beginning, while the state also has to ensure that the funds reaches the intended beneficiaries. An effective delivery system is as much a responsibility of the state as passing of laws.

The perceived and real wage differentials and job availability in different parts of the country cannot be fixed without direct state intervention. Some regions in the country attract more industries because of past and current investment done by the state in those regions. Take the example of Sardar Sarovar dam on Narmada. The river was dammed to provide irrigation benefits to the rich farmlands of Gujarat and Western Maharashtra, at the expense of MP. There have been a just struggle for last 20 years by the adivasis and dalits of Madhya Pradesh against the dam and displacement caused by it. Mumbai is a zero power-cut zone of India, at the expense of much larger part of the state. New Delhi attracts the largest number of immigrants now because of massive infrastructure investments made in the capital on the pretext of commonwealth games. Without mentioning these kinds of pandering, and criticizing Lalu Prasad Yadav’s decision to locate a central government factory in his home state is an exercise of futility.

The role of respective state governments is obviously not beyond reproach. Bihar is a classic case of misgovernance, which again can be attributed to the feudal assertion of upper classes. Feudal rulers don’t like their turf being encroached by anyone else, including the modern capitalists. In other parts like Maharashtra and Gujarat, the feudal lords molded themselves smoothly into the property owning capitalist class. The rich peasants in Bihar and UP resisted this kind of transformation, and thus denying the state not only any kind of industries, but also keeping the population low on all kind of social indicators. Feudalism is a historical phenomenon and can end in three ways. In europe capitalism helped in a big way in uprooting feudalism, but there imperialism and colonialism went hand in hand with the growth of capitalism. Without imperial order, either the oppressed classes can join hands in uprooting the rulers (as in China in 1949), or the state can play a top-down role through its assertion of basic human rights and equality for all citizens alongwith proper executive and judicial intervention. India chose the second path after independence, but the upper and middle classes/castes showed remarkable ingenuity in joining hands and are in total control of the state apparatus now. As long as these oppressing classes have the control over state power and resources, things are not going to change. Until and unless this changes, all kinds of state sponsored schemes in the country is bound to have limited success.

Kuffir ends his post by asking a rhetorical question, “if there wasn’t any india, wouldn’t you see large migrations from bihar to mumbai in a completely different light?”. Ignoring the fact that by virtue of our birth/citizenship we have been granted some basic rights by the constitution of India, that the federal nature of our country ensures that the only entity we are tied to is the central government. The taxes we pay are in lieu of this promise that the state will protect our rights. Federal state governments are an artificial creation, and any attempt to restrict our movement within India is against the basic foundation of the country. The migrants must enjoy the same kind of economic, social and political rights as any other section of the society. Personally, I also support free flow of people across national boundaries, but that is beyond the scope of the current post.