MICRO MOVEMENTS AT WORK
Kanika Verma and Shrashtant Patara // New Delhi
The changing livelihood landscape of rural India
Since the 25th of March, a very large part of India’s 59 million inter-state migrant workers have been unemployed. Struggling to keep body and soul together, it is estimated that over four million are trying to make their way to villages that are often over a thousand kilometres away. Government buses and trains ferried one hundred thousand or so people home in the first ten days that movement across borders was permitted. A few lucky ones have used their last paychecks to buy bicycles. The rest are walking. They are stuck in no man’s land, physically and meta-physically.
In a country like India, where 81% of the workforce is employed in the informal economy, (1) COVID-19 has brought the fragility of livelihood security for millions of people into sharp focus. Even before the crisis, narratives emerging from the ground in rural Uttar Pradesh were telling us that development initiatives would need to look beyond mere employment figures, that they would need to find their way into the reality that lies behind the statistics. Jobs in India’s urban centers have not solved the problem of rural poverty. On the contrary, the displacement of workers to urban centers has complicated the challenges faced by the rural communities their remote employment sustains. The scenes now unfolding before us demand a fresh perspective, beyond the top-down, narrow lens that promotes silver bullet solutions and ameliorative schemes for those considered to be “disadvantaged.”
Over the past month, our team at Development Alternatives has had conversations, on chat groups and the telephone, with hundreds of entrepreneurs, civil society partners, and grassroots government officials. These discussions have unearthed significant shifts taking place in the opportunities that people will have to make a living, the constraints they will face, and the resources that will be at their disposal as we start to move beyond the current crisis. A return to the status-quo will likely see migrant workers struggling to find the jobs that sustained them before COVID-19. But should this anticipated job shortage be the focus of our attention? Of the 230 migrants we interviewed, 60% said that they would not like to go back to their old jobs in the city. The challenge ahead may not be finding a way to re-employ these migrant workers in the city, but rethinking India’s economy to include not only rural labor, but rural communities with an influx of workers suddenly at their disposal.
In most economies across the developing and developed world, there is evidence to show that the most effective way to expand economic opportunity is through entrepreneurship-led job creation, particularly micro-enterprises. It is increasingly evident that the post-COVID-19 “new normal” for meaningful employment in the rural economy will be determined by three factors—the agency of entrepreneurs, control over resources, and the resilience of communities—and actors at three system levels—people, local institutions, and the larger economy.
Rural communities possess a wealth of knowledge, experience, and collective wisdom. These hidden resources and relational assets provide immediate relief to the affected and build long-term resilience. We can already see how communities are using these resources to fill gaps in this time of need. Take, for example, 34-year-old Mangal Singh Dohre, who runs an internet-enabled “common services centre” near Jhansi in rural Uttar Pradesh. While the government struggles to disseminate critical information on the pandemic and various measures it is putting in place in response to the crisis, Dohre’s new “home office” helps large numbers of returning migrants apply for food cards and complete documentation for quick receipt of government benefits. It has also become a transit point for movement of local produce and incoming consumer products.
Entrepreneurs in the rural economy, with access to very little, have become innovators and agents of change. They are shredding layers of social, gender, and religious identity to create new networks that connect what they do to those in need, often bridging scales to connect meso-level resources and the macro economy. A “Micro Credit Facility” run by a women-led federation, Sankalp Swashakti Mahila Mandal, has helped over one hundred entrepreneurs with community-centered credit products and services in the past year. Now, federation board members are acting swiftly to reschedule loan repayments in this time of distress. While cities have cut rural workers loose, the women at Sankalp Swashakti Mahila Mandal are helping to ensure that their clients have what they need to survive this period of uncertainty.
A seismic shift is taking place within India’s informal sector, in which close to three hundred million people who were making a transition into the formal economy are falling back out. What kind of a job market could they possibly walk back into when this is over? Perhaps one in which we legitimize the role local communities and informal networks play in coming up with timely, need-based solutions to the problem of how to make a living, especially when formal, mainstream institutions are unable to do so. Regional Entrepreneurship Coalitions we have set up in four rural districts have demonstrated how a diverse group of actors at the county level can leverage their respective strengths to accelerate the pace at which aspiring entrepreneurs are able to set up small businesses. Today, coalition members, including government bodies, banks, training institutes, NGOs, and entrepreneurs themselves, provide a new kind of “institutional infrastructure.” It is this infrastructure that will allow us to understand the local consequences of Covid-19, share relevant data, and support multi-stakeholder action to co-create adaptation strategies for both the immediate and longer-term challenges of a post-Covid-19 world.
The crisis is revealing new ways in which collaborative action can change systems by working on the problems that made them dysfunctional in the first place. Before COVID-19, the world seemed to be coalescing into two kinds of institutions: those that command oversight (i.e. governments), and others that make money (i.e. the private sector). Civil society was being marginalized or turning to social entrepreneurship. Social innovation had begun to be equated with disruptive technology. Now all that has changed.
At a time in which mobility is restricted, we need to reflect upon where we want to go. Not every movement means moving forward; and forward movement is not necessarily progress. One-dimensional growth, in the hands of a few, where every price includes disguised costs that cause social and environmental damage, seems to have boomeranged on us. Reverse migration—the walk back home—reminds us of how counter movements are extremely potent tests for the robustness of prevailing social and economic systems. As we set new goals, may we measure progress on the basis of value and equity, beyond just time and money. Can we imagine a world in which our understanding of work changes from something an employer “gives” to something an individual “initiates”?
The wave of innovation and micro movements we are witnessing can influence deep and systemic change. They have the potential to show us a new pathway for impact at scale, where many small mutinies and the knowledge they carry will travel, in the benign shadow of the pandemic, to different places, adapt to new contexts, and re-vitalize village republics to build a new “Gandhian” economy of the twenty-first century. An economy in which millions of people will not have to undertake a journey back into the city, fearful of the next crisis that would leave them penniless with nowhere to go.
Lest we forget, the next “move” is ours.
Notes:
1) “Women and Men in the Informal Economy: A Statistical Picture” (publication, International Labor Office, Geneva, 2018), 88.
Bio:
Kanika and Shrashtant are part of the leadership team at the Development Alternatives Group. They are passionate about social innovation and system change. Entrepreneurship is an area of abiding interest.