Abstract
The fact that labour in India, in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, has been trapped in an unprecedented crisis, in living memory, is widely acknowledged. The employment and livelihoods of the overwhelming majority of workers have taken huge hits, and a massive uncertainly continues to loom over their immediate foreseeable future. This article focuses on how the world of work in India has been impacted by the pandemic, and it seeks to investigate the ongoing challenges. However, the massive vulnerability of workers in the country, which has been brutally exposed in the current crisis, did not emerge overnight and needs to be situated against the backdrop of the so-called economic reforms, in particular those during the preceding 6 years of the current dispensation at the centre and its (mis)management. This is done in the first substantive section of the article, although very briefly. The second substantive section takes stock of the current conditions of the world of work, exacerbated by the pandemic, as it continues to evolve. The challenges confronting India’s working people at the current juncture are enormous, to say the least, but the ruling dispensation, at best, appears to be indifferent to their lives. We close the article with some concluding remarks and immediate policy pointers. JEL Classification: J21, J23, J46
Highlights
On 24 March 2020, at 8 p.m., the prime minister (PM) of India announced a nationwide lockdown, which was to be implemented after merely 4 hours
While we focus on the increasing precariousness and vulnerabilities in India’s labour domain during the period of reforms, the last quinquennium or so before the COVID-19 pandemic is best viewed as a difficult phase, almost unprecedented since Independence, with respect to the broad macroeconomic indicators such as the GDP, investment and consumption ratios, level of exports, credit flows, crisis within the banking sector and, the overall employment trends, as we highlight below
It clearly emerges from the relevant secondary literature and available field studies that the world of work has been hit very hard, unleashing unprecedented vulnerability and insecurity for millions of workers in the context of the pandemic, due to the ill-conceived lockdown and overall policy framework to deal with it
Summary
On 24 March 2020, at 8 p.m., the prime minister (PM) of India announced a nationwide lockdown, which was to be implemented after merely 4 hours. The images of distress and exodus of workers, clutching their meagre belongings, often carrying children and elderly on their shoulders and backs and trudging hundreds and thousands of kilometres, determined to somehow reach their ‘home’, were reported both in the print and visual media for several weeks for the subsequent period These were the most dramatic spectacles of the vulnerability and precarity of workers (and their families), anywhere in the world, who had lost their jobs and their hearth and temporary homes in their destination areas, with no hope of support and succour from their employers, the government or any other quarter; many died on the way, of hunger, exhaustion and accidents. We close this article with very brief concluding remarks and some pointers regarding policies that may ease, at least in the short run, the difficulties and uncertainties faced by workers at the current juncture
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