Labor

I don't think I've been back in India long enough to title this post 'Labour'.  American spellings persist. In any case, I recently publicized this blog to more people, and I've gotten some great feedback and responses in the last week or so. Thanks and keep them coming!  Interestingly, I got a couple questions about people who work in the village itself, and although I did my best to answer those questions via email, I feel like there's enough to say about the subject to post about it. So here are some thoughts. 

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A couple months ago, when our project in Nanegaon was in its early stages, a couple of us at Gomukh sat down to discuss the variables which would be included in defining sustainability criteria and making energy calculations for the project.   Land, water, and expense were an obvious few, but what struck me as slightly odd was labor. Mentioned in the same breath as the first few factors, it sounded like a measurable and quantifiable commodity.  The term 'Man-days'; the unit in which this variable would be recorded, added to the feeling that labor was a natural resource like any other on the list.  It didnt sound right. In the months since, I've seen that there is both validity, as well as great incompleteness to this perspective. 

Let's talk about the validity first.  In this great country of more than a billion people, there are a great number who are young, enterprising, and in need of a job. It is a diverse pool of labor, with a range of skilled and unskilled, educated and uneducated Indians.  But it often means that whatever the job, if you are willing to pay, then there's someone willing to help.   If you live in the city, and need carpentry or electrical work done in your flat, you can often find someone to do the job at a cheap rate within the building you live in. If you are a farmer in Maharashtra, you often no longer work your own field, but rather hire nomadic laborers who migrate from the tribal areas, and live in small tents on the fields during harvest season. And if you are an NGO like Gomukh, working on environmental projects in rural areas, much of your on-the-ground work is done by uncontracted, temporarily hired youngsters. It is an accepted fact, an automatic which goes without much saying or planning. 

Now lets talk about the incompleteness. First of all, I don't know about you, but to me, the term labor is slightly demeaning (recent moms...you're reading this wrong). It seems to imply very little value addition, which is quite often not the case. But more importantly, treating labor as a commodity or natural resource is incomplete because unlike other variables, people are a highly non-static, dynamic resource.  Not just in availability and number and other quantifiable indices, but the behavior of the variable is also highly dynamic. 

Now this wouldnt be very important if India was truly the vast labor pool it's made out to be, but in reality, this is a slightly simplistic view.  Labor- people- shift based on job availability, on earning potential, on quality of life, and on a variety of other factors, making it a little less reliable than it is made out to be. 

The situation in the Kolwan valley is a great example of this phenomenon.  Recently, it has been incredibly hard to find labor for Gomukh projects in the valley.  When asked why, the locals will often blame it on a one-off excuse- such as a religious holiday, or the 'baazaar day', or the heat.  Sometimes they'll just say something like "Well, it IS the second Thursday of the month", and you just have to nod your head in understanding, although you know there is nothing special about the second Thursday of the month.   But this belies a larger truth- that the youth of the valley are leaving for the cities. 

Why does this happen? Well, for one, Kolwan valley has a unique problem because it is situated closer and closer by the hour to the amoebic cities of Mumbai and Pune.  The other potential reasons are plenty- factories offer reliable wages, the city often promises a higher standard of living, the huge amount of respect earned.  I believe that the most important reason has to be the lack of meaningful opportunities for advancement, and the boredom in the village. No educated youngster is highly motivated to do hard farm work, especially when they see their parents generation contracting this work out to other laborers.  So unfortunately, while the unedcuated youth fall prey to alcoholism, the educated leave for the promise of the city- making 'labor' a very unsustainable resource. 

Is it a rational move? Not necessarily. The standard of living in the city as a rickshaw driver, as a factory worker, or as part of the informal economy is not high, and I would bet that most people would live longer if they remained in the village.

But at least they're doing something. 

That is why I believe that it is not only rural education which will spur the progress of rural development through locals, but also alongside the creation of diverse local income generating activities.  This will have to be championed by NGO's at first, who would train workers, promote businesses, and set up saving groups and microfinance banks. Eventually, one would hope that the area would be brought to a self-sustainable level. 

This way, instead of the cities sucking away the village's best, brightest, and youngest, some of that hope can be retained locally.  On the macro level, this will also mean that India's growth will happen  in a more inclusive and less polarized fashion. 

Remember the famous Youth that I posted about a while ago?  It's not just a Labor Force, its a Force in a total sense.  It just needs some marshalling. 

-Nikhil