Why workers lost patience

IN THE last two months or so, the country has been overwhelmed by the biggest-ever exodus of informal workers from business hubs to their respective states after the lockdown was declared. Probably for the first time, urban India—limited to their world and privileged— began to take note of the scale of India’s informal workforce. They not only realised the fragility of their lives, but also that they are a critical part of the formal economy. In the absence transport facilities, thousands of workers simply walked barefoot for hundreds of kilometres to reach home. And their torturous experiences shook everybody, everywhere.

However, Union Home Minister Amit Shah blamed the returning workers for this situation. In an interview to a television channel, he said, “Some people lost patience and started walking on the roads.” Earlier, many political leaders— mostly from the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party—also discounted the gravity of the situation. But Shah’s reasoning is troubling. It forces us to ask the question: why did workers lose their patience?

Let’s begin with a broad profile of the people who lost their “patience”. They are mostly informal daily wagers sustaining an entirely cash-based economy in urban areas. They left their villages, both out of distress and due to lack of choice. In cities, they had to earn every day to sustain their household, and also to remit a little saving back home for the survival of their extended families. They do not enjoy job security like workers of the formal economy. When the lockdown forced all businesses to shut down, they lost employment and also their earning. So the question is: what could they have done?

In such situations—similar to a severe natural disaster—workers have two options: they either stayed back hoping that the business would resume; or they left home. In the case of the first option, there was some certainty as to when the business would resume. But India’s lockdown was extended three times. In such an uncertain governance structure, the workers opted for the second option. That’s why migration picked up only after the second extension of the lockdown in April. And when it started, there were no government plans to arrange transport to ferry them back to their villages.

But in both options, people needed something that only the government could have ensured: assurance. Or, in other words, they needed the trust of the government to rescue them. But the migrants didn’t have either the assurance or the trust of the government. They began their journey due to a jobless situation to a place they called home, where at least they had the assurance of a roof on their heads.

Shah is not factual in his assessment when he says “some” people lost patience. For how many months can you test a poor’s person’s patience? The government belatedly realised its mistake and finally started trains and buses to ferry them. Does this mean an entire workforce accounting for a significant percentage of the country’s population lost its trust on the government?

“The 2020 Edelman Trust Barometer Spring Update: Trust and the COVID-19 Pandemic”, based on a survey of over 13,000 respondents— belonging to the educated and well-earning classes in 11 markets that include India—shows that trust in governments has hit the highest in last 20 years. Some 65 per cent of the respondents said they trust their governments would help them out of this pandemic. This is a trust level that was seen after World War II. The survey also found that 67 per cent of respondents believed that the less privileged and poor people suffered disproportionately more than others.

This is a scary verdict. The privileged classes, while accepting there was inequality in our governance, said they needed the government the most in this situation. Then how could poor daily wagers not have lost their patience?

The rich now trust the government the most, while the less privileged experience its absence