COVID SMASHES INDIAN MIDDLE-CLASS DREAMS
Millions of people across the country - and around the world - find their aspirations fading with all social progress halted and the economy thrown into reverse gear by the global pandemic
Millions across the country and around the world find their aspirations fading with social progress halted and the economy thrown into reverse gear by the virus
Until late March, Ashish Kumar was helping to make plastic boxes for Ferrero Rocher chocolates and the plastic spoons tucked inside Kinder Joy eggs to scoop out the sweet cream inside. With a diploma in plastic mould technology, the 20-year-old had a foot on his chosen career ladder. His younger brother Aditya chose law, but Ashish had his sights set on plastic.
“I want to start a business of my own,” he said, explaining how he wants to recycle plastic to make day-to-day products at his own factory.
India’s coronavirus lockdown has thrown those plans into disarray. Educated but unemployed, Kumar is one of countless people across the globe whose social progress has been halted by the new coronavirus that has infected more than two million people in India alone, and thrown the economy into reverse. With it, the aspirations of millions are fading.
Key to economic development
For years, people in rural India have been gaining prosperity and moving into what economists call a burgeoning middle class of consumers those who earn more than $10 a day, by some definitions. This group has been a keystone of plans for economic development in the world’s second most populous country. In the pandemic, India’s economy is forecast to shrink by 4.5 per cent this year, according to the International Monetary Fund.
At least 400 million workers are at risk of falling deeper into poverty, according to the International Labour Organisation.
Kumar is one of around 131,000 people who local officials estimate returned from working around
India to Gonda, the district in the northern state of Uttar
Pradesh that he left last June. Nationwide, about 10 million people made long, hard journeys back to rural villages they’d left. Some have gone back to the cities, but many of those who had been sending back funds are still stuck in the countryside.
Working in a factory in Baramati in the western state of Maharashtra, Kumar was earning Rs13,000 (Dh650) every month, more than twice his father’s pay from a job in a grain market near Kumar’s home village in Uttar Pradesh, a sprawling agrarian state. Of that, the young man was sending home around Rs9,000 (Dh450) every month, much of which was helping to fund his younger brother’s studies.
No longer. Once a provider for his family, now he has become a financial burden.
Obsessed with plastics
Kumar whiles away his time back home in the village of Dutta Nagar, bantering with friends in the muddy courtyard they jokingly call it their “office” outside the ramshackle primary school where he studied. In Uttar Pradesh, around 60 million of the state’s population of more than 200 million lives in poverty, according to the World Bank. He said he has applied for several jobs at plastic factories in western Gujarat state and other parts of northern India but hasn’t found work.
“No matter what,” he said, sitting near his parent’s single-storey home, surrounded by jade green paddy fields. “I need a job.”
As a schoolboy, Kumar was obsessed with plastics. A chance conversation with a cousin who had studied plastic engineering got him hooked, Kumar said, and he started researching. In Dutta Nagar, where there were no internet connections, that often meant asking one of a handful of locals with a smartphone to Google the opportunities.
A world removed
Kumar’s ambitions were a world removed from his father Ashok’s early years. The 47-year-old, who assists with pricing grain harvests, remembers when the family had neither enough food, or proper clothes. A slight man with a weather-beaten face, he never finished high school. “I thought that the children shouldn’t fall into our rut. They should be pushed ahead,” he said.
Kumar, who says he has never tasted a Ferrero Rocher praline, finished his diploma in Gujarat last June, and took the train to start work as a technician at an Italian-owned factory 1,500km away from home.
The factory that employed him is run by Dream Plast India, a subsidiary of Gruppo Sunino SpA, an Italian plastics maker with 10 plants around the world. “The factory was first class,” Kumar said. His contract included a monthly contribution from the company into a retirement fund and a bonus. Workers were served one meal every day, the supervisors were friendly, and the salary came on time, he said.
Broke in Baramati
Six days a week, his work typically involved overseeing two machines and a couple of contract workers. At the end of the day, he would relax with a game of badminton or watch wrestling on YouTube. His income over the past year helped his parents build a proper four-roomed brick home and helped pay the fees for his brother to go to law school in Bahraich.
Then Covid-19 struck.
Kumar first heard of the coronavirus in early March. When India’s lockdown forced Dream Plast India to temporarily shut its plant in Baramati on March 21, he had enough cash to wait it out in town. But as the pandemic swept through India, a survey of some 5,000 workers in May found 66 per cent of participants had lost their jobs, and 77 per cent of households were consuming less food than before. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced a Rs20 trillion package promising free rice, wheat and pulses for millions of people and a programme for rural employment.
Flouting safety guidelines
Even for those with work, labour experts say conditions are deteriorating. In May, India’s state governments issued health and safety guidelines for factories as they re-opened after lockdown, which included compulsory face masks, thermal screening, social distancing and frequent sanitisation. But trade union leaders allege many companies did not follow all protocols.
By early June, Kumar’s funds had run out. Even buying food became difficult. His parents grew increasingly worried.
On June 25, Dream Plast India sent him an email, asking him to report to work within four days or face termination. Instead, Kumar resigned on July 20.
But he isn’t ready to give up on his plastics factory. “I will do it,” he said. “No matter what it takes, I will fulfil my dream.”
Whatever little money I had, I sent some of that so my son could eat in the big city after the lockdown. At that time, I was very scared.”
Ashok Kumar | Father of youth who lost his job
The factory was first class… We got one meal every day, the supervisors were friendly, and the salary came on time. But now, I need a job... I want to start a business of my own, I will do it. No matter what it takes, I’ll fulfil my dream.”
Ashish Kumar | Unemployed youth