 Hello and let's talk about the harvest season and COVID-19. Farmers are said to harvest their crops amid the lockdown and they face a host of challenges. There are basic logistical issues such as being able to manage the harvest itself. There are questions of getting the right price for the crop, at least the price to survive. There are challenges of transportation and of storage. What support are our farmers getting for this? Are they getting any at all? We talked to Viju Krishna the All India Kisan Sabha on this issue. Thank you so much Viju for joining us. So the first thing we wanted to ask was that basically it's the harvest season now. And from the reports you are getting on the ground, for the last time when we had a discussion we talked about some of the issues the farmers might be facing. And now 10 days into that, what are the reports you are getting on the ground regarding the issues they are facing with the lockdown? See, the farmers were looking forward to a bumper harvest of wheat. And the acreage under wheat had also increased in a big way compared to the last years. It was estimated that it would touch close to 32 million hectares. And the production also would touch around 105 million tonnes, that is what was expected. But now in a few days it's about to be harvested. There is a shortage of workers, a lot of migrant workers we have all seen there has been an exodus. There is no provision or no help coming in for ensuring that there would be harvesters which would be doing it. That is one aspect. And other than wheat, there are different crops. It's not just the question of wheat and paddy alone. You also have chana, you have crops like mustard which are being harvested already in some ways using the agriculture workers. But they are not fetching the price in the market. For instance, from Rajasthan, I just got reports that chana and mustard which would have fetched around 4,800 to 5,000 rupees for a quintal today is not even fetching 1,000 rupees. So the government will have to step in to actually try and procure this for them. It could also in the very near future, there may be also the requirement the government should also step in for helping harvesting activities as well as in the transportation and marketing of these crops. So another key question basically is that the transportation marketing itself. So have there been any concrete arrangements made by any governments regarding these measures or is it just happening arbitrarily across the country? See as of now, there is nothing that is giving confidence to the farmers. There have been some kind of government orders and government notices coming in. But still it is not happening much visible on the ground. So it is only when it is visible on the ground that the farmers are confident and that the insecurity would go. That is still not coming. And here we find already crops, especially the perishables, vegetables, fruits, flowers, Floriculture is almost I think finished in this period because there is no, even buyers also are not there. So that is another problem that we are having. So it is still not at all to the desired extent. So as far as the, like you mentioned, the non food crops, even for that matter, I think say water considered cash crops. There also there would be a considerable crisis. Yeah, you see there are certain crops which require to be watered in a specific period. And if you don't water, let us say from April 1st to April 14th, two weeks you are not able to water, then the entire crop is lost. There is an example I would like to give of Cardamom. So we in the state of Kerala, we had the farmers called up, we had to intervene and with special permission that five workers could go and for the watering of these cardamom crop. There is the case of the silk cuckoos. The silk cuckoos are ready but there is no one to bite. After a point, we all know what would happen to the cuckoos. So that would just be rendered useless. So this kind of a situation is also there. Sugarcane, sugarcane migrant workers are in a big way involved in the cutting of sugarcane. So that is not happening. So these kind of problems farmers are faced. So and also as far as I understand there is still no real clarity from the government on say even on the ground assessment regarding what is the necessary intervention that might be needed in various sectors. So because we are getting some reports of say for instance in the urban economy, what is the kind of impact that's happening. But I have not seen much studies or for that matter much government announcements regarding and they declared it an essential service. But other than that say a sectoral evaluation or a sectoral intervention doesn't seem to have come in yet. See the only thing which has so far come in is the 2000 rupees under the Pradhan Mantri Kisan which has been coming into the accounts of the farmers. But that was anyway due at this time. It is not something to deal with the COVID epidemic and related problems. So that is one. We had specifically made a demand that 6000 rupees under the entire amount should have come in at one go at this time because it's a crisis. It was an unprecedented crisis. Other than that there was need to ensure that a transfer of 5000 rupees was a demand that all India Kisan, agriculture workers and union and the CITU had made. That 5000 to every account should be transferred because people are not having any kind of income, a lot of them. So for purchase of the essential for instance other than food grains, the other requirements to meet the other requirements. And the government itself other than just giving the ration of food grains and some very meager amount of pulses it should follow. For instance Kerala has included about 16 or 17 other for instance there is cooking oil, there is salt, there is sugar, there are two or three types of pulses, there is Suji or Rava which is given. So these kind of initiatives have so far not come in most other states and that cannot happen just leaving the entire burden on the states. There is no incentive or no kind of assistance being given to the states. That is a role which the center has to play. And as far as the first lockdown, it came just unplanned without any preparation for the lockdown and it just forgot that there are millions of people, mostly from the rural backgrounds who come to the urban areas to work in the lean period as migrant workers. Most of them are from either farming backgrounds or agricultural labor backgrounds. So there was no consideration of them at least when now there is already the talk of extending the lockdown. So I think at least at this time there are four more days. The government should first spell out what it will do to mitigate the suffering of this huge mass of people. That is what it has to do. And the very related issue is also the question of the buffer stocks because the government itself has been claiming that there has been record harvests and there is a huge amount of stock obviously in the go downs. There hasn't been any announcement of policy regarding its utilization item. No, buffer stocks given the minimum buffer which is required, I think almost three times that is present. You have around 50 million tons of rice and about close to 28 million tons of wheat that is in the go downs of food corporation of India etc. And we are also looking forward to a bumper harvest which if the government takes proactive measures we can save a lot of it. But that is something which the government has to immediately act on. So this buffer stock is there and even in terms of pulses also we have a good stock of pulses. But pulses there is the issue of milling is required, which again requires migrant workers. So this buffer stock you rightly pointed out that how it is going to be utilized. Would it be left in the go downs for the rodents, the rats and bandicoots to eat or would it be given to the hungry masses of our country? And if that would not happen, just if you look at the great Bengal famine which happened before when people millions died due to the famine. A big problem was not that there was not enough food grains, more that the people who required it most did not receive it. So if this is not at this, we could be staring at a huge crisis where hunger deaths already you see post the lockdown. It is said that around 200 people have died not due to COVID but due to the lockdown and related impact. So you can imagine the kind of human tragedy that we would be staring at if the government is back on this. So we would hope that in the next couple of days at least there have to be some concrete announcements especially if the lockdown is going to be extended. There are very specific sectoral based ones rather than calls for unity or calls for celebration and stuff. No those calls should be just set aside and now immediately I would say by tomorrow itself the prime minister should assure what are the concrete measures that are going to be taken and one thing which has to be done is to assist the states. Not enough is being done in that direction. That is something which the central government has to try and be much more magnanimous at this time. It cannot indulge in politicking at this particular and this is a crisis in which all of us have to be united and fight it together. And in that the best food should be put forward by the central government. Unfortunately they are still sitting on different recommendations and proposals that have been put forward to them. Thank you so much Juju for talking to us. The centre for monitoring Indian economy says that unemployment in India has soared post the lockdown. An estimated 11.76 crore persons lost their jobs between March 22nd which was just 2 days before the lockdown began and April 5th. The CMI survey also shows that the Indian labour force participation has steeply declined to its worst level ever, a mere 36.1%. We talked to journalist Anindya Chakravarty on this issue. Thank you Anindya for joining us. So we have heard about the unemployment numbers in India yesterday, the very steep rise. And we have seen this across the world. For instance we have seen this in the US as well, millions applying for unemployment benefit over the past few years. We have seen reports of joblessness in Europe of retrenchments too. So what are the characteristics specific to India amid this global trend? So let's look at it in terms of population. Obviously the US numbers are 6.6 million people applying for jobless claims. In India we see that this is CMI data, obviously not government data unlike the US. CMI says 23%, more than 23% people returned that they don't have work in the first week of April, which is the second odd week of the lockdown. And all this data was collected on the phone, not as robust as CMI collects, but as Mahesh Vyas said, good enough for us to make predictions. In fact the 23% number is most likely to be on the lower side. We probably have a much higher level of unemployment which CMI could not track because people must have gone away from their homes and probably not responding on the phones. Now, if you look at it, there's another thing that we have to distinguish. In the US there's a reason why it's called a jobless claim, initial jobless claim numbers, which is taken as the unemployment number, because people are claiming for benefits. That claiming don't, unlike India where if you don't have a job, you aren't getting anything. The government of India is not giving you anything. Other than the announcements of 20 crore Jandhan Yojana accounts getting 500 rupees of widows and pensioners getting 500 rupees a month and all the free ration which has been announced. And there was an announcement that registered construction workers, there's a lot of money lying there, state government should give them money. That it appears they haven't got, but we can come to that later. So it's very clear that 23% is probably the tip of the iceberg. And the reason for that is that as the CSDS, Azim Premji survey, Azim Premji University survey of 2017 to 2019 tells us that 40% of India's workers are paid daily, 6% are paid weekly. And that means that at least 46% of people after two weeks will not have any money. Only 26% have monthly salaries. That leaves out another 28% who don't have a fixed cycle by which they get money. Maybe it's daily, monthly, weekly and it changes. So that tells us that 74% of people are actually vulnerable. And other than those who are involved in essential services, most people will not earn a penny during the lockdown. And the 23% number therefore is likely to go up rather than go down. So a key aspect of this would be the fact that the people getting affected the most are migrant workers, people in the informal sector or as you were saying the people who are self-employed which is kind of actually a very problematic definition in this context. Yes, exactly. When one looks at something called self-employed, actually it is meaningless because the PLFS which is the government's own data tells us that 52% of Indian workers are self-employed and their median salary, median earnings is 8,000 rupees a month which means 50% of that self-employed earns less than 8,000 rupees a month. 60% of them are in agriculture and we know what agriculture income is very, very low. Non-agriculture, self-employed which is the remaining 40%, out of that more than one fourth call themselves CEOs or directors. And when you think of a CEO, you think that this person is earning in lakhs and therefore what is a lockdown to them? They have so much savings. But the median salary for those who call themselves CEO and director is 11,400 rupees a month. The next lot which is about 16% of the non-agriculture workers which works out to about let's say 6.5% of all workers of self-employed workers in India. And that is about, let's say about approximately 3 out of 10 workers in India overall are shop assistants and their median salary earning is 10,000 rupees. Drivers, median earning 10,000 rupees. Textile and garment workers, median earning 5,500 rupees. Food processing 2,500 rupees. There are people who work with stalls and they open markets. They have these small things in markets where you go and buy vegetables. Street vendors. No, not street vendors. These are fixed stalls. So that's 8,000. When there's a move around, their monthly income is 7,000 rupees. Now you can make out that with this kind of monthly income if you don't go to work on any single day you're not going to make money to eat. You've seen those videos of people lining up in Dharavi and it has been clarified that this happened before the lockdown. There was some kind of food being distributed. But we are seeing people turning up in all these places where free food is being distributed in huge numbers to get their food. They cannot survive without free food being given to them. And that is some, I would say 30, 40 or more percent of Indian workers. This is not just that 23%. So the key question here is that could the government have done anything at all considering the circumstances? Because the government's argument would be that this was an emergency we tried our best but... Yeah, the emergency was something that you know about from middle of January or at best end of January. I mean, let's think that okay, forget about end of January, start from middle of February. What were you doing sitting around doing nothing? The government should have been prepared well in advance and if there had been a war going on the government would have been prepared. You know, it's like the US which has no problem funding buying bombs and sending people, young people to fight in some distant land but has a problem buying ventilators and masks for its people. So to say that this was an emergency, yes it was an emergency but people, experts had been saying this is going to happen. You need to lockdown. The Wuhan was locked down on the 22nd of January and we have locked down two months later. What was the government doing unprepared for two months before that? So therefore it is very clear. Italy locked down on the 9th of March. You had a 15-day lead period. What stopped you from setting up isolation centers, from getting PPE kits, for working out ways to hand over money to the poorest of the poor, getting it ready, getting the lists ready. I mean there's a new survey which has come out by this NGO called I think Jansars. Jansars right here. Jansars and they've done a survey of about 3900 construction workers and they're saying that 90% of construction workers do not have any earnings right now. 90% of construction workers do not have any earnings. The government announced that construction workers were registered and I think they said that some 3.5 crore construction workers are registered in India and of course construction workers are probably double that number. But nevertheless they said that all those who are registered, there is a welfare fund for them and they can all get money. And I've done a calculation that if you take that register and if all the money is given, they'll get about 10,000 rupees each. 94% of the people surveyed said that they're not registered. So this registration itself is just a typical government figure. A senior IS officer told me that this is actually meaningless because these registrations are done from state to state and workers, the same workers go work for a few days and these are done by usually the PWD kind of departments, public work departments. They register, they don't know who this person is. The same guy comes 15 days later, registers again. These are not unique numbers. They change from state to state. So there is nothing in place to help these people. Thank you Anandya so much for talking to us. Thanks a lot. That's all we have in this episode of Let's Talk. We'll be back on Monday with the latest developments of the day. Until then keep watching NewsClick.