 All of you on this panel, and we are all very privileged to have you together this morning, this afternoon, depending on which part of the world you are in, to join us in this conversation. Because we absolutely must ensure that in the weeks and months which follow, and on the other side of this pandemic, because there has to be another side, we ensure that all the feelings in securing the rights of elementary justice that we have failed our workers with all of this while is remedied to some degree or to as much as it can be. So we will go through a round of conversations. As I said, this is the finest group that one could gather you bring various kinds of experiences and reflections and years and years and years of work. And we want to hear from you. And I thought that before, before we look at the present, we do need to look at the past, because, because we haven't come here, suddenly, or by chance. We've come here because that is how the situation of workers in this country has been and remain over the past decades, particularly the workers and informal work. We are here because not because of the pandemic, this unprecedented humanitarian crisis, which many of us believe is probably going to be the worst humanitarian crisis that all of us will witness during our lifetimes. This has not occurred because of the pandemic. It has occurred because of policy choices made for decades and policy choices made to fight the pandemic. So I wanted us to really step back and say, what are in your opinion, what is it that has resulted in this profound failure to be able to provide any kind of protection and rights to our workers when they most needed it. And, you know, one of the things that I, in fact, I was, I've been talking with some friends on this panel itself, like Ravi and Kannan who couldn't join us. You know, Prabhat Patnaik, Jyothi, Ghosh and I, we put out a couple of articles where we said that the most, the first thing that we have to do is to ensure, just like the middle class is assured, wages through every day of the pandemic, because they are forced to stay at home. Likewise, every single worker should be given 7000 rupees per household and a certain amount of green. But, you know, the, even if the government, and it's a very, very big, if the government had even agreed to that, to that, to that suggestion in rural India, we at least have some kind of a framework we do have the thanks to the energy we have job cards, we have pensioners, we have people with bank accounts. So if the government had resolved, it could have transferred these resources. But in urban India, actually, even if it had resolved to do it, how would it do it? It doesn't have a list, you know, even a list of who the informal workers are. They're not registered with the government because they've never extended any kind of labor protection to them, and they've never intended to. And only 17% of workers in the informal sector have an identifiable employer. So what happens to the rest? You know, so this crisis and actually when we were writing this article, we ultimately felt that if the government was to do it, the only way it could actually do it was by using indelible ink of the kind that we use in elections. And you know, would have people to present themselves, take the cash and the grain and have indelible ink. I mean, this kind of abdication where the state doesn't even have even the elementary information about the workers that don't any kind of protection of their rights as workers and their social security. What has brought us to this past, we have many laws, we have the Interstate Migrant Workers Act, we have the Contract Workers Act, we have various other laws, we have the Building and Construction Workers Act, etc. You know, the quick surveys that we have done found that most workers are not even, even if you are construction workers, you're not registered. So, so I wanted you to, you know, wanted us to wanted to ask each of the panelists, where is it that we have gone so wrong. Is it in the design of our legal framework of rights? Is it in the implementation? Is it in state bias of the ruling class? Where have we gone wrong? Is what gone so terribly wrong? That is the question that I wanted to raise before all of you. And John Bremen, who we are particularly privileged to have on this panel, he's done more work than the lifetimes of many of the people who will be listening to him on the conditions of workers in India. So, John, how would you, where have we gone wrong? Thanks, Hars, and it's nice to see many familiar faces to discuss these issues. But before going into the question of where have we gone wrong? And it's not over the last couple of years that that question is addressed. The first one to put forward the magnitude of the people we are talking about at vulnerability. And that question, an elementary question, how many of the people are not only threatened by the pandemic, but threatened already for many years in their way of life, in their human quality. And the magnitude we are talking about. And even that simple question, that elementary question, is not known. A few of us were discussing already before the start of this panel about the number of food loose people on the road, on the road, trying to reach home, chased away, but also wanting to go away now to where they belong or are supposed to belong. No, there are estimates varying from four crores to 10 crores to 15 crores. And that shows the question of who the people are, where they are, how they have gone there, and why they are going back now. At least, and that is highlighting by the highlighted by the pandemic, they have become visible all of a sudden, while they were an unknown quantity, because it brings up the total lack of care, handed out to them, to which they are, as citizens, they would have a right, the total lack of care, the indifference, but also the unwillingness to come to their relief at this moment, or critical in their life. Their life has, as I said, been critical before, but now more so than ever. That's my first answer to your question, Harsh. Ravi, looking even closer at law and policy and where we have gone wrong there, really looking back, where have we, why have we faltered so badly and where have we faltered so badly? Harsh, well, thanks for bringing me to this discussion and this issue of where we have faltered so badly. Given that we have such an extensive labor law framework, and this going back centuries now, at least as far as the formal sector is concerned. But of course, there is also a huge set of laws that deal with unorganized sector workers. Why is it that we have failed to cover? Why is it that we fail to provide a modicum of decent regulation for the workers? I think there are two reasons for this. First of all, the one thing I would like to say is that whenever we talk about labor in India, you cannot demarcate between the social question in India and the question of labor in India. Just as you cannot demarcate also, you cannot only talk about the question of labor in India, de-contextualize from the economic policy regimes. So I think at both levels, you need to talk about the social question, you need to talk about the economic questions. When you talk about the social questions, the issue of caste, gender, minorities, ethnic identities, this becomes so vitally important. The recognition of the fact that we are so deeply hierarchical and so deeply discriminatory that we don't really care about classes of labor. And I think that is the situation in which we have existed from all times. That is not a situation where we have been able to move away from, despite whatever pattern of capitalist development, whatever pattern of development that we've had in this country. So the fact that we are able to treat all kinds of indignities of labor that we do not actually imbue labor with human dignity. We don't imbue physical labor with any kind of human dignity at all. And of course, if it is dirty labor, if it is polluting labor, then of course it is the most indignified form of labor. So I think that we in India and labor policy is only a part of how we socially structure ourselves. We are used to dealing with invisibilized labor at the bottom of the pyramid. We have never really created institutions. We are a great country. Harsh, irrespective of the conundrum that you faced in terms of how do we give handouts to workers. I believe that the Indian state is an amazing state because it can deliver under most complex situations. I come from a town called Elhabad, now of Priyagraj, where we deal with this religious congregation year after year. And in some years we deal with this congregation where on days that we are able to deal with 20, 30 million people coming into the city on a single day and leaving safely. Except for two years, 1954 and I think 1992, 1991, there has never ever been an accident of any kind. So we have an extraordinary past, but we can, the fact that we do not exercise this in favor of classes of people. And those who engage is a case in point. That's the first thing. Secondly, if you also superimpose the pattern of capitalist development, the pattern of development that we've had in India, since independence, but accelerated after neoliberalism after 1991. A lot of the Suriyan story, who has been somebody I've learned from from the very beginning that I started working on rural transformation. He tells a story of rural transformation and change and of labor from the 1960s itself. And that's a very long span. But I think the story of labor transformed in specific ways after 1991 with liberalization. And we do need to understand that the Indian state started liberalizing a phase of liberalizing labor laws, more de facto than do zero dealing with the states rather than the center. And the next result of that is that labor, labor markets in formalize. I have made this argument in a number of places into papers, which are one, which are which I wrote for the ILO and other my presidential paper in the society of paper economics that the heart of the Indian economy was followed up from 90s onwards and with accelerating space in in in in this century. So that the organized the former sector of the economy itself become became informalized. I think our audience should know the fact that even even at the beginning of this century, 73% of organized sector manufacturing in this country was already informal. And that increased to 77% in 2017-18. The organized service sector, which was technically the most formal part of the economy was 33% informal in 2004-5 and became 52% informal in 2017-18. If you look at the growth of the over the last 15-20 years, we had a declining agricultural employment. But this was matched by very slow rate rate of growth of formal employment. Basically, it was informal employment, which which has grown in this country and it grew under the in the within the rubric of the labor laws that we have. The labor laws did not afford any protection to any section of labor, either within the formal sector of the economy or within the informal sector of the economy. And this happened much before the nature of the state. We still have a new liberal state under this government, but the nature of the state has of course changed very much. We have a much harder state, a state which believes that the courts will do its bidding that it does not need to worry about laws. It can put anything on the statute books or even if it doesn't put anything on the statute book. And that is what that is the condition that we see with the labor court, I guess we should talk about it more later on. But also we see with the latest changes that have been made at the state level in labor laws. So you are absolutely right. The changes started occurring much earlier. We did not have a modicum of regulation for unorganized sector workers. But over the last 20 to 30 years, it is the organized sector of the economy which has become informalized. And finally, I just want to make the point, which I think all of us realize. Jan has said this repeatedly over the last 30 years. I have said this over the last 20 years. Informality and migration and circular migration in India have gone hand in hand. The growth into informality in India is due to the growth of circular migration in India, both short term and long term circular migration. The bulk of informal labor in India are today migrants. They are circular migrants, either short term migrants or long term migrants. Circularity and informality have gone hand in hand and they coexist with discrimination in labor market segmentation. So I think these are the characteristics within which we have to look at the changes in labor law and the conditions of labor in this country. Thank you Ravi. I think that you made many, many valuable points as always. But one that I especially agree with is that the Indian state does not lack capacity. It's not a state without capacity because what it chooses to do, it does very, very well. I've been part of the IES. I know how much of competence and caliber there is when they set out to do something. And so the denial, the systematic comprehensive denial of rights to workers in the informal sector is not a failure of the state. It is part of what the state consciously wants to do and does not want to do. So I think that's a very, very valuable point. Also how much of this is intrinsic to the nature of neoliberal capitalism and that growth has always been accompanied by more and more informalization. And informalization has been linked more and more with short and long term circular migration. I think these are all really valuable insights that you have offered us. I move now to Renana. Renana, I don't see you. I hope you're still here. But Renana is somebody, you know, not only I, but a lot of us have held in very high esteem. Zeba is a formidable organization which has worked with very, very large numbers of women workers in organizing them and with years and years of your experience. Again, the same question, why has the state so profoundly and comprehensively failed its informal workforce, and particularly women? Thank you, Harsh, for inviting me to this webinar. And this is something that one feels very strongly about. And especially now looking at how the callousness with which workers are being dealt and how the new labor laws. I know we're going to talk about that, but the new, the intent of the government and the employers is to put all the revive anything that is to revive has to be on the backs of the workers, making them even more miserable than they are now. But we'll come back to that. Anyway, my point was one feels very strongly about this. I don't want to repeat what Ravi has said, but I just say that over the years, one has seen the real informalization of workers. Of course, there was always a very big informal workforce, but it has become even more informal. And the mechanism has been through contractors and casualization. And this whole contractor way of working or this casual way of working is the way of working where you don't recognize the worker at all. And so identifying the worker, who he or she is. Where does she live? What is the phone number? What is a bank account? None of that is important. So it's just a mass of, as far as the employers are concerned, it's just a mass of unidentified labor. And that is the problem that of course now has come up because they're all unidentified. I'd like to give one or two specific issues. What we have been working, which are, which is specially a women's area, which is the home based workers, women who work from their homes, making things on the piece rate for often very large employers, often even multi nationals. But through a whole list of a whole chain of contractors. And of course, they get very little at the end of that, the piece rate is much lower than the minimum wage. They often don't get their payments and so on. And we had this long discussion with very large employers and with the contractors that at least let's recognize these workers. Let's see who they are, what kind of work they're doing and whether they're even getting whatever piece rate they're entitled to. And in fact, we made a whole manual of that with the employers. And of course, much to our disappointment, but I guess to be expected, nobody took any notice of it, because they wanted to keep them unidentified. So this desire to keep them as an unidentified mass. I think that is the basis of what we are seeing today. I want to talk about one more thing, which is the bill, we talked about laws. I want to focus in on this building and contract workers act, at least the building and contract workers fund. Now, there are these huge funds. To this day have not been able to understand why these huge funds, 1000 crores, I think over 1000 crores, 1200 crores in Delhi alone. Another 1000 crores in Gujarat, similarly MP, similarly in many, many of the states, 800 crores I know in Punjab. The money is just lying there. They spend 10% of the money, why? Because they do not want to identify the construction labor. Had they today identified the full mass of construction labor, which could easily have been done, the cash transfers to them would have been very easy. And construction workers are one of the main migrants who are walking home because the money is there, the money is supposed to be for them, it cannot be spent on anything else, but you don't identify them, you don't give it to them. And the third group, which we haven't been talking about is what is called the self-employed. And these are very much part of the informal sector. They are both in the rural and urban areas. They are often do part of ancillary industry, so they are dependent on industry. Sometimes they are independent like street vendors. And again, a totally unlike MSMEs, which are identified, these very small micro enterprises or survivalists self-employed are again unidentified. So this whole issue of identity, I think comes up again and again. And finally, I'd like to say that if we had had the system of proper cash transfers, we could have, of course, depending on the intent of the government, but the method of supporting this very large labor, even if it isn't identified by labor, if it was just, if we had a sort of basic income for the lowest 60%, we could have today really saved this huge migration. But I think it started off well. Jandhan accounts were made. And after that, the whole idea of cash transfers forgotten. So I think the two ways, the identification and the cash, the possibility of a some form of basic income. If either of those were in place or both of those were in place, then we could have avoided this huge tragedy that is happening today. You know, once again, you have underlined that the fact that we don't have a record of the workers is because we've chosen not to have a record of the workers, because the employers in close cohorts with the state have deliberately not wanted a record of the workers because it would have created responsibilities for the rights of those workers, then that would ensue from their registration. And I think that that is a really important and powerful point. And when we look, look to the future, how do we ensure that in future, this invisible mass of workers who are available like a tap when you want them, you put it on and when you don't want them, you just switch it off and you don't have any further responsibility towards them. How can that change in the reality of workers, I think is really important. You also talked about cash transfers and if you believe that if cash transfers had already, there would have been a system of cash transfers, there would have been at least a vehicle to reach the workers in their time of latest distress. I come now to Atul again, a very dear friend like everyone else on this panel, but much more than that somebody who's who's devoted himself to think about these issues. And, and I'm sure he would also talk about the relationship. I mean, some of, you know, the reasons for these failures being located in the nature of the economic system that we run and the nature of our state. But, but over to you, please. Thank you for asking me to join this important conversation. And I will also like to add that I agree with the way you framed the issue and as well as my co panelists who have given a given their ideas about how to look at the current issue. I suggest that when we the key question that you've been asking her shoes. Where has the Indian state failed. I would just like to also add a sub question to it where have we failed in the sense that it's not only that the state has failed, but in terms of the way we were conceptualizing itself and the point that you know, Professor Berman and Ravi is underlying that the state itself has gone through a transformation. And if we acknowledge the fact that the state itself has gone through a transformation, then our engagement with the state on the question of labor also needs to be modified in the light of that. And I think, as you said, it's a somber movement moment, and we it's time also for us to maybe step back a little and see, you know, how we have been engaging with the state, and, and should we be reconsidering considering some of the aspects of how we have been engaging with it. May I suggest that in many ways, it would not be inappropriate to argue that the typically, you know, sort of defined this phase of Indian state as a developmentally state has come to an end. I mean, we all acknowledge what had happened in 1991 and so on and so forth. But clearly, Indian state has recrafted and reconstructed itself in a manner where it wants to, I mean, and you know, the title of today's conversation was before COVID, during COVID and post COVID. And I think there is a strong element of connect between how the Indian state has been looking at the question of labor on all these three funds, France, that is pre COVID, during COVID and post COVID. And the state has been very consistent in how it is looking at the question of labor and labor in general. In the imagining of the so called lockdown, without going into the question of whether lockdown was essential or not or and so on and so forth. I think in that imagining of lockdown. There was no imagining of labor. You know, it was, it was an imagining only about, you know, people who are, I mean, like us, or who had possibilities of this physical distance and so on and so forth. I mean, everyone understands that context. So this absence of imagining at the time of the lockdown continues even now. And I think it is very intentional. I mean, many of the panelists have said that the intent of the state is changed. And there's a lack of empathy. But again, I think the state has been consistent on that front. So, you know, to sort of specifically address the question that you've been asking, I don't see an issue this as a what we have experiencing now as an issue of the failure of the legislation, or the failure of the documentation of the, you know, because everyone who's sitting here, we all know the reality of India's labor based on the sources of information that the government of India provides. I mean, apart from our own specific field based research. And it's very clear. I mean, Ravi has written, I mean, Professor Freeman, I mean, there's so much substantive literature to suggest what are the key characteristics of India's labor market. And everyone knows we're talking about the infirm informality. We also know it's not only the informality, but how migrant labor has been the key component of it. We also know where migrant labor is involved. We also know how migrants migratory labor migration, like my great labor moves. So I think in terms of the knowledge and understanding of what is happening in the labor market is very much available with us. A, it's neither the failure of law. B, I don't think it's a failure of information and understanding. None of these is the key factor which is responsible. And if I may add for extending from the conversation we just had, I also don't see so much an issue of record and documentation. In fact, the state, Indian state is actually at the moment busy in destroying the documentation and evidence it has in a sense that in sectors of labor market where it has record, it wants to, does not want to maintain record. It does not want to keep the record. So clearly, the state is not interested. I think the key question would be for us to ask is, how does the state manage to get away with what, you know, what is happening correctly. I mean the humongous human tragedy that this country is facing. How is it possible that the Indian state in these times is able to implement its agenda of actually deregulating capital. It has successfully, you know, re-regulated labor. It has worked and crafted the labor as it wanted. And now it's also crafting the changes because if you look at the announcements made in the past five days, clearly the emphasis is to deal with substantive reform, whatever you want to call it reform, 2.0 reform, 4.0, whatever is the fashionable expression. But the essence, the emphasis is in terms of what it wanted to do before. So the state is busy doing the same. Now the question as I'm suggesting is, should we be doing the same. And my humble submission is that perhaps not. I mean, I think this is the time where we rather than focus on looking at the categories of labor. This is important and we have a very good knowledge base of that, but there is also a commonality of experience of labor, which COVID has brought in front of us. In fact, the suffering of labor is across the board. You know, with of course some differences in the extent, but you know, I've been sort of, you know, going around in the, you know, industrial areas of, you know, where I live. Whether you are looking at big industries or, you know, informal industries and so on and so forth, there is a huge element of commonality in the experience of labor. We also know that even those who are working in so-called organized sector with some kind of relative protection were also did not get any protection. And the reason for it is not only because the government orders were not implementable, but the government itself has been busy for the last decade or so, telling us that it actually doesn't want to regulate. It wants to give up its capacity to influence and regulate. It wants to actually give it to the employer and the factory owner. So the state has been busy diluting its capacity. So suddenly, at a point when we have the crisis of this mammoth proportion, I mean, where is the state's capacity going to come back to regulate? The state, I mean, and the announcements of the labor law changes again expresses state's intent that it wants to give up its capacity. So the state, as far as labor and, you know, the working people is concerned, does not want, I mean, Ravi was mentioning about that this state has any, yeah, that capacity is very selectively used. I mean, it doesn't want to use its capacity. So whether we talk about, you know, the vulnerable section in terms of creating documentation for the construction workers, but actually the government is actually wanting that just the workers also become undocumented in the way that the construction workers are undocumented. I don't think that the state was not aware, you know, when you filed that PIL, I don't think that the state was, you know, not aware that, you know, how 85 to 90% of the construction workers were not registered with the welfare system and therefore would not be eligible to seek those benefits. So this, I mean, what I'm suggesting is that the state had full information. It knew what the condition of the labor market is. If you look at the PLFS survey which is brought up in the government of India 2017-18, there's a clear characterization of the nature of India's labor market and the condition of India's labor force. It knew that if you look at the self-employed, there is about 50% of the self-employed, which does not make minimum wages, which doesn't make 9,700 rupees in a month. It knows what were the rural wages and urban wages. It knew what were the differences between the wages of men and women. So the absence of saving with the workforce to deal with, you know, a few hours of lockdown was well known to the Indian state. It's not that it did not know that they had no money to survive on their own for even two days, that they would need food as soon as they are taken away from their earnings. This was very much part of the knowledge base. So what I'm suggesting is that it's intentional. I mean, I'm not saying the suffering is intentional. But the perspective through which the state has seen the lockdown and the construction of the post-lockdown society and economy is very much well thought out. And it will have to be asking ourselves that how do we deal with the state whose basic character has changed, who is not going to be, you know, responding to the kind of, you know, very well worked out schemes and programs that we have been seeking. We'll have to think of other modalities of building pressures of the state. And my suggestion is that that modality, the key feature of that modality would be to talk about the commonality of experience of labor. And to bring together this commonality as a mechanism to work as pressure for the state to respond. Because if we sort of start looking at labor in terms of these multiple categories at this moment and seek their documentation, then it, you know, it essentially boils down to issues of implementation. Well, we are very, I mean, as everyone has said, that is essentially not an issue of implementation, but so much deeper issue embedded in the nature of growth strategy that we have chosen. I mean, Professor Breeman is here. I mean, and you know, he's wonderfully argued in his years of research, how the nature of urban growth and the peri urban growth and how the informality is embedded in this growth strategy. So the informality, vulnerability and precarity is embedded in the growth options we have chosen and our expectation that the state will now be suddenly becoming empathetic and respond to this human crisis. I don't think we'll, we'll get the kind of response we are expecting unless we think of other ways of bringing this commonality of experience of labor. So I think that, you know, once again, you've underlined what what all of us are saying in one way or the other. It is not a failure of legislation, it's not a failure of understanding and information. It's not even you say a failure of documentation. It's it's it's intrinsic to the character of the state. And, and, and, and also, you raise the question somewhere, how and why have you allowed the state to get away with this. It's a, you know, you know, this, this way, I thought we would spend a lot of time in this, in this section of the conversation, looking at specific laws. And, you know, what, what was wrong with the Interstate Migrant Workers Act, what was that wrong with this other act. But I think all of you are saying very, very clearly that it's not the letter of the legislation which is, which is at fault. It is the character of the state and the character of the of the ruling class. And, you know, one has to see like the state to be able to understand why we are in this situation today. And that's, that's, that's a really worrying observation. You know, how do we go from here is something that we'll talk at the latter part of today's discussion. I bring in here Priyanka Jain, who works with Ajivika Bureau, which has done a huge amount of really, really valuable, both work, direct work on the ground with workers, informal workers and large and substantially circular migrants, but also very, very, you know, front end kind of research. So Priyanka, how would you respond to the question, where have we gone wrong? I do agree about, you know, the point about commonality of labour, but because this pandemic sort of also catapulted into imagination, the particular kind of situation, location of migrant workers. I'd like to sort of like delve into that a little bit more. What we saw during the pandemic, you know, was a complete criminalization of their existence overall. So as a migrant worker, you can't be out on the streets of a city to buy your ration to even protest, you will be largely charged. You can't be walking on the highway, the police will stop you. You can't even go further from the state borders of your home state. The police will stop you there as well and send you back. If you do manage to reach your village somehow, there are, you know, state officials standing there to beat you up as well, unless you kind of go through the forests. This kind of suspension, complete statelessness is not like you were saying, it's not an anomaly. It's not something that has come out of nowhere. It has a fairly, it has a very strong connection with a kind of deeper neurosis that sort of exists. And the genesis of this, you know, as I think a lot of other people have argued comes from our larger approach in economic planning. It's not, it is also about the way we have implemented labour laws or not implemented labour laws in the state intent, etc. But I'd like to kind of further unpack two particular points which I think relate to this, this sort of suspension that we saw very starkly during the pandemic. One is the, and it relates to the migrants relationship to state and society. What is their particular position in India's highly unequal labour markets, and what is their relationship to governance, particularly urban governance. Now, I think, as far as circular migrants are concerned and this is, again, something that a lot of the panelists over here have spoken about the marked or perhaps the more distinct feature about their vulnerability is that you are sort of kept desperate. So it's not migrant workers work informal and informal industries in small scale as well as in large scale factories, but it is the same everywhere. It's not like labour laws do not, you know, are not applicable to them at all. In fact, there are a lot of labour laws that do apply to them. They are not followed the large scale violations. What we find is a certain sub market which is created. There is a certain ghettoization in the Indian labour market, where there are norms, not laws, and what is the sole logic of these norms. It is to be as extractive as possible of the labour in body of a migrant worker in terms of length of day intensity of work and abandoning every possible basic cost that an employer is supposed to bear of labour. And what that does is it makes sure that the migrant worker and the migrant household is intergenerally, intergenerationally reproduced in that particular format is never able to claim any kind of basic hold which allows them to come out of this trap. And that is why we see migrant labour in the sort of situations that we saw also because when they are in the city and if we look at urban governance, they are in a state of complete alienation in the city. You know, when we when we started working with urban governance in the last few years, we kind of began thinking that maybe urban local bodies don't know where migrant workers are because they're not in the slums and the imagination of the urban poor is restricted to slums. They live inside of factories, they live inside of construction sites, they live inside of pipes, you know, completely sort of unrecognized areas. And so our work sort of began with the idea that we need to get the urban local bodies to recognize and to see these people. And it was in fact something that was important to do. But the more we investigated and the more we kind of came to understand the logic with which urban governance work. What we realized is that there is a very clear intention behind not providing basic services to migrants inside of cities, circular migrants, because it fears that it will lead to claim building on their part. There is fear that they will start claiming the resources of the city, start settling down over there. So a lot of people in the municipalities and officials will tell us that if we provide them water, if we provide them toilets and if you provide them food, they will not go back and that's not a risk we can take. Being able to claim your foothold in the city is how the urban poor, the semi-settled, the more settled forms of migration were able to sort of come out or were able to negotiate the city. That is not something that seasonal circular migrants have had ever in the position to do and that was very, very intentional. That's something that a lot of evidence from other cities like from Delhi and from Bombay also suggests, you know, that you are not given services for a very particular reason. But, and that creates the kind of statelessness and suspension, which was what was amplified at this particular point. I think what were, I think the kind of openings or shifts that have happened at this particular moment that I think are important is first of all, the injury has become very visible. Not that these didn't exist before. Yes, they were amplified at this particular moment, but it was related in how we function, but it has become a lot more visible now. There's a lot more consciousness around it. There was a lot more pressure on governments and states to do something about it, even though these kind of conditions have existed before. And it has led to like, you know, the spate of all of these announcements as far as food is concerned, ration card is concerned, housing is concerned, etc. And there are also arbitrary measures right now to just kind of like, you know, register migrant workers at bus stops and railway stations. And I think we kind of need to treat them as openings, but also be incredibly careful. Because the state has made its intentions of using all information to control labor, to control the movement of labor, to impinge on their freedom of movement, and to largely see them as a factor of production as something that they need to come back to kind of address industries labor shortage. So how do we use the openings of the moment to push our agendas of universality rights, labor rights, etc, but not play into the very clear tendencies of the current regime to use every bit of information to control the life of labor. And this is something that even the industry is talking about today. So I'll stop there for now. You talked about many things, Bianca, but I, you know, you talked first about the criminalization of workers. And I'm just, you know, just last night I was out with some younger colleagues we were trying to, you know, reach out to migrants who were walking. And, you know, I, there was a look in the eye of the migrants I spoke to kept looking around they were like fugitives from the law. They were like people who were committing a huge crime and were hiding from the state, because all they wanted to do was to get home. And it's a it's a look that will, I think, haunt me for a lifetime. If you have reduced, you know, hardworking, you know, oppressed workers into fugitives because all they want to do is to have the dignity of going to a place they call home. You talked about the whole, the whole premise of keeping desperate. And I think that that is very, you know, the whole strategy is to keep them desperate, not allow them to develop roots to the moment you develop roots in the city. And the moment you also have, you know, a regular place of employment, where you can start asserting organizing, I think that is really the. Again, you're underlining that is not by chance it is a design in the G, you know, we come right to the end to you, not last but not least in the G it's been a very thoughtful scholar and with the CSV. And when he was in Oxford, he conducted a very rare kind of research which was an ethnography for a year with migrants with a group of migrants who moved out of a set of villages in in Bihar to different parts of the country. And through those insights, you know, what you're seeing today and what would you like to say. I think the ethnographic work was an eye opener in many ways and it obviously helps us to also, you know, in some ways in the findings resonate with some of the things that have been said already. The most important aspect we need to consider and it's a point that I think was made earlier on is the social distance and I use this word very sort of reservedly social distance that exists between migrant workers and the state. There was a reference earlier to the social question that we need to understand and with which the labor question is linked. The fact that most of our labor communities emerge from Dalit Bahujan communities, whereas, you know, most of those who hold power. And who are, if you will, the ruling classes or dominant classes come from a very different background is something we cannot ignore and this sort of comes up in the way in which, you know, migrant laborers or laborers more generally relate to the state or in fact not relate to the state. Another aspect that I think is crucial for having brought us to where we are is our understandings and when I say our I mean those who are in positions of privilege and dominance if you will. Understandings of the nature of labor and the idea that labor is fixed and of course we know that you know when it comes to thinking about labor in this country. When labor is not fixed it's it's a hugely mobile population, but the, the disjuncture that we see is a recognition that labor is not fixed doesn't necessarily come with the recognition that the social protections the social rights that, you know, what that should be made available, is not fixed. Our procedures of accessing social rights tend to be based on an imagination that labor will remain or is in one place whereas as you as we know in fact that's not the case. So if I think one had thought about portability of social rights, the, you know what we have heard in the last few days in terms of one nation one ration I think that sort of those sorts of ideas. I think it's just too little too late, you know, a portable social rights would have perhaps been one way of addressing the very, very pressing sort of, you know, concerns that labor has. I think linked to this is the is the failure of the Indian state and of the Indian ruling classes to think about labor as citizens. And I think that comes up again and again. We've never really thought about and the Indian state also has never really thought about labor in terms of citizenship. With respect, we must also take responsibility for the way we've written about labor we haven't really, you know, linked questions of labor with questions of citizenship. And I'm thinking here in terms of such basic aspects of citizenship as voting. So, in a country where so many millions of people are crisscrossing the country in search of work. So voting is an act that is incredibly fixed in place, you can only vote where you are registered. And that of course is meaningless for so many people who are moving around town and country in search of work so for them, voting would mean having to go back home, wherever home would be for that one day in order to cast a vote and of course a lot of migrant workers do that. They do go back home to cast their vote and then they come back and sometimes they do it, you know, they pay for all those journeys themselves The point is that, you know, some sort of allowing migrant workers to vote, you know, a version of postal vote or a version of sort of long distance vote would have probably made them count more than what we've seen at the moment. And that brings me to the final point about how urban governance links with questions of labor precarity. There are absolutely no ways in which labor is represented in the day to day urban governance of the cities of the neighborhoods of the areas where they live. And that also is, I think, points to our failure in terms of thinking about labor as as citizens. So I think what I'm what I'm what I'm trying to say is that in addition to the actual framework of labor laws, the ideas about labor have left a lot to, you know, have resulted in, you know, our present conundrum. In the last few months where we would have expected some sort of perhaps solidarity from members of middle classes with the condition that migrant laborers are facing. And what you instead see is the hashtag me to migrant, which in some ways, instead of, instead of solidarity with the migrant workers is a way of appropriating the very real struggles the very hardships the kind of pain that migrant workers are going through. And I think that brings me back to the point I started with the social distance between labor and the state the social distance between labor and those who control the state. I think is what has brought us to the present position. It need not have been like this there have been critical junctures where we could have taken very different pathways, but that was not something that we did. Thank you very much for these very, very valuable comments in the cheat. I think what you said about have the social distance actually which has appeared between the migrants and the state is such such a profound situation and this is what we are seeing. I actually wanted to come in and turn our attention to the question of women's labor also at this point and we are seeing that the state now believes that economic revival is possible only by further weakening of labor protections and many states have used ordinances to go down that path. Within that larger context the question of gender and labor has also assumed it assumes a very urgent relevance because of the extraordinary scale of decline in women's employment, which we have seen between 2004 5 to 2017 18 and we are seeing the impact of shock of contracting economy, but I'd like to ask you and turn to the question which Atul somewhere said that in states imagining of the lockdown or responding to the question of dealing with the pandemic workers were not in that imagining and I would further add that women workers were completely out of the site of the state. There were no absolutely no provisions for women workers, not only for them to survive or get past the lockdown, but also in terms of their travel in terms of rebuilding. So I'd like to ask you, Ravi, you have looked at question of gender and labor and also the numbers, the declining numbers of women in labor force. How do you see the new regime of labor, which is actually the number of labor protections are folding up. What impact would you think will have on women's labor? How do you interpret it for women? Well, there are two separate issues here and I think it might be useful to deal with both of them. One is to talk about the impact of the pandemic itself on the working population and on women in general and then to talk about the changes and to contextualize the changes in labor law within that broader framework. So as we know, as far as the pandemic is concerned and here we are really talking about not the pandemic as such, but the lockdown. The lockdown has affected almost the entire land and this also brings me to Atul's point, the entire universe of informal work, the entire universe. So we are really talking about something like, you know, 85 to 90% of the working class in India and data also shows that the CMI's data, they've analyzed the consumption data and we saw a study some three days ago which shows very clearly that 80% of households have experienced significant declines in consumption and of course have no savings to cope with the crisis and so on. And similarly, obviously, I mean this decline in consumption is because of lack of income, lack of wages, lack of employment. So it's a very, very severe crisis. Now this severe crisis, in order to overcome this, this is not a crisis. I do not believe that this crisis lends itself to what people call a v-shaped recovery. Coming out of a crisis of this kind is going to be extremely protracted. That's number one. Number two, the major problem is going to be the problem of demand. That's because external demand, which, you know, almost 30% of GDP is going to take extraordinary long time to revise. So it's a question of basically somehow stimulating and reviving demand. We know what the government of India has done in the last few days. It has announced a stimulus package which is less than 1% of GDP. And it has announced a medium term reform package, which basically mostly regurgitates the old reforms, which are already announced from 2016-17 onwards, with some new, you know, some new sets of changes which is announced. So there is nothing, there is nothing in the in the offering which can help in reviving India's economy in the next six months to a year. What it has put in place is a set of the labor law changes. As you know, there was a prototype recommendation made by the central government that states need to respond to attracting and in a time where actually the question is of actually reviving capacities. The state wants to attract investments and both domestic and international investments through lengthening of the labor day through demolishing labor laws and so on. I mean, it's from an economic standpoint of view from a labor economist standpoint of view from an aggregate economic standpoint of view. This is a bizarre response to an extremely serious crisis, the major manifestation of which will be in the form of a demand contraction. And nothing has been done, 0.8, just about 0.8% of GDP going into demand. So we are in for a deep, you know, this means that the crisis is going to be very protracted. And this is where let me be very clear about this. All the analysis that I have done, you know, looking at labor law, flexibilization and impact on employment, impact on growth. And in my own work, my papers in 2016 are the Bhattacharya's paper, Ato's paper, all of us, the NCUS, if you look at this 2009 report, all of us have argued that the liberalization of labor laws does not lend itself to either hire employment or higher growth scenarios. And this is something which has to be, I mean, there is a great amount of literature in it, and we need to drill this in. So if you look at this, the kind that basically the direction in which the government is growing is going and the kind of labor law changes that it has recommended to the states to bring about have absolutely nothing in them which can revive the economy, either in the short to medium term. The crisis itself is a medium term to long term crisis. It's probably going to last forever. The Bank of England says this is the most serious crisis UK has faced in 1776. We are now predicting a 3% declined in global GDP, but it has not sunk in that in our policy circles that this is the nature of seriousness of the crisis. Now, when a crisis of this kind happens, and when demand constricts, and when there is a very severe quantity rationing of employment, all the data that we have, all the data that we have from Indian states, cross sectional data, time series data tells us that it is basically the weaker sections and particularly women whose employment declines very precipitiously. So as it is, we've had an 18% point decline in female labor force participation over the last two decades or so. And this is going to exacerbate in the times to come. So we are going to see very sharp rising inequalities in a period, by the way, where overall labor force, so this is a different kind of inequality that we're going to see. Till now male workforce participation rates have been more or less stable. Female workforce participation rates have been declining. In the next two to three years, we are going to see extreme constriction of overall employment, and within that extreme constriction of overall employment, we're going to see very sharp declining rates of workforce participation of women, and also a sharper impact on their wages and earnings. And here again I am speaking about the top, the bottom eight to nine decides of women of women in the workforce, not the top 10, the top decide, which is mostly urban and highly educated and highly skilled. Firstly, about what happens to the worker who returns home in what conditions. And you know I've been reading and listening to accounts where actually they have borrowed for the first time from the family back home, because they were in such a situation of desperation now. And this is the first time they had to, and in the conditions of penury that that the family was, and, and the unpaid debts here and unpaid debts there. And, and, and your value in terms of being able to support and provide for your family and the fear of the pandemic and, and all of that. In addition, I also wanted to briefly draw attention to the people who have not left and who have nowhere to go. And I work a lot of my time with with homeless people and homeless single men I just about two or three days back I was sitting in the they again like fugitives they ran away from they were pulled away they were locked up in in schools they said which were worse than jails. And they've come they're hiding from the police in in in pipes, they're living inside pipes, and I spoke to them and their desperation They said the only work that we used to have was in wedding parties and in in Dhabas. None of that work is going to be there. What is going to happen to us in the coming months. And also in our food distribution in places like Nangloi, people who worked in very small enterprises, you know, food, food, where etc, where they're 10 workers, 15 workers, where they themselves say that the employer has no capacity to pay them in these circumstances. And they have been reduced for the first time in their lives to lining up for two hours three hours for for a small ladle of cooked food, and the state is definitely going to tire of this distribution of food. And then what happens to them, what happens to to the breakdown of whatever food charities we have, what happens even to the solidarity that that Ravi spoke about. And I've been really touched by the numbers of people I see on the streets helping others, but that is going to also weary and come to an end, what happens to people's lives after that. And I think that there is that we are, I've seen signs of, I mean, of of mass hunger of the kind that I saw as a district officer, occasionally in mass drought situations to see that kind of desperation of mass hunger in the city in the city hunger is always a heartbeat away for this segment of people like but but you always had some way of earning some money or a good war to go to or somewhere else. Today hunger is part of the everyday reality and of very large numbers, two kilometer lines, three kilometer lines of people waiting for food. So there's the crisis of the worker who has left the crisis of the worker who actually has nowhere else to go. And I think that we have to bear all of that in mind. It has been a very, very, very hard, hard-rending conversation, but I think it has been a conversation of solidarity. It has also been a conversation where, where, you know, there are moments in history where they say, speaking the truth is the most revolutionary act that one can do. And I think this was an afternoon or a morning for those of us who are from overseas of truth telling of very painful truth, truth telling. And I think that with the truth telling is the possibility one day of finding some kind of avenue or pathway to a more just India and a more just world. So let us end, you know, if we despair too much with remembering something that Martin Luther King said, he said the arc of history is long. But in the end, in the end, it bends towards justice. Our body is how long, how long is that arc of history going to take before it bends towards justice and how can we together fight so that it does bend sooner within our lifetimes to justice. So thank you all of you for sharing, sharing this very moving and insightful set of observations this afternoon. Thank you.