 behalf of Centre for Equity Studies. I welcome you all to the webinar. This is the fifth edition of the webinar on the pandemic and equity series. Today we will be talking about what does the drastic contraction of the economy mean for the Indian labouring pool. Before we go into that, we are going into a dark prime in our democracy where we could see the police without even questioning or even taking into ground the people who have actually carried out the riots or have created hate among the people, leaving them and them all aside. Today we are arresting all the democratic voices which have stood for the constitution, which are standing for peace and which are which are standing for the peace. We all start condemning the Delhi police and in solidarity with all the political prisoners around. As of now, in India we all know the Indian GDP in the April to June 2020 quarter has contracted by 23.9% and this is also where when the informal sector is not been factored in, if we include that, it would be much higher and according to Pranab Sain's estimate it could go around to 32%. The finance minister in one of the statements talks about it as if it's an act of the God. But we can see that before the pandemic itself, the Indian economy had been contracting and it has grown just with 3.1% in the last quarter in 2019 and 20, in the lowest in the seven years. And with the stringent lockdown, this crisis has further precipitated in order to have this discussion today on the drastic contradiction of the economy and what does it mean for the Indian labouring poor. We have eminent professors with here today, Mr. Jan Prumman, he is an eminent sociologist and an eminentist professor of the University of Amsterdam and a leading scholar of labour in India. He has written extensively and with empathy and insight written on the informal labour in India. They are passed in the present. Renana Jappala has led the iconic SEVA, the largest trade union of women and has been active for decades in organizing women into organizations and trade unions in India. Mr. Prabhat Patnaik is a renal academician, author and political activist. He writes on the political economy of labour and capital. He was a former professor of economics in JNU. Our professor Nagraj is the professor at the Indra Gandhi Institute of Development Research, Mumbai. His areas of research include aspects of India's industrialization, applied macroeconomic issues, public sector performance in the industrial labour market in India and official economics, economic statistics. He has been actively criticising the production of misleading statistics from the current regime along with exposing the issues with the jobless growth. Mr. Vikas Ravan is a professor at the Centre for Economic Studies and Planning at the Jevalan Air University, Delhi. He is an eminent scholar who has focused on land and agrarian relations in India. He has conducted several field-based studies examining the impact of economic changes on labour and other evangelization. Professor Vikas Ravan also recently conducted field-based studies of the contracting of the economy, the job laws and how different people have been suffering during and after the law, during and in the unlock phase. Now I request Hush to continue and start off the session. It's a conversation about people who care and who think deeply about this moment and I think we all need to put both our minds and our hearts together. As India faces probably what is going to be the greatest humanitarian crisis in the last half century, perhaps longer, perhaps in many of our lifetimes. And we are witnessing huge stories of joblessness, of hunger, of a sense of despair about the possibilities of life getting better in the near future and even in the medium run. I believe that policy choices that have been made may perhaps leave the impact for even a full generation. All of us have been naturally going to be hit adversely by the shrinking of the economy but we really need to think very hard about what is happening and what will happen to the masses of the labouring poor. What we must understand is that the immensely ill-advised strategy of the severest lockdown in the world with the smallest relief package not only unleashed an intense state-induced catastrophe of human suffering of hunger, joblessness and dislocation and the severest recession that India has suffered since independence. India continues to stumble as infections rise because it is not able to organise its public health infrastructure even so many months into the pandemic. But the unkindest cut of all is that many independent and privately many official experts agree that India's infections showed no sign of ebbing precisely because it opted for the strategy of the most punishing lockdown in human history in the name of fighting the infection and preparing for its rise. I fear as I said that the people of India will endure the disastrous consequences of these failures for at least one generation. India suffered its first economic contraction of 1.2% in 1957-58 because of the need to import large quantities of food to the border of famine resulting in a balance of payments crisis. Recruiting droughts and food imports brought us to our next great contraction of 3.7% in 1966-67. Oil shocks caused the next two contractions of 0.3% in 72-73 and 5.2% in 79-80. India is headed for much larger contraction this year. At the moment in this quarter for which we have data 24% contraction is based on just reports from the formal sector of the economy. Pranab Sen India's former chief statistician estimates that the contraction would be closer to about 32% and for the overall for the full year it would possibly be around 13 to 14%. I don't know what each of you what your estimates are about the future but as as maybe a hundred million people can be expected to lose jobs the debilitating impact on the food livelihoods and health of millions of Indians appear to be calamitous. We will also ask how did India arrive here at this place in its journey? The COVID-19 pandemic was probably to a degree an act of God as the finance minister maintains but the cruel lockdown with a relief package of less than 2% of the GDP contrasting with 13.2% in the US 7% in China 11.8% in Brazil and 20% in Japan were conscious policy choices. As Prime Minister Modi thinks it fit to post photographs of him feeding peacocks and reading a newspaper as ducks walked by in his spacious green garden India stares at a bleak future of a more extended period of runaway infection than perhaps anywhere in the planet. Of what I believe is the beginnings of a creeping invisible scattered famine and of years of prolonged mass hunger and joblessness all of this in a climate of of of the shrinking and and the further shrinking of of democratic freedoms in this country the suppression of all voices of dissent and and behind all of this a communal project targeting India's minorities particularly India's Muslims. This catastrophe to me appears to be the direct outcome of leadership of hubris and of narcissism with an almost pathological absence of compassion and it is in this context that we thought we would turn to some of the finest hearts and minds that we have to reflect on on on as I said what is the nature of the crisis that we are seeing what brought us here what can be done and not just by the government but beyond what the government can do or will do and and and and it is in this context that we would all be meeting and discussing today what are the consequences of this drastic shrinking of our economy for specifically India's labouring poor and for India's destitute poor I work with homeless people for the last two decades and and and they are the labouring poor but they're also so so far from any kind of of a job of certainty security and dignity even in normal times so for the labouring poor at various stages of vulnerability and precarity what are the consequences of this drastic shrinking of the economy that you foresee how bad do you expect the impact to be how long do you think it will last what will it do to their lives to their capabilities and to their prospects of survival may I start with Professor Jan Bremen who's I think probably longer than many people in the audience the entire lifetimes Jan Bremen has been studying and writing as a great empathy an insight about India's labouring poor and he's joining us from Holland so would you like to start off the discussion and I'm glad to participate in it and I look at the kind of commonality between the panellists and presumably also those who participate harsh you talked about democracy and basically all of us are speaking up for democracy but the irony is that those voices of ours are understood as descending voices not as democratic voices it seems that those who speak up for democracy nowadays are accused of being anti-national of betraying the the cause of the nation so to say and that is alarming that is disconcerting and that doesn't make it easier for for politicians and policymakers to solve the problem of dire poverty and progressive poverty and we have to understand the current situation under the pandemic in the time frame of course and we have to realise that people now thinking in poverty in which they were already well entrenched it's not a new phenomenon for them and they desperately tried very courageously try to get out of it in various ways to basically apply what is now called self-reliance which is coping for survival but we have seen and I'm only talking about the last couple of years but poverty is of long-standing of long-standing danger to the nation I would say a long-standing danger to the nation but in the in the last few years we saw the demonetisation which is still what shall I say seen from those in the seats of power as as having we have as having had a positive impact and we know of all of us around the table and also among the audience that it was not a success it was a good failure and it increased the misery of the people who were already poor after that the introduction of the GST the good from services text added to the crisis so the pandemic is part of a trend of a longer trend of increasing poverty which we cannot call poverty anymore but destitution the word for destitution is pauperism and what we see is the face of pauperism what I find striking harsh if you ask us what has been the impact of the pandemic that we learn so little of how the poor are coping at the moment in the they have been driven back to in so-called home be it on the outskirts of of the cities or to back to their villages and we have seen how the government has watched its hand of those who were footloose how they were driven back basically to be with the household to which they belong and from which they have opted out in order to make a living that is not possible now and what happens to them we have not we have a lot of information about the the traveling back to home but we do not have much information on the diaplyte of the people which are now not poor any longer they are pauperized and I think that word pauperism should be understood because it has a reflection in history in social history of course and we have to go back to that literature to that knowledge that came about that pauperism was what shall I say the reaction of the government then in the west to the predicament of the poor not alleviating their poverty but driving them down to further poverty to further poverty in a pauperized condition and then went along with an ideology which I find back now an ideology of social Darwinism where it is the survival of the fittest and those who are not able to cope it basically says that they are not self-reliant anymore and then the rights of the citizenship are taken away from them that's the situation of the pauperized country thank you you know you you you you very starkly underlined that even in normal times people live and and struggle of courageously with poverty but what we are seeing now is their slippage from poverty into pauperism and you believe that that is actually not an accident it is it is it is a conscious outcome of of policy choices you've also underlined that whereas for a while while we witnessed the distress of returning migrants for a little while their suffering was you know knowledge about that and information about that was available to all of us in the middle class but what has happened how are they coping when they have returned home we know less and less about so Rinana may I come to you next Rinana is works with probably the largest collective of working women in the world and you know I think has both ears and her heart very close to the ground and so how would you respond to the questions that I opened up with Rinana? Thank you Harsh and I would like to actually focus I'd like to base on experience somewhat and focus more on the women because we talk about laboring poor but women are a very big part of it even when they are not counted and when you ask this question how bad it is how bad it is how long it will last what is the impact so of course one could talk about the last three months but we do realize that this is going to last for a while I think the macroeconomists can talk more about how long is it going to be a year two years longer but I would like to so I was thinking how do we how do I say what the impact is going to be and what I understood what I remembered was that you we went through this financial crisis in 2008 onwards and in a way this is very comparable to that or what is going to happen of course the last six months has been much much much worse so that shrinkage of 30 percent 33 or 30 percent was really the effect of the lockdown but as the economy does open up there is still going to be shrinkages and I sort of looked at a survey we had done in 2009 on what has happened during that last year and one thing which I do need to say is usually people talk about jobs lost but as you know mostly in the informal economy it's not really only jobs lost of course people completely lose their jobs or completely lose their livelihoods but it is a decline of incomes a decline of number of days which have worked the decline in prices that you receive for your products so I just wanted to tell you something of what we saw in 2008 this may be worse we you know we don't know maybe but just what we saw in that one year is I'm going to go over the different areas so a lot of the women were working in construction 30 to 40 percent this was a survey we did in three states 30 to 40 percent found that they had no work construction really collapsed as it is collapsed now and be very slow to pick up and the rest said that they had less than 10 days work so they also said that there was a decline in the daily wage rate up to about 25 percent so some people had some work but they had much less income some people had no work at all small factories closed down a lot closed down 20 percent of people said that they had no work 40 percent said that it was less than 15 days and the small factory people said that they had lost all working capital that there were no export orders and there was a slowdown in domestic demand again the same things that are going to happen women home-based workers there was a 60 percent decline in the amount of work that they had as they are saying now that at that time also they said that agriculture has not been hit and that's what we said now that agriculture is still doing well but what we saw then was that there was a decline in the prices of agriculture produced so though people were the farmers were producing there was a major decline what was the effect there was a reduced consumption of food and especially people stopped eating vegetables and meat of course a lot of people did not go to the hospitals or for medical treatment until they became very very ill 70 percent went into debt and a large number took the children out of private schools some withdrew the children from education all together and like now but much less of course there was an increased migration to the rural areas so this is what we saw happen and this is what we expect this year at least this year that there'll be reduced incomes there'll be reduced work what we are seeing even now is that in a family one where there were three people working there's one person working so given the kind of malnutrition we have given the kind of anemia we have among women we're going to see much much more of that and it's going to really be difficult thank you Renana I think that was very very very sobering and my guess is that it'll be much worse than in 2009 because we actually chose to shut down the entire economy the entire supply entire demand of the economy and the economy was already slowing down but I think your reminder firstly about thinking about women workers who are even in the best of times invisible and and struggling and and the many things that you spoke about the expectation that work opportunities will reduce incomes will reduce food consumption and here you know from my conversations around food I've seen that it goes it's going in three stages the first is that as as Renana talked about the first stage where people start reducing the the more expensive which is also the more nutritious parts of food so vegetables meat eggs milk those start reducing and you and you're eating sometimes roti with with salt and salt then at the second stage the actual quantum of of even that very basic food starts declining and we've seen signs of that as well and and that people are going down eating less and reducing the number of meals you know whether we really reach the third phase which is of people much larger numbers of people sleeping hungry is something that we are trying to find out at this very time a collective of us from across the country are trying to reach out to various communities including persons with disabilities single women and others to find out what is the situation with regard to food but what you had observed in 2009 reduced food especially nutritious food decline in you know taking children out of school seeking healthcare only you know when you have to and sometimes not even there I think the human the granularity of the human distress that the slow down you know these figures of 23 percent 24 percent 30 percent what would they mean to people's lives I thank you for Renano for reminding us and I turn to Prabhat whose you know his insights and wisdom about being in economy I am not alone in you know in trying a great deal on on learning from his insights so Prabhat where do you see what where and what is going to happen what is happening and what you expect to happen to India's labouring poor and in this time of economic shrinking thank you thank you Hirsh you know almost everybody's agreed that in current year not just the first quarter the current year as a whole is going to witness a substantial contraction in the GD the figures vary from 9 percent to 12 13 percent and this contraction is going to give rise to a significant amount of unemployment again the figures vary but the minimum would be about 50 million unemployed at the end of the year so on this question the fact that the labouring poor are going to be very badly affected not just because of the closed down but also in the sequel to the closed down there is a general agreement but most people believe that all right this is a year in which things have not worked out well the pandemic is still continuing but next year would be better or two years down the line the economy is going to recover that there's a general feeling that the economy is going to recover after a certain period I believe that that is not necessarily the case that requires certain very specific kinds of intervention in the absence of which the economy can actually go on and on and on down here let me just give you some reasons why I believe so during the pandemic there has been among I mean suppose let us say next year investment comes back to the level where it was in 1990 sorry in 2019-20 consumption would still be somewhat lower even though it may be higher than this year it will still be lower than 2019-20 because meanwhile during this year people have gotten to debt to maintain whatever consumption they were maintaining many of them have actually run down their cash reserves in other words vast numbers of households have really gotten to debt which is what of course Rinan have also talked about and in the process they would like to devote a part of their incomes whenever these incomes come into their hands to recovering their position paying back some on the debt rebuilding some of their cash reserves and so on therefore their consumption cannot possibly absorb the income they get because of which it would remain subdued compared even to 2019-20 now investment again cannot really I began by saying let's assume but investment again cannot really be at the 2019-20 level because exactly the same thing has been happening to small marginal enterprises to petty producers they have also gotten to debt and this debt is something which should actually prevent them from going ahead with investment even if they get some cash into their hands they would be under constraint to pay back the debt therefore investment again cannot really recover to the level of the 2019-20 in the coming year if that happens then the overall level of output would not recover to what was there in 2019 and if that happens if there's a shrinkage in output which is not only in the current year but even subsequently in that case you soon find that investment would begin to get cut and as investment begins to get cut then consumption begins to get cut and that in turn induces a further cut in investment therefore you would have the economy going downhill so it's not a question of whether we recover in one year's time two years time three years time but really that the economy would be going downhill and downhill and down the way to kind of prevent this is through the injection of purchasing power by the government the injection of demand by the government you mentioned the earlier contraction for instance during the two oil shocks mid 60s in the foreign exchange crisis in the late 50s and so on all those were periods in which India was a planned economy in which the government was really duty bound to maintain its expenditure as a matter of fact its expenditures can knock because of these external shocks but the moment the shocks could be somehow absorbed or overcome the government expenditure was back again at a fairly high level but this government is not one which is actually cutting you know which actually believes in reviving expenditure I'll give you an example the 24 percent fall in GDP in the first quarter of the current year as you know the government sector that is civil administration defense and public services has itself fallen by by 10 percent 10.3 percent now the point is whenever that the economy is contracting typically the government maintains its expenditures in order to push on the impact of this contraction if anything it may raise the expenditure to counteract the contraction but as a matter of fact we have a situation where the government itself compounds the contraction which is what economists talk about government expenditure being cross cyclical rather than anti cyclical now this is what the current government believes because in a period of contraction taxes go down any taxes go down expenditure also goes down like had happened in in India during the Great Depression of the 1930s therefore since this government is not going to intervene my fear is that the economy would not just take one or two or three or four years to recover but the economy in fact may go down and down and down therefore it is essential for us to actually make this point that in the absence of government intervention the economy is going to suffer because of which the labouring poor in particular are going to be very bad thank you I fear that every word of what you what you foresee and your foreboding is is is is extremely accurate is completely accurate but that spells a very very dark future and you know when we read about the Great Depression in the United States and the suffering that it it it led to among the poor for for a very extended period of time and and that the government's fundamentalism in a sense of of as you're saying a pro-psychical rather than anti-psychical sort of interventionist interventionism makes the prospect extremely grim so Dr. Najat may I turn to you now and how do you see the present crisis what is your understanding of it thank you Harsh can you can you hear me can everybody hear me thank you yeah I thank you for this invitation I'm delighted to be here as so as it was mentioned earlier we know that economy has contracted by 24 percent in the first quarter of the current financial year compared to the same period last year as some people have said and I agree this this number could be an underestimate because the estimation of informal sector output in GDP in India is very poor in fact the quarterly estimation itself is is very poor and particularly the informal sector they are broadly you know rates and ratios applied so there is very little primary data used for quarterly GDP estimation so I won't be surprised with the actual figures would be much higher than 24 percent as some of us okay now output shrinkage of 24 percent one can expect simple like there will be a corresponding decline in employment roughly speaking of the same order and organized sector employment is relatively better protected organized sector or formal sector relatively better protect not all of them though we know from this year my data the organized workers organized sector workers have also lost jobs but the bulk of the the fall in employment would be in the organized sector as we all are aware of so output output contraction employment contraction are you know I want to to follow one so did the government respond to the crisis how did the government respond to it the distribution of some food grains under PDS distribution of free food grains and the PDS allocation rising allocation and energy this has happened we know that in the month of May the government announced a major Atma river package but we all know that most of it was was loans and concessions but not increased in public expenditure so actual additional public spending in the Atma river package was as widely estimated is about 1 percent of GDP so this has hardly added much to much to demand okay so I think the the total quantum which is supposed to reach the the the needed of the relief package was small to begin with just to give an idea I think most other countries in fact the IMF's own study shows that India's package has been in fact the least of the smallest among all emerging market economies forget about the advanced countries in fact there are estimates for for Vietnam and even Bangladesh I'm not sure the Bangladesh number but I'm sure the Vietnam number that even they their fiscal stimulus in the present crisis is far better than India it really shows how conservative Indian government has been with respect to this then then question is whatever is allocated a lot have it reached has it reached the poor and here I think you know the people from the you know reports in the ground show that very little of it or not say a large part of it hasn't actually reached the intended beneficiaries so the real benefit of it to the poor in terms of protecting incomes or you know taking care of the humanitarian crisis is probably limited yeah and one thing the NRA GA seems to have relatively done better this is my understanding I may be wrong but my understanding is that since it is a demand driven it's a self it's a self-selected program the workers who are who are who are pushed out of the urban areas when the village is demanded this and understand from the newspaper reports that there's been a rise in the number of people demanding job and and getting it so therefore the whatever is allotted for NRA GA the additional equipment seems to have been used up to a substantial extent which is a which is a good sign which is a good sign though the quantum of allocation may not be as much as many many scholars would have would like to have so this is a though the government has responded to criticism but what they have done is is is uh but only one silver lining to the entire thing is agriculture so food grains production is likely to be good despite the despite the excess rains and floods in large parts of the country my sir my guess is that overall food production is increased and demand for labour in agriculture would have correspondingly won out so to that extent to that extent it is been a it's been a you know it's a silver lining okay but let me also add a caveat here production might have gone up but has it reached the the consumer and therefore have the farmers realize the income out of it i think there are serious concerns no i think the government's estimates of agricultural GDP is at the at the at the farm gate level we are not sure of the prices but uh the Monday prices seem to suggest the prices have collapsed okay whereas the farmers where the consumers in the cities are being much high applied this has happened because of slumpions in the in the in the transport and transport system so who has who has benefited nobody i think the increased agricultural output probably will improve self consumption of peasants okay but the people who wanted to sell it in the market they probably have not realized better prices and of course the urban consumers are paying a much higher price for because of this so the overall welfare gains of of agriculture is probably much less than what the government's GDP estimates for agriculture show that's why so i think the overall effect of of of of the pandemic and the lockdown is very serious and on the it's it is a on the on the labouring poor and there are lots of field reports about which many of the other families know better so i think overall things have been been powers when you compare it with other other countries i think india's situation is far worse yeah i would stop here maybe i'll come back thank you thank you and i think we'll come back in the second round to some of the questions about what you know which you talked about what the government did could have done and did not do uh but some there's there's almost irony that that india's economy is being saved it's being saved by that sector of the economy which has been the most neglected for decades which is agriculture but also i mean and when we come back again i i worry about whether you know the next phases of the inter crops you know horticulture whether you know all of this you're going to see the same kind of of of productivity and and of course the questions of marketing of income and so on would remain so because your prognosis for the present and the future for the labouring poor okay before i come to what's happened you know during this period of pandemic and the lockdown and subsequently let me just sort of make two points about the the the the conditions in which this happened and i think there are two things that we need to understand one is that uh we had already been into a fairly prolonged process of of economic distress and in particular of agrarian distress uh preceding before any of this happened uh you know the FAO has this sort of international surveys on food insecurity which showed that in between 2017 and 19 something like 500 million people in the country were living with moderate to severe food insecurity some so so basically 50 crore people in india were were living with uh with moderate to severe food insecurity food insecurity in india increased from 2014 to 2019 uh it increased by 3.7 percent while interestingly in rest of south asia prevalence of food insecurity declined by 0.5 percent okay so we we were already living through a period where where food insecurity agrarian distress had intensified the second thing is that we have already we had been going through a phase in which government had been systematically destroying our statistical system and this is something only people like nagraj have written a lot uh but you know we know the story of what has happened to nsso surveys nsso employment surveys consumption surveys estimation of poverty gdp and you know uh anything that could tell you about about living conditions of people in this country was essentially stopped so you know now that has a bearing on what we are getting to see after the lockdown and i would like to you know i think my interpretation of what has happened particularly in the context of agriculture because that's the sector that i really look at uh is somewhat different from what nagraj just mentioned uh you see i we have been doing village studies since the time lockdown started we collected data from 44 villages across 18 different states we have been putting together massive amounts of secondary data downloading downloading downloading you know crazy amounts from whatever websites we can get hold of uh official websites we can get hold of now if you take the data on monday arrivals total quantity of arrivals and you take the price at which this this produce was sold between last year and this year taking everything together and i've downloaded data for every commodity for which data are available on eggmark net website which covers 300 different mondays and we have downloaded everything that they have over the first quarter total value of produce fell as compared to last year fell by 35 percent you see the total value of produce sold by farmers was down 35 percent now this is a period in which you had cyclone umphan you had desert locust you had 60 percent of the country had what is called uh extremely you know highly excess rainfall you had hailstorms and large parts of the country now how is it that you're saying that agricultural production was unaffected from this in fact if you look at the the press release of of the government in which the quarterly estimates were really they say estimates for for milk fish egg poultry are based on production targets so they essentially just put what they thought what was what was what was their pre-covid target for this quarter as what has been achieved they have no data about it it doesn't reflect anything of what has happened and you know there were any number of media reports of how farmers were forced to sell their very forced to abandon their abandon their perishable crop on the on the streets they were forced to dump poultry produce from dump eggs and so on so massive destruction of crop produce happened during that period of lockdown in particular the finance ministers on record having said that there was a decline in decline in uh in demand for dairy produce so you know how is it that then you come up with a number which says that Indian agriculture agricultural production has not only grown it has grown faster than it grew last year in this quarter so you know it's just basically huge amount of window dressing that has been done it is it does not reflect the condition of the ground it does not reflect anything of what we have seen it does not even reflect the data that government has has released during this period for example on the produce that farmers were selling so you know I think what thinking of agriculture as a sector which is providing some kind of relief in this period is I think grossly uh overstated this is a period in which farmers are going through severe crisis and their ability to you know employ you know extra workers because workers have lost jobs I think are seriously limited you know there's so much that they can do so so and in fact I think there is going to be this is a period in which you could see great increase in farm in nettedness and farm distress so so you know thinking that agriculture can sort of push the economy in this period I think is is an idea that's being being overstated that's that's essentially what I want to say at this point. Thank you thank you Vikas I think again some very important reminders firstly that you said that India was already sinking deeper and deeper into food insecurity in the last five years unlike our much poorer neighbors you reflected on the the propensity of our government the present government to hide bad news with with with with hiding data and and so the worries about that but I think most importantly you talked about that you know the idea that agriculture as a sector is going to save the economy is perhaps not so well well founded I go into the second part which is what brought us here and I think some many of you've talked about it what you know there are many people who would argue that no you know this is a global trend the whole world is facing a recession India is just reflecting the same global trend the virus is substantially responsible and it's an act of God to what extent is that is that justified how much of what we are seeing is really the result and of policy choices and what are these and here I wanted to really start with Prabhat because I was looking at some of the questions also in in the chat box and there's a certain you know the question is that why is the government not making these choices it's it's bewildering that the government is refusing to put more hands in more money in the hands of the poor which would have dealt with the immediate distress but also been good for the economy it's hard to understand why the government is choosing not to do this and is it that we don't really have the elbow room that these are choices that are not feasible for the government so Prabhat if if you could start off about what has led us to this situation and could the government really have done differently I was saying that there's plenty of elbow room because even though we cast we'll be right in terms of the fact that the peasants are getting 35% less value for whatever the money arrivals across but at the same time the government does have very substantial amount of food brainstorms as a result immediately if the government engaged in putting money into people's hands purchasing power which is financed entirely by a fiscal deficit that would not have any serious inflationary consequences oil prices are low therefore there will be no cost push inflation either from that side and we have plenty of food drain stocks and of course unutilized industrial capacity the system is obviously so severely demand constrained that the government can with impunity engage in deficit financing until the economy has recovered somewhat after that you can raise taxes and I would of course advocate and increase the wealth tax but at the same time the reason why the government does do this okay I think there are two different aspects to this question one is why doesn't the government do this the other is how is it that the government is allowed to get away with not doing anything of this kind now here I would like to say that you know we often talk of democracy the fights for civil liberties and democracy and so on essentially as a political question quite separate from the economic crisis economic issues as a matter of fact the government would be forced to take cognizance of this and would be forced to put purchasing power in the hands of the people and would be forced to do things which would alleviate people's distress if the people are in a position to march on the streets if trade unions can go on strike demanding that various things be done if agricultural uh if peasant organization like cultural labour organizations can actually get on to the streets okay at the moment they are problems about getting on to the streets because of the COVID-19 but at the same time there is a pervasive atmosphere of fear and I think this fear and this oppression of democracy also prevents people from uh taking to the streets and fighting for rights that would actually rectify the economic uh distress to which they are being subjected why does the government not do this I think that's it that's a very important question mind you in many in many advanced countries for instance during this very pandemic governments have taken measures to alleviate people's distress measures for instance in terms of temporarily nationalizing private healthcare providing as we have heard providing relief packages substantially higher than what India has done but I think in the case of India there is a kind of kowtowing to the dictates of finance which is unparalleled anywhere else in the world I mean I think our government is far more subservient to the dictates of finance because you know in finance as you know does not really like large government involvement in the economy doesn't like uh large fiscal deficits and therefore the government kowtows to them now every other government has actually shown some spunk in actually providing relief to the people even by running up huge public uh huge fiscal deficits but on the other hand not the Indian government in that sense the Indian government is far more subservient to the dictates of global finance international finance than any other government I think their thinking is derived from that of finance and that thinking carries the day because people are not allowed to march in the streets to counter that thinking the same question I think to other panelists I think what needs to be done there's probably a significant degree of agreement between us I think everyone would agree with what Prabhupāda said that we need to massively expand demand by public spending both by putting money substantial amount of more money in the hands of the labouring poor and in infrastructure projects and so on so forth which uh you know the question really is one more of political economy why is our government refusing uh refusing to take steps which would both make life more bearable for the survival of the labouring poor and would rescue the economy for all of us so really it's more a question about what is you know why are we what has brought us to this situation in terms of public policy choices and why are we why is our government making these choices uh you on you on bremen uh you've been a critic of course consistently of of of governments in the past as well you've talked about how we've never built uh you know a structure of of of welfare and of the protections of labour so so in that background how do you understand the political economy of of of public of public policy choices that the government is making even at this moment well harsh let me uh reply to that question by uh saying a little bit about situation in my own country i'm talking to you from far away sitting in a country and society in which the labouring poor who are there they are there very much so but they have voice they have political uh voice and assertion and uh that climate of fear that prabha talked about is very important because uh it seems that the labouring poor in india do not have political voice or even political representation in my own country there there is also COVID-19 no doubt about that there has been a lot now and life is coming back slowly uh and uh prudently because the pandemic is not over by no means is it over but the pandemic in my country a well-to-do country i must say in in the west uh the pandemic uh happened in a situation in which both the level of the standard of living was much higher than in india has been so far and not only the standard of living was higher it was also more proportionately divided and in the ice the case we have to understand the impact of the pandemic also as uh progressive inequality instead of uh of uh reducing uh inequality by looking after as uh what mr ghandi would have said the last and the least uh uh there's no doubt that uh and that's what already has been said basically the informal economy has become a black box we do not know what is going on there and there are just assumptions and estimates and guesstimate i uh i should uh say we do not know the the the quantity of contraction but the contraction is certainly much more than a quarter of gdp it may rise up to one third of gdp as has also been said in my own country the impact of the pandemic is a contraction of the economy by eight to ten percent and that uh proportion you will find uh in most of the advanced economies so what is very clear is that the the the the catching up as they are so bravely called the catching up economies and developing nations uh are much more badly affected than the advanced countries and the disadvantaged countries i should say what is uh noticeable also that while this crisis is going on all talk about sharing the wealth of the world more equally between the countries the nations and the people uh is out of fashion these days uh countries and societies look after their own concern they are inwardly looking there is no solidarity uh i think that india is among the worst affected countries also because the the the government seem to have washed its hands of the labouring poor uh do not forget when we talk about hunger that according to the global hunger index already at the beginning of this year india stood at the bottom of that ranking uh at the position of 111 out of 127 that was the global the position of the global labour index for india and that has uh as has already been said uh become even worse than it was uh so there was not only a higher standard of living in my country but also there was welfarism there was the the the the the concern that what happened in my economy basically affected the those who were lesser educated who earned less over what shall i say disadvantaged in the job market that understanding is not there among the government in india and that has to do not only with the climate of fear which leads to a kind of self-censorship also for the labouring poor also for the labouring poor self-censorship but uh it is a situation in which the the government does not feel accountability to the labouring poor it has no accountability and by washing it hands it also hides the condition of the labouring poor by not collecting data by not collecting data on what is happening and of course there are a large number of civil uh society initiatives think of action eight think of viego of of of seiva uh there are a lot of of civil uh society uh initiatives the problem is government does not accept the figures and the estimates put forward by these voluntary agencies because they say we only rely on public data collected by official agencies but having destroyed official agencies to collect the the the data are not there so the absence of information on what it means is progressive uh properization of the labouring poor is not something that comes out of the blue it is basically a scenario a script which is by being written by the government itself by sweeping under the carpet the condition of the poor the government seems to think that it can ignore what is happening there what all of us may may not sufficiently be aware of is the growing anger among the labouring poor of what is happening to them when they were were walking out of the cities that was out of despair no no doubt about that but it was also an act of resistance by walking away because they felt betrayed they felt cheated by what was happening to them repairing to the countryside has not solved the problem of course and that has already been documented uh fair enough and far enough but we should learn more we should learn more about what is happening to the labouring poor in order to put it on public record but when it is put on public record it is not accepted by the government that is the problem yeah in fact in the last part of the third part of the discussion we didn't need to talk about how in these circumstances how can we force our government to act differently and we'll come to that but rena may i come to you next and the question that we're asking here is that the solutions are not complex to understand and the solutions could have led to the relieving distress in the immediate run but also protected the economy from its worst impacts why are we not making these political choices and these economic choices how what is your understanding of that rena please um hush i before i get to that i just want to say something that you had mentioned that the progress um on food intake what people keep producing and that at some point people will be going to sleep hungry um i wanted to say it doesn't it's not really unfortunately there's very little information about that but uh what our service show was that during the lockdown the first three months or so people were going to sleep hungry there were many many families who were going to sleep who maybe had one meal a day and no more and that was happening and you know in the first two months the pds system was supposed to distribute to everybody free but it didn't there were huge gaps it was only in the third month that things got somewhat sorted out and even today it's much better than it was the first two months but there are definitely big gaps of food just basic food reaching the people and also you must realize that the pds is only giving grain so uh you know just dry rotis is that what you would call uh food so i think you know we can't discount the level of hunger that happened during the lockdown so i just wanted to make that point and if i could just you know add and supplement to it you know in some ways it you know for the for the homeless we found it's even got worse because in delhi for instance at least 10 lakh meals were being distributed we were critical of the way people were made to stand in line all day etc but they were distributing 10 lakh meals that has also stopped and there's no employment opportunities so yeah so and and then you know there's no information or so on about that and uh going to statistics um and the kind of statistics government use i just wanted to say i was on another webinar and somebody from the finance ministry was there and they were very proudly quoting a study by dalberg on how much of the government relief had actually reached people but something like 96 percent of food had reached 96 percent of the people and so on without mentioning when i actually went into the survey that 96 percent of people had got one time in four months at least one time in four months and um similarly the relief on cash transfers was actually very poor the jandhan again i don't have the exact figures but large numbers did not get it and who did get it was you know what is 500 rupees so so you know they are using statistics but they're uh it's not that they're manufacturing but they're um actually conducting these surveys and then putting them out to show how good the relief has been totally ignoring so many other surveys i want to make that point about statistics uh i you know we're part of a joint action of trade unions so all the trade unions have got together except bms for some reason and um uh has been trying to um you know make these statements put demands and so on and there were a number of demonstrations and uh everybody of course got arrested um and nobody knows about that which brings me to the point that i really want to make why is it not happening why is this misery not coming out is the role of the media the media is totally sold out almost totally there are a few exceptions and uh protests um misery all that you don't see it at all i mean you see these terrible uh things about uh what's his name sushant singh rajput and riya chakravarti and kangana whatever run out that's what's dominating the media and uh i remember reading this thing on why india doesn't have famines anymore by amartya sen and it it was because because of the publicity that goes along the media and the media has stopped playing that role completely it did a little bit during the migrant crisis and that's when people came out and tried to help and all kinds of things happened and now we've forgotten all that so i i think what the media has done has has desensitized has dumbed down has just killed any real um debate and that is because the government has full control of this media so i i'd like to say that finally just to say that one of the things that the crisis had revealed was the weakness of many of our social security systems the extreme weakness of the social security systems um perhaps it did bring out the strengths of the pds system uh somebody said norega was doing well i just saw survey and i am seeing this also from my own experience um 10 percent of people uh who have of the migrants who've gone back have received any men are working on norega at all and i personally and i know this will make me unpopular but i personally believe that rather than norega we should have just put cash in the hands of people so those are the things i wanted to say i think many valuable points about um uh you know invisible hunger on the role of the media which has allowed the state to be protected from any kind of accountability and what amartya san had said that the media plays a very important role to to prevent famine i feel that the growing creeping scattered invisible famine that is growing in our country has been made more invisible by the media and then also the weaknesses of our social security uh systems nagraj how would you like to very briefly talk about you know you had in your first interventions talked about the things that the government did but clearly they were not enough and why what could why have they not done what needs to be done in your assessment yeah thank you uh i yeah i i still try to figure out why government uh uh why uh government does not want to do it even now i think brahav had a uh interesting argument that we are we are scared of the or the power of the power of finance you know international global finance and uh and we are so subservient to the global finance that we do not want to raise our voice or we don't want to take a view which is but you know i would i i would go a step further than what the prabhav said in fact even imf has said india has room for more public spending in fact even one of the uh one of the leading uh one rating agencies uh moody's or snp or one of those even they have said that india has india has more room to to spend uh so often they are very uh very very carefully stated statement but the fact that even they have said but yet the government is unwilling to uh unwilling to uh to heed to any of these voices shows that there's something far deeper than the the international financial you know fear i think there's something more than that what is that you know that's a i think that's a very political question you know i think it's a it's an extremely you know ideologically conservative government i think that's the that's only every prince you know i can draw because it's it genuinely believes that you know that people should take care of the checks i think you know when they say it's basically saying your life is your problem i mean i'm being very blunt uh i think i think it generally believes when when the migrants are walking listen it's it's your problem uh so i think you know otherwise very interesting i mean you may think i'm being generous to be gone see if if bgp wants to do social service they can do it i mean they have invented the grassroot level we all know many of you know better than i they have the almost capable like i mean in fact i was talking to people uh you know in the bhopal uh tragedy 1984 i'm told i was never in the bhopal that time but i was told that the whole society came forward including i mean the civil society across political and the communal uh whatever divide they all came together together to help people who are affected so i think even if the bjp decides to say look we have created lockdown unprecedented lockdown we must help i think the grassroots of the party can do a lot more but somehow for some reason they have not done it this i believe has something to do with the deep ideology with the present regime is that's my uh that's my inference and that's the inferential that's forever that's only um yeah i think i'll stop here thank you i think i think that that it is an ideological position we're holding it deep conservatism market fundamentalism uh of of the government which stands in its way uh you know what you said about the migrants have actually said this to me that we have to fend for ourselves they actually took the prime minister's statement exactly you know interpreted in that way with a lot of bitterness uh because uh you know how do you see the political economy of uh the choices that we are making uh which is rendering uh the situation of the poor the labouring poor so so so much more precarious then it needed to be missing missing your voice because yeah i would like to make two points one is to add to what pravath and nagar had said you know and there's no denying that there's a great need right now to to put money in the hands of people uh but you know uh if you look at india's experience with in respect to anti-poverty programs from the 1980s or you know any sort of the whole range of social protection programs that india has experimented with over the last several decades one thing that stands out very clearly is that programs which involve kind transfers work the best you know pds or food for work programs of the 1980s for the ones that you know really had a very significant impact on on alleviating poverty and distress on the other hand programs which are which involve transfer of money cash you know there is a greater problem of leakages you know whether it's rdp of the 1980s kind or or or other or jandan yojna of of today's kind this is not to say that there's no need to transfer money right now there is indeed a great need to transfer money right now in the hands of people but there is also a huge possibility of doing in kind transfers beyond just providing the great i mean why can't the state for example uh say every all dairy cooperatives will be provided 10 rupees per liter of milk that they procure on the condition that they will bring down the prices of milk the retail prices of milk why can't they say that we are going to provide eggs to every child every school going child every young and mighty going child or or or women and so on or milk or or so many other things you know why can't you say you know restart your midday meal program and say okay children can still come to school get their midday meal and go back home you know even if you don't want to do classroom teaching and so on subject to following social distance physical distancing norms and so on you can surely provide nutrition there are so many services where you can why can't you just hire a large number of health workers sanitation workers and you know and the money workers to to deal with a whole range of things of teachers for that matter tutors you know there there's a huge possibility of providing goods and services to people which could both go a long way in in alleviating their distress as well as generating huge amount of employment so you know there are all kinds of possibilities of what the state should be doing that's my first point the second point I want to make is that we are living in a world in which the state is consciously manipulating data and we don't know what all it's doing you see on the 5th of May we looked at data on energy work that was created in the month of April it was the lowest in the last in the entire history it was the month with lowest level of employment generated in the entire history of the program okay now then a month later you go back and the data for April have been revised and a huge amount of general employment has suddenly appeared from nowhere now please note that in during the lockdown the exemption to energy the letter the notification which exempted energy from lockdown was issued only on 20th of April on 20th of April central government issued the notification you know that notification would have reached the states and then to the districts and and by the time you would have created work the month was over now how is it that so much work was created in the month of April and if you actually go deep into the the NREGA MIS website you find that there are several cases where much more than 10 days of work was generated in the month of April when there was a lockdown and there was no exemption for NREGA work in fact my colleagues Dr. Pais and and Baladarnayadam have done a statistically sort of sampled panchayats in Tamil Nadu done a survey on how much work has been generated under NREGA and there are huge discrepancies between what is being reported on the website and what is actually happening on the ground you know I mean it's perhaps and I'm speculating a bit here perhaps what is happening is that once a work is sanctioned it's just recorded as having been done you know things of that kind and we have no idea what is going on there is zero transparency in this whole system of building of administrative statistics we have no idea where these numbers are coming from who's feeding these numbers into the website what is being manipulated these numbers are routinely revised to the convenience of the government and they have zero sense you know today you see something on the amount of employment that's generated on in NREGA in the month of august 15 days later it will be a different number you don't know what's going on and you cannot explain this so you know I think we are living in a situation where access to information is rarely curtailed and anything that is problematic is routinely manipulated and watched you know that's the situation we are coming I don't think there's ever been a time when we have been able to trust our government as little as it as we do today you know the data the information the prime minister's own words you know whether it is on on the China conflict but whether it is on on employment whether it is on on on NREGA or anything else it's dealing with optics rather than with truth you know in this very desperate situation of this massively growing disaster the last question and I have my eye on the watch and therefore I request short reply so that we can also answer some of the questions that our audience have raised Anupan would be presenting those questions my last question to which I need which is the hardest question is what needs to be done there seems very little labor of civil society mobilization against the government very little organized anger little sustained political action by the opposition and even less willingness of the government to heed our prescriptions what can then be done to save our people from this massive growing disaster you know I you know among other things I wanted to draw your attention there was a lead cover story by Time Magazine recently where they describe you know one migrant workers distressed and all the suffering that he went through and at the end of the article they say that they asked him you know with all his anguish and anger who are you going to vote for and he immediately said Modi ji and and and then they actually he had spoken to me as well and he'd asked me why do I think this is happening and I'm saying that the only way I can understand this is that we have been you know hate has been is now like a drug that has that has been injected into the veins of of society in a way that we are intoxicated in this heat and in this intoxication everything even unemployment even hunger is acceptable I mean there's something in the politics that that that we need to understand and we need to be able to fight and what is it that we need to do for for people to to have you know constructive anger and mobilization to make the government work for for for for the people of this country what do we need to do I think that that's really a question and also in Nadra talked about conservatism I worry about whether it's conservatism or it is really crony capitalism that we're talking about as well is it subservience to finance for ideological reasons alone or or or or or or something more than that these are very hard difficult questions so so where do we see hope for for for people mobilizing for change and here I thought just a minute or two each I'll go in the reverse order because I'll start with you and and then I'll hand over to Barn for some of the audience questions because Harsha I think there's also a positive side to what you said you know and I think we need to also recognize that and see how that can be built on one is so you know while when the lockdown happened that you know suddenly everybody was was stuck and we didn't know what to do and so on but you know if you look at the last two months I don't think any week has gone when people have not been protesting I mean even today in Haryana there's been a very large protest of of farmers two days back you know farmers were protesting across the country and this is something that's been happening throughout you know workers and peasants and with all the constraints I mean yes I mean it's not as much as it should have been and there are problems in terms of how much we are able to mobilize but you know this is something that has been building and and one is seeing greater and greater mobilization and I I hope this is something that picks up more steam so it is something that is happening and you know there is a need to build this further and I I think that's possible the second thing I I mean I really it's interesting you know you you made this point about you know the hatred being the drug you know this is a country which you know came into being with that hatred you know I mean we you know we went through partition and all the violence that happened with partition and then on that foundation built a secular secular country with with the constitution that we have and and so on and so forth so I mean I do think that there is a possibility for the progressive forces of this country to take the country in a different direction to to to you know get this country out of this drug that has been once again fed to people and and and changed the course of history we've done it before and I think it's possible to do it again inshallah not do it yeah I I'm happy to learn from because of the that these farmers protests going on and I I I'm happy but my own impression are something different when I do follow the media but what is surprising is even the organized workers when their rights are being taken away very little seems to be happening I mean I'll just give you one example recently I wrote something up in the Hindu newspaper and somebody's senior from Bangalore called me in the in the government called me and said what you said is absolutely right and he said there are workers are not protesting in very little protest only thing they are doing is workers the workers unions are filing cases in the in the in the courts in labor courts against the dilution of labor laws but very very few of them are actually on the streets I mean this is about the supposedly the organized workers in Bangalore city Bangalore city the history of the trade union movement so that made me very I mean very very depressed and you know then I was wondering where are we heading so I would love to share Vikas's optimism or so but as of today again I was with some trade unions in Bombay again I got a similar picture look nothing much is happening so I would love to share it but I would like to believe that this is not happening at the ground level but maybe I don't have the the sense of it I hope I'm wrong thank you I hope your wrong is well Prabhakar yeah you know one thing this government has done is to really break up solidarities among people in fact not only has it broken up solidarities in the sense of pitting against Muslims and minorities and so on but it has actually atomized people and this is something which is a point where the interests of Hindutva and the interests of capital coincide because capital hates having workers united in opposition to it and that's why I always call think of this government as a sort of corporate Hindutva alliance and one of the achievements it has had is to really break up the resistance and break up the people now to the extent and you know it is it is that coming together of the people that actually makes even parties with conservative ideologies yield ground after all the stories are not people who particularly wanted a welfare state but they find it very difficult to dismantle it because of the anger of the people now I think these people our current dispensation has really you know gone beyond that kind of constraints because on the one hand you cannot mobilize large numbers of people partly because for the time being the kind of pandemic but by the way they were worried at the time of the anti-caa protests because that was one occasion when hundreds and thousands of people actually came together now likewise because is is is right and and I and there is this demonstration taking place by peasants everywhere if there could be a million peasants in Delhi tomorrow they have to in that case the government be forced to take cognizance of their problems no matter what their ideology so so the point is that you know is the constraint of this kind atomizing the people deaking them into dispersed individuals who have nothing in common each of them then says yes I'm going to vote for Modi each of them then actually sees his problem in complete isolation from from everything else that is number one and number two using Hindutva as a plan for mobilizing votes and you know so so all this has to be broken through collective action and of course to the extent that Vikas has his faith in the collective actions taking place now I suppose our only hope lies in carrying this forward carrying this much further and and and you know this is where I think the trade unions the left the voluntary organizations all have to come together actually launch people's problems yeah sure Renana your quick point on this um Harsh I'm quite pessimistic I don't think that people are protesting in or are feeling the need to protest or feeling even that the government has done something wrong they're suffering but you know it's not the government who's done something wrong maybe if I didn't get my pds allotment or I didn't have a ration card and I didn't get it it wasn't the government it was the way that things are happening and I must so so the government and you know the act of God and Nirmala Sitaraman's act of God of course it came in on the GST context because they didn't want to honor the agreement but I do feel that that's you know if that is what common people are normal people at least our members that it's all the whole COVID crisis has really scared people maybe they say why doesn't government help us more but there's no huge feeling that all this is happening because of government so I don't think that what is happening and what at least so far is going to lead to many more protests that the farmers protest is against a particular action of the government with the APMC allowing restricting the APMCs but that's a very specific thing and the government may yield to who knows it's not a general satisfaction that things have gone terribly wrong so and that is going to happen these kind of protests do happen and continue to happen on particular things that affect you at that particular time and I just like to say you know everybody has such great faith in the trade unions we've been working as a trade union and with organized sector trade unions for a long time and it's not just this government the power of the trade unions has decreased tremendously through direct reason for as soon as soon after liberalization started so it didn't happen yesterday or five years ago it's been happening over the last 25 years and the power of trade unions is very low now very low so not and of course we have this huge propaganda machine and the propaganda machine is you know downplayed as you rightly say plays up the identity your religious identity and plays down your identity as a worker or as any other being so I don't see reasons to hope I'm sorry it's it's quite quite pessimistic we're all struggling with that young you know from a little distance with all your years of insight what do you think I mean how will things change well I'm not very optimistic of course same time I think I'm realistic and I don't see any political forces at work at the moment who are able to change the predicament of the labouring poor what has been addressed in our panel discussion is basically the role of the state much more and Prabhat has said that already than the role of capital and of a kind of predatory capital for a lifting up for emancipation for social decency and dignity of the labouring poor a broad acceptance of the principle of equality and equity of social justice and tolerance is required and that seems to be lacking in the state at the moment those voices are there in society and we all come across them whenever we move around and whenever we move around but they don't seem to reach the parliament they don't seem to reach the state and that's a problem that is a problem another problem is that the politics of fear of intimidation of harassment which lead also to a kind of self-censorship not only among the intellectual class but also among the labouring poor what has been said in passing is also that the pandemic has led to increased indebtedness of the labouring poor and that makes for dependency that does not make for counter failing forces so we should basically worry also over the lack of a combined opposition political opposition to the rule of the current set of power mongers in the country at large which they have a lot of leverage in dictating their agenda and there is not an attempt to organize the opposition in strong in strong forces as a counter failing power may i leave with that that harsh yeah i i think that we have to invent and strengthen a politics of solidarity and that is truly the only way to fight the economic crisis the crisis of the labouring poor and and the crisis of of of of fraternity as well which we are facing and what that politics of solidarity will be how will we build it i think has to preoccupy us most of all a couple of things one i think this question of why is corporate india still supporting this government i think essentially because they think they are this this government is the best bet to to extract whatever remains of the pie that you know a disproportionate amount of it goes to crony capitalists this this regime is is their best bet so so so sure enough monies and and anise would would would would go on with with this regime but you know i it's just why i think more enriched is also a question yes exactly this is the regime that would make sure that despite all this they get more enriched and and and therefore uh you know the the bulk of the the the what the government does in this situation actually ends up benefiting crony capitalists the capitalists and and and so on so so there's that but you know i think you know one has to strike a balance between not becoming unrealistic and not becoming overly pessimistic and i think one has to see you know you know there's no denying that there has been a setback in our ability to to resist a regime of this kind a regime that's divisive and destructive insofar as people's welfare is concerned that you know we are today weaker than than we were but at the same time you know i think it's important to look at the the green shoots it's important to see where we can build from and and and and you know work on that i think the point you made about the need for solidarities and i i'm reminded of you know that very important slogan that was used during the CAA protests you know i think that's a slogan that needs to be you know raised and and people have to come together and and you know find out we want to you know get back this country so so i think i just talked to i loved another slogan forwards you divide we multiply uh so that's where the whole place did none of we lost you would you like to come in uh yeah sorry i sort of lost some connection so you heard the questions and i heard i heard the two questions yes i did hear the closing and i was just thinking on the uh bihar elections um and uh you know we do work in bihar and one of the i mean the main thing that is happening is that there is no really good opposition the rj rjd was the only real opposition and that is now quite divided uh as you know they it's jailed lalu prasad um in order to prevent his he's the one with the charisma and so that's happened his family's divided rtd and um there's i don't see huge disillusionment with the present sarkar so um is this going to the bihar migrants have come the thing that they were very upset about of course was some remarks that he made about uh migrants and not getting the migrants back but uh is and also what you said earlier uh the religious propaganda machine has really grown in bihar i've seen it happen over the last uh five years seven years so uh is it going to is something going to happen let's see it doesn't look like you that's my the corporate sector one i don't really have any and uh yeah we still have to fight uh fight for solidarity i feel that that has to be the hope otherwise we lose everything and sorry i'm being so i was quite pessimistic but we have to have solidarity and that's what we've been trying to put together it's just that you know it's so much harder now than it was even 10 years ago so it's but of course you do one does have to keep on trying and things change things happen uh circumstances change so maybe things will completely change we don't know yeah i agree you know the politics of solidarity is the only way forward i agree we need to move forward on that and yeah about uh why catalysts i think again the the question of fear is i think very evident uh in fact my interaction my very limited interaction with the intersection of people from sub-bombay uh and various uh and some industry associations uh there's a i mean what they say publicly and what they say privately is is is completely different and uh so here many of them are uh very much so it is true that a true select uh conglomerates are the favorite of the of the present regime and they are they are multiplying i mean their assets and their their power is multiplying we all know but that doesn't represent the entire catalyst class uh i mean i mean one can think of instances therefore i think the but when will the there'll be a polarization and and that will have that will get reflected in politics i don't know if people will say but i see ultimately uh business plays an important role in in politics and in everyone know it so how will uh how will they affect uh i don't know they just like what happened during janta regime uh you know when the at the end of the uh of emergency and lots of businessmen back the janta party we all know about it so when will that kind of a uh turn will happen with anybody's case at the moment but to say that the entire catalyst class is together uh that i'm not but uh it is true some of them are enormously not getting out you're uh you're losing comment uh well this goes back to the to the main problem we are discussing uh in this panel and how to change the miserable predicament of the laboring uh poor uh problem is that in the current setting of the economy they are redundant to demand it seems they are as a kind of reserve army of labor which is not continuously employed often not employed uh and increasingly less employed so many of the laboring poor are redundant to demand and one can say one can that that is also the problem of creating a solidarity solidarity is also based on a joint interest a common interest it should be important to have the laboring poor along instead of deporting them to the margins of society it seems that the current political regime in india has been ideologically very successful and it is quite popular still uh that is also uh what shall i say a major barrier to creating uh solidarity between the social classes while the current political regime has been quite successful ideologically it has miserably failed economically and increasingly so it's not only the laboring poor which is who are heard also the middle classes it has not taken away their commitment ideological commitment to the current regime but they are also puzzled about the economic failure and in order to change the plight of the of the laboring poor it is important to change their purchasing power of course let us for a moment compare india to china where both nations were let's say 50 years ago and where they are now and however authoritarian and also repressive gufra the government of china is today the common chinese men women women and child they have prospered under an economic regime which was focused on them on creating welfare where welfare was missing on adding the purchasing power where there was no purchasing power in terms of poverty alleviation the the the record of the chinese government is impressive of course and in india the current crisis pandemic crisis is even utilized by the political class to further deepen the price of labor to ask labor to work not eight hours but to work 12 hours not to be paid overtime and no having no labor rights well that takes away all kinds of solidarity is of course not only between classes but also between state and society so as long as adding to the purchasing power of the laboring is not seen as economically very rational and very logical as long that that does not happen the price of labor in india will be further driven down and that makes for and that's what i began to say not for poverty but for populism uh so friends we've overshot time a bit i be proud to tell that all of you came here it was a very somber discussion but i think that you know some people ask why did you why do you invite people who are like-minded i think like-minded people have to come together to think about you know some of the biggest challenges of our times and and see cancers and in that spirit all of you coming together in solidarity was very valuable i think that we will go back to many of the points that you spoke and i hope we'll keep meeting again to make sense of our times i just wanted to end with you know where do i see my optimism so martin Luther king somewhere said that the arc of history is long but in the end it bends towards justice uh how long and when it will it bend towards justice is something that i keep asking myself but it will bend towards justice and uh yopulsad the french philosopher said you don't fight fascism because you will win you fight fascism because it is fascism and i think maybe maybe that's that has to be a obvious strength and that's all so thank you all of you