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With this few words I'd like to extend our 1a welcome to the distinguished अआण और जींग at end sa meri ran in this webinar. यह � slime बवआश़ जा Hautinad उई मृकःःनीु का, swoją शी कुष् आँस, कुई। शाउस लगे, наши. व迎 ना वी ज़गी is सब आप의, था मोस्ति Studios िंके बाज� अरीव्टरी, अरेव्टीाशंट आदाद, Both are welcome. इन्टीट में तेदिजाा आप कोई ठांने इ स्विवाल, It's indeed my pleasure and privilege to welcome you all to the online lecture series organized by सुल्जोकमा लिया को ब्रुछ्टी सींशद, KK's state of the university, अगव्टीश सिएंट तो बन जानदूज वाए, This is sixth lecture in the series and the idea of having these lectures is primarily terms has been hosted by the various disciplines of school this particular lecture has been hosted by discipline of sociology and social work jointly and also to Prof. Indoreal Bhoomi for kindly agreeing to chair the program. Let me take a couple of minutes to introduce our speaker and the chair today. Prof. Deepak Mishra is currently teaching at the Centre for State of Regional Development, CSRD, JNU. He also taught at Raghavan University Department of Economics for quite some time before joining NENU. He has been the CCR Chair Professor International Centre for South Asian Studies at Russian State University for Humanities. He was also a Commonwealth Visiting Fellow Department of International Development, Queen Elizabeth House University of Oxford and also South Asian Visiting Fellow in Department of International Development, Queen Elizabeth House Oxford once again during 2007. His areas of interest and specialisation includes political economy of agrarian change, economic transformation of mountain economies, rural livelihood and agrarian institution, migration and human development. His many publications include books unfolding crisis in Assam's tea plantation and employment and occupational mobility. Then he also published a book, The Internal Migration in Contemporary India and also another book, Rethinking Economic Development in North East India. So I welcome on behalf of the school and the university, Deepak. And the Indranil Vomik, let me introduce him and welcome. He is teaching economics in the Tripura University. He currently heads the department of economics there. His areas of interest include agricultural economics, plantation issues, economy of North East, public economics, issues related to migration and development. So we are very happy and pleased to have these two eminent scholars, academics amidst us to discuss a very important issue. And then we hope that we will have a very fruitful discussion today. So without much further ado, let me invite Indranil Vomik to take the chair, charge of the chair and take this forward. Before that, may I request all the participants to kindly mute their mics, because if their mics are on, it will be very disturbing. And if you have any questions during the deliberation, please use the chat box to write it down. Our colleagues will note down those queries and comments and pass it on to the speaker to respond. So with this initial remarks, let me invite Indranil Vomik to take the charge and take these things forward. Thank you. Thank you and good evening. My network is very slow. I am not sure whether you can hear me clearly, but it's a big pleasure for me. I humbly thank the Honourable Vice Chancellor of KK Hendrick University, Prof. Sharma, Prof. Bhuruva, the main organiser and the chair director for the Suriyakumar Bhuvan School of Social Sciences. There is this person, Prof. Deepak Mishra, it's a pleasure that I am listening to you, all the participants and colleagues from KK Hendrick University. The topic, as we all know, is extremely relevant and particularly from the point of North-Eastern India. We do have various ways of looking into it. We are vulnerable. We have a large migrant population. We have a large number of in-migrants. We have a large number of out-migrants. And in contemporary India, we need to consider where do we stand. So without making any further delay, I would humbly request Prof. Deepak Kumar Mishra to make his presentation. We can always get back to him after his presentation is over. Prof. Mishra, the stage is all yours please. Thank you. Good evening friends. I am also grateful to the Vice Chancellor. After his presentation is over. Prof. Bharwa. Am I audible? Yes, you are. Good evening friends. It's a pleasure indeed to be part of this conversation. I am grateful to the Vice Chancellor and Prof. Bharwa and other organizers for giving me this opportunity to share my thoughts on something which is in our minds ever since we have seen those images of migrant workers desperately trying to get back to their homes. But let me begin with a caveat if you in fact one is that I normally don't work on policy areas. I would like to describe myself as a field economist. So my understanding of migration processes are primarily through my field survey, primary field research based understanding of the processes on the ground. But since the vulnerability of migrant workers has been one of the widely discussed topics and there is always a question at the end of all kinds of discussions that I have been part of as to what can be done. So I have ventured into this area of at least looking at few ingredients of an inclusive migration policy for India. And I am sure that your suggestions, your critics and comments would help me to further develop some of these ideas. So let me start sharing my screen first and is my screen visible please. Yes, yes. Thank you. Now for all researchers who have been working on migration and various aspects of it. The lack of adequate data to begin with and adequate understanding of the conditions of migrant workers was known to them than before the pandemic. It's a pandemic, a humanitarian crisis of such proportion, huge proportion that finally brought migrant workers into the focus of policy circles and it is a sad commentary on our understanding of the vulnerabilities that sections of our working classes face on a day to day basis. In a sense, migrant workers made themselves very visible by reacting to the crisis. But their statistical and policy invisibility is clear from the fact that in the initial responses to the crisis, migrant worker as a distinct category was not even taken into account. Only when we were confronted with those images of despair that we started to recognize at least we started to empathize with the problems faced by migrant workers. Initially, however, they were treated as deviants as a law and order problem, not only during the process of migration, reverse migration, but also at the origins. They were stigmatized and isolated. So this treatment says something about the way migration and migrant workers remain invisible to our dominant, remain invisible in our dominant policy discourses for a long time. However, after that, after the initial phase, there were lots of efforts both by the government and by the civil society and of course by researchers to understand this crisis, to understand various dimensions of this crisis. I've just listed some of the quick surveys, rapid assessment and other kinds of surveys and the conclusions are not very surprising. We find that there was a catastrophic loss of funding, employment because of the lockdown, decline in consumption expenditure of households, food security and hunger increased, health crisis not only during the first and second wave, but also the post COVID debt burden caused by catastrophic health expenditure. There is kinds of violence. But two aspects of this survey, I think I would like to emphasize the first one is that even when the eligibility criteria were made and even when there were some assistance which were provided by the government, the reach left much to be desired. It is not enough. Secondly, at least one of the surveys point out that even within the category of migrant workers, vulnerable migrant workers, you find that people belonging to socially marginalized groups suffered more. Same is true of the recovery, there is a significantly diverse, significant diversity in terms of the way livelihoods have been recovered post the initial phases of the crisis. Simply because we became aware of, at least more aware of the conditions of vulnerability of migrant workers during a crisis, that is always a danger of assuming that it was primarily because of the nature of the crisis, the anonymity of the crisis, the suddenness of the crisis and hence our responses might be sort of or in response to a crisis situation. But there are long term questions as it is pointed out many a times that unless we look at the structural reasons behind the crisis of survival, the long term reasons which caused such kind of a response, we probably will not be able to design or develop a kind of a response which is required to address the problem. So, I would like to focus more on the long term reasons and the presentation that I will share with you today is basically in two parts. In one part, I would like to share my understanding about what are the reasons for which such a vulnerable workforce is there in India in the first place and what are the conditions in which these vulnerabilities are created, reproduced and sustained over a period of time. So, that's the first part and second part can something be done about it in terms of policy, if we think of policy, so what are the options that we have, what are the basic ingredients of such a policy which is inclusive in nature. The nature of economic growth that we had in India and this is many of us know about this that the structural change that followed, first of all it was slow and when it started to take place in the in the past two decades or so, we see that the out migration of labour from agriculture did not lead to an expansion of significant expansion of the workforce in manufacturing. It's not manufacturing which observed the labour force which was displaced, but the labour which was displaced, but primarily this labour was engaged in the service sector, in particular in the urban informal sector. Even if we disregard the fluctuations in the growth trajectory by and large, even in periods of relatively robust growth in per capita income, we see that employment expansion has been very slow and it has been catastrophic in the past few years before the crisis, before the pandemic. So, on the one hand, a tiny section of the service sector workers are being able to access better paid, highly globally integrated jobs, but on for the majority this transformation has meant a movement, a mobility from agriculture to largely the urban informal economy, which of course is highly diverse. Informal economy is characterized by lack of social security, but it is also a sector which absorbs lots of diverse forms of employment from self-employment to unpaid family workers, wage workers, so on and so forth. All studies on migration flows in India point to the segmented flows. It's not only diverse, it's segmented. The migration flows are segmented. That means that not everyone who is migrating are having similar kind of experience at the destinations. Now, if you look at the background of this migration, the background factors in this migration, I think three conceptual frames or three ideas about the Indian economy need to be taken into account to understand the context. The first one is on even development. Post reform economic growth has been highly unequal in terms of inter-regional disparities and interpersonal disparities. So, increasing inter-regional disparities in terms of level of development and the trajectories of development has meant that from the relatively less developed areas, labor has started to move out to relatively more prosperous areas. There are micro-linkages in terms of labor flows across the states and regions, particularly, there are talks of an internal demographic division where my labor from the relatively more populous but less developed states have started to move out to, in search of employment in the relatively more developed or at least growing states in western and southern India in particular. However, an inter-state understanding of this process may not be adequate because in every state we find there are regions which are more backward than others and often the distinction between migrant sending states and receiving states gets blurred as it was pointed out by Prof. Bhoomi in the context of Northeast India that the same states or same regions could be sending migrants as well as receiving migrants. So, inter-state disparities may not give us a complete understanding of this on even development which is at the root of these outmigration processes. The second point is about the prolonged agrarian crisis and rural distress. Now, it is of course for partly at least policy induced, many would argue largely policy induced change in the sphere of agriculture and the rising cost of inputs in agriculture and the fluctuating and unreliable prices in the output market are the reasons behind the prolonged period of crisis. But let me point out that the agrarian crisis is often described in terms of indicators like the suicide of farmers. Suicides are in fact an extreme manifestation of the crisis, but the absence of suicides doesn't mean that there is an absence of crisis. Similarly, at times the agrarian crisis is described in terms of the fluctuating productivity growth in agriculture. I think a better way to capture the distress dimension is to look at the inability of a large sections of the presentry and agricultural labour force solely on the basis of agriculture. So, there are various evidences to point out that apart from a very tiny sections of very large farmers, the incomes from agriculture are not simply enough for the survival and reproduction of households in agriculture. So, a natural outcome of that is a kind of diversification of livelihoods and one form of diversification is through the spatial reallocation of livelihoods. However, this spatial reallocation of livelihood could be accumulative or destructive. For some, this could be a means to invest their agrarian surplus through non-agrarian channels, particularly in the education of their children, in urban housing, in real estate or transport and communications, trading, so on and so forth. For many, this spatial reallocation of livelihoods is a move desperately to look for other avenues for survival outside agriculture. Two processes, I will not go into the details of it, but two processes which form the foundation of this moving out are disposition, disposition of owners of means of production from the ownership of these means of production. So, not only in terms of large scale land acquisition, but also through various processes which undermine the foundations of livelihoods in a rural setting, including environmental degradation, extreme climatic events, degradation of CPRs, so on and so forth, are behind the process of disposition, which takes away the sources of livelihood of predominantly rural population from their control. The other process is the normal working of the capitalist economy in which the presentry gets differentiated and has part of the people who are pushed out of their livelihoods, join the urban labor force. But when they go out, they move into the informal economy. Now, informal economy is an economy where workers survive without decent social security. They are engaged in insecure precarious employment, they are mostly dependent, they are so precarious that in fact the COVID-19 crisis told us in very clear terms that they are not able to survive for even two, three weeks without, in the face of a sudden decrease in their employment and dynamics. So, that means multiple sectors and multiple kinds of livelihoods, including a mix of self-employment and livelihood. Institutions of caste, gender, ethnicity and religion and language further divide this workforce in the informal economy. Before I move to other points quickly, informal economy is typically understood as a residual sector, a sector which is not within the regulatory power of the state. But I would argue that it is beyond this understanding, we must go and see it as a specific kind of production relation that generates vulnerability. I will return to this point if possible later. Apart from this understanding of migration, there is also an understanding of migration, which is a positive understanding of migration. As a professor, I think I have remarked that migration is part of the development process and right issue. But increasingly, and this is particularly before the crisis, migration is seen as an outcome of voluntary choice of individuals and households in response to opportunities rather than displaced. It is pointed out that much of this migration is actually aspirational in nature, both in terms of economic and non-economic drivers of migration. It is also important to recognize that when people migrate out from a region, they send back remittances. So there is always in response along with the outflow of labor, there is a reverse flow of money, information and technology. And this could be a basis for further development of the backward regions. And in this understanding, this is a win-win situation even if the migrants are not permanently staying in the urban areas, they are circulately because in the urban areas, there is the availability of cheap labor. And as in the case of China, the migrant workers are not staying in the urban areas, then they are not crowding in the urban infrastructure. So both origin and destination areas can develop as a result of this. In another way, this is a market mediated spatial trickle-down effect that can actually take care of poverty. And many commentators were hopeful that this kind of a migration in the final analysis help both the destination and the origin areas. There are many things which are found to be described in this context or that are found to be true on the ground. However, a generalized description of this nature typically fails to take account of the huge diversity in migration outcomes that we also see. So the point is not to move away actually from a generalized description of migration and migrant workers to understand the specificities of this way, of the ways through which specific groups of migrants, specific classes of migrants get integrated, incorporated into the larger market. So if all migrants are not really vulnerable, who are the vulnerable migrants? Vulnerable migrants are those who are in the informal economy, self-employed and wage labor without any social security. Vulnerable migrants also include those migrants who work in the formal economy as informal workers. All of us know that there is a process of informalization and casualization of formal sector over the past many years. So even if you are working in the formal sector, there is no guarantee that you have a secure job or a social security. Along with that, the seasonality and circularity of migration that also creates the specificity of vulnerability. In what sense, the migrants who are migrating out seasonally, they typically migrate out in response to the changing labor demand in the origin as well as in the distribution areas over seasons. So the migration cycles are typically linked to agricultural cycles. Circulatory migrants on the other hand, they migrate constantly through back and forth movements between origin and destination areas and that may or may not coincide with the seasonality of agricultural cycles. But what is important is that they are neither comfortably settled in the origin nor are they completely detached from the destinations. So they try to balance between these two and this is one reason why we found so many migrant workers in the face of the crisis decided to go back leading to an increase in employment in agriculture. At the bottom of the job hierarchy are of course bonded laborers who take an advance and work off their loans. We'll talk about them a little later if time permits. If you look at vulnerability, we need to look at vulnerability in these three different dimensions because a good policy has to respond not only to the eradication of vulnerability or at least minimization of vulnerability, but also look at different kind of vulnerabilities and their interrelationships at the origin areas, at the source areas. People move out but everyone doesn't end up as a vulnerable migrant. So what exactly are the determining factor which pushes some into the hyper insecurity, hyper precarity that we witness in the urban job market. Whom migrate and how is the crucial question and in my mind addressing the lack of choices, lack of viable alternative in the origin areas is one of the ways through which we can address the question of long term vulnerability. So the vulnerability might be manifested in some other sphere but its origin might be linked to the source and origin areas. Secondly, vulnerability in the process of migration, field studies demonstrate that when migrant workers move out, typically those who are less educated with less social and economic capital, they try to move out through these two channels. Either through the layers of contractors, they might be employed finally in a globally integrated technologically sophisticated multinational cooperation or a big corporate house but they are employed through a hierarchy of layers of contractors and subcontractors and their agents. So that entry point determines the trajectory of their outcome to some extent. The other alternative increasingly in the case of youth out migration is through social networks, family, friends, relative. Here again, if we understand social capital as in terms through the lens of social relations, we will find that social capital is not a universal idea. For the migrant workers, social capital is a fragmented social capital. There might be the flow of information about jobs where it is available, the terms of joining the occupations so on and so forth are conditioned by their access to the right kind of social networks which is conditioned by their socio-economic provisions. Finally, vulnerability at the destination, informality and precarity about which we have already discussed already that creates the conditions under which people work in the informal economy. For many of the workers, this has meant that they are typically invisible, they are typically invisible from the urban economy, from the destination economy. In what sense? At the origin and let me flag this issue that although economic outcomes are easier to capture in some somewhat easier to capture behind the vulnerability lies the process of political marginalization, social marginalization. Because access to jobs, employment, social security depends on certain preconditions and these preconditions are mediated through institutions both formal and informal. And getting integrated with that requires some kind of political voice at least in terms of changing the conditions requires some kind of political voice. But because of at least for a section of migrant workers, those who are most vulnerable, it is found that when they migrate out, they typically do not gain the same citizenship right at the destination. And in the origin, in fact, in the case of seasonal and circular migrants, at the origin they become unreliable voters, unreliable supporters there because they might not be there when their support is needed by the leaders. So there is a weakening of their voice if at all there was some voice in the origin areas and at the destination areas, they are often treated as unwanted outsiders, or simply forgotten or invisible workers. So this workforce which constantly plays a very significant role in providing various kinds of services to the urban economy. In fact, the economy as a whole suffers as it has happened when migrant workers went back. Initially there was lockdown, but in the post lockdown phase also it took the economy to revive precisely because there was labor strategies in various parts of the country. So that's what convinced us about the role that is played by migrant workers at the destination areas. However, their roles are not only minimal. The way it is not only about employment and earnings, the way cities and urban areas are being reconfigured through a framework of neoliberal reconstruction of space in urban areas. We find that typically the right to the city itself is denied to a section of migrant workers and those migrant workers who live in the work sites, live in distant fields, in construction sites away from the city, typically they are, in fact, their citizenship rights gets fractured, they are not considered as citizens, whenever they are considered as citizens, they are considered through the prism of exception rather than free. Now coming to the question of migration policy, before we go further, let me share an experience. Before this pandemic, I have been working on a group of seasonal migrant workers in one of the least developed parts of Odisha and there were constant efforts by various NGOs and state authorities to register the migrants. And migrants refused to be, routinely refused to register themselves. In fact, many of them tried to flee without registering themselves in the night or through various climate techniques. Before we move or talk, move into a migration policy or even talk about a migration policy, we should be clear about one thing that it is not if the policy of the objective of migration policy is about regulating or controlling migrant migration flows, I don't think that is going to work, that will lead to various kind of abnormalities, unintended consequences so on and so forth. The other dimension is the questions about the right to privacy of individuals. Most of the migration policies supporting migrant workers, for example, increasingly rely on digital platforms where migrants have to, you know, control, have to enroll themselves. Now, that means the state will have information about the existence of the the concentration of migrant workers so on and so forth. Now, the state, however, is in heterogeneous institutions to the extent that it can be captured by various kinds of, you know, elements who might not be friendly to the migrants and state policy is not necessarily always, you know, friendly to migrants. We notice that in some cases state governments tried to stop the trends from stopping the migrants from moving out. One must have sufficient checks and balances so that this information doesn't violate the rights of migrant workers. I will flag this issue because I think the right policy is not to control, regulate and somehow, you know, channelize migration in predetermined directions. Rather, the right approach should be an enabling policy addressing vulnerability of migrant workers. Those migrant workers who are skilled, who are moving out with sufficient background information about the prospects and are joining a relatively high paid job, they probably do not need the state to support them to that extent. But vulnerable migrant workers do need a form of state support. So, what I'm trying to say is that the objective should be very clear, but then questions are raised as to what about our past experiences. The interstate migrant workers, I mean, studies uniformly show that it was almost never employed, never implemented properly. So, given that, we need to also pause and think whether what we are proposing as new solutions, whether the state has the capacity to implement those policies and programs which are supposed to help migrant workers. So, to sum up three important caveats before we move on to migrant policies, migration policies, migration policies should be to address the vulnerability of migrant workers rather than to control migration flows. We do not have a data, but the data that is to be collected needs there should be sufficient checks and balances within the system to prevent the misuse of that information and also the implementation part of the policy is at least as important as the intention to help migrant workers. Some broad questions, some broad, you know, foundations of migration policies. The first bottleneck is to move beyond the neoliberal orthodoxy about state interventionism. Neoliberalism broadly argues that market-based solutions are better than any kind of state intervention because state intervention invariably leads to inefficiencies of various kinds and hence they are deeply suspicious of state intervention, including interventions in favour of labour. One needs to go beyond that to see why there are cases where the market may not provide a decent livelihood to a section of migrant workers and hence the state must step in. And that is one of the foundation, that can be one of the foundations of an alternative policy is that the requirement, the necessity of state intervention in certain situations must be accepted as a legitimate objective of, you know, a legitimate dimension of policy. Second thing is we cannot secure or address the vulnerability of migrant workers without having a general framework of rights of citizens and or rights of individuals. As I was saying that vulnerability also gets reproduced because of the low bargaining power, low voices of migrants in the institutional structures of democracy. A right-space approach is different from other kinds of approach here because here the rationality of the rational of state intervention is derived from a commitment to provide a decent dignified life to individuals. So, there are of course this by saying this I mean when we say this normally the question that is that is thrown back to us is that then where is the capacity of the state to do so. State capacity is something which evolves over time, if the right kind of commitment is there and it is backed up by action, I think right-based approach provides a wider net, a better approach to include or to address vulnerability. In many cases migrant workers suffer because they are treated differently. So, one of the basic principles, basic foundations of policy should be to eliminate discrimination between migrants and non-migrants in every sphere. This is not easy because the institutions through which one can do that are likely to be less sympathetic to non-migrants for the reasons I have already discussed. But then this is one of the cornerstone of enabling inclusive migration policy. The economic rights of the citizens which I talked about a little while ago needs to be recognized as part of their citizenship rights. Citizenship doesn't mean just voting once in 5 years. Citizenship means a bundle of freedom, a bundle of capability enhancing support from the state and those rights should be the foundation on which you can create a migration policy. Workers' rights are not a popular issue these days. It is thought generally that if states support workers' demand for minimum wages or work contracts, then it will weaken the growth prospects of a capitalist economy. But then I think the investment in workers' capabilities in enhancing the conditions of working conditions and living conditions of workers is in fact an investment in the future of the economy. That is when you are providing support to the workers. It doesn't have migrant workers in this case, vulnerable workers in this case. It is not that you are just spending money in a kind of wasteful populist adventure. What it means is that if it is being done in the right way, then we are creating the foundations of a more sustainable and more equitable economy. There are lots of instrumentalist arguments in the sense that why a skilled, educated, healthy workforce is better for the growth process. But I think in the final analysis, it should be recognized as an end in itself. Living a productive and dignified life should be recognized as an end in itself in terms of its intrinsic value and that is derived from the idea of citizenship rights. That should be the foundation, not the short-term economic gains of providing the support to the workers, although there will be many kinds of gains from the support. Again, one has to choose between both immediate concerns, short-term interventions and long-term interventions. I will speak more about long-term interventions primarily because these are less popular. Behind the vulnerability is actually the lack of choice. The workers who move into precarious jobs, insecure jobs, it is not that they do not understand the risk of joining such jobs. They go for such some of the worst forms of employment contracts primarily because of lack of alternatives, lack of alternative sources of livelihoods, physical, financial, human capital. So, there are two ways of addressing this question. One is through asset redistribution. This is normally not very popular in policy circles these days because the moment you talk about land reforms or any kind of asset redistribution, normally it is categorized as politically not feasible or impractical. But then let us understand that access to land can be achieved through a number of different ways. I will not go into the details. There are arguments that there is no surplus land available but yet we know that there are land, lease market is a dynamic market. There are categories of landowners who are not necessarily interested in land. There can be mechanisms to address that but not only about land. It is also about halting, for example, privatization of CPR, other forms of privatization of water bodies that might help in having alternative sources of livelihoods. A long term way forward of course is to invest in health education and skills. There is no alternative to that because in future there may not be jobs which are, there may not be enough good jobs which one can access without necessary education and skills. A migration policy apart from other things has to address two basic tasks. One is through supporting livelihoods, supporting livelihoods through creating gainful employment either directly through state intervention as in the case of the MGNREGA or indirectly through supporting labor intensive or manufacturing and services. Apart from that, social security for workers and their families. This idea is gradually gaining ground that universal social security for workers may be needed to improve the working and living conditions of workers as one kind of solution. Both these channels of interventions are equally important. Let's talk about the interventions at the origin because the moment we talk about migrant workers, typically one thinks of the thing that can be done at the destination. Evidence shows that gradual and systematic improvements in agrarian life livelihoods, shared prosperity in agriculture, it's not just that average incomes are increasing in agriculture, agriculture is getting commercialized. One needs to see whether the benefits of this increased income if at all it is there, is it coming to the larger section of presentry or is it being concentrated in the top bracket. A shared prosperity in agriculture, particularly through provision of irrigation studies find that they do reduce the extent of distress migration. Rural non-farm employment, the first choice of many migrant workers is non-farm employment in the vicinity. Expansion of that, employment guarantee, not just announcement of a program but its faithful implementation. Wages should be decent, we just should be more than the minimum statutory wages, not less than that. Dependable employment and the employment for a duration which is considered substantial from the perspective of the workers. And finally, easy and timely payments of the wages. All these factors depend on how effective the employment guarantee scheme can be on the ground if you are thinking about reducing vulnerability in the origin areas. But it has to be coupled with employment guarantee in the urban areas particularly in this small and medium towns particularly because of the relay migration that one witnesses from small and medium towns to other places. Credit support. If you look at the reasons behind taking loans against one's future labour power, one of the fundamental reasons for taking that credit from the informal market could be the unanticipated decline in income as a result of let us say crop failure. Often it is also because of catastrophic health expenditure. Most of the migrant workers who join Dadan for example, they utilize this money to either to support their immediate consumption or to pay for their immediate consumption expenditure or to pay for the loans that they have taken for catastrophic health expenditure and crop failures and so on. Finally, rural infrastructure development including social infrastructure. We have already talked about education and health because the intergenerational transfer of vulnerability works through the collapse of public health and public education in the rural areas. Its impacts are not visible but over a period of time when we see a large number of young dropouts or who migrate and enjoy the labour force, it is primarily because of these kind of forces, these kind of conditions. Can the state play a role in creating employment other than this employment guarantee because that can be only for few days. Can there be a prospect for growth of labour intensive manufacturing and service activities? I think if one dares to imagine an alternative growth path that is more dispersed, that is more regionally balanced and that is more embedded in local value chains, local demand and local raw materials. It is possible to create a dispersed set of manufacturing and service activities and let us remember that that was one of the strategies through which the solid foundations for manufacturing in China was established. What can be done at the destination? We will talk about social security later but in terms of employment generation. Again, growth of labour intensive economic activities. Focusing on MSME growth, there is already some focus on that, there are already some talk on that. But when we combine all this, we need to be very careful about what is happening in terms of the conditions of work in the micro enterprises where own account workers and unpaid domestic workers are concentrated. As I have already said, there is a scope for the urban employment guarantee as well. And yes, it is not a matter of employment guarantee alone, livelihoods depend on access to transport, housing, credit and law enforcement. So all these policies are to be combined with employment generation for say by the state or directly or employment generation through other means to provide the necessary employment to at least a section of the migrant workforce. Let me just clarify one point. When we were talking about the way state should provide employment in the origin areas or the state should provide employment in the destination area, the idea is not that state has to provide employment to each and every person. But the point is this, if state provides some employment opportunities, if state provides access to some livelihood opportunities, then it increases the bargaining power of the workers who are likely to enter into the most exploitative forms of labour contracts. So the objective here should be very clear. For example, we need investment in the rural areas, not necessarily to stop everyone from leaving the village. But to ensure that people when they are moving out, they are not moving out in search of food and it might sound surprising for some, but as a researcher in some of the worst affected areas, people do migrate out even today. Because they do not have enough opportunities to survive in the origin area, so they move out. So at least the creation of these kind of alternative employment opportunities, alternative livelihood assets, I believe will help in reducing some of the worst forms of out migration. It should not be seen as policies to restrict migration. The processes through which vulnerability gets re-emphasized or reproduced are linked to the way the informal economy works. It is called unorganized sector, but it is not disorganized. It works through various social institutions. And the concentration of socially disadvantaged groups in some of the worst labour contracts tell us that it is not the accidental, it is not just an accident that those who are socially marginalized belonging to Siddhuka, Siddhul tribe communities, minorities, they end up with the worst employment outcomes in the migration labour market. So it is linked to the way migration labour flows are segregated through the use of social institutions. If we take the case of debt bondage and unfree labour, there is a reason to address these very concerns in a straightforward manner in terms of defining and monitoring on freedom and making the labour contractors, final employers and state institutions accountable for any kind of bondage that is found in labour contracts. So there might be a need for addressing the sectoral concentration of unfree labour and integration of rehabilitation program for bonded labourers. Quickly in terms of social security, I think I am running out of time. So quickly in terms of social security, there should be universal social security. Why should there be universal social security? Because the way employment is diversified in the informal economy. The way migrant labourers are constantly moving between jobs and locations, between wage employment and self-employment. If we try to go for a sector specific or targeted approach to social security, there will be lots of exclusion and inclusion. The transaction cost of getting oneself enrolled again and again or proving one's credentials for entitlement might lead to high transaction costs. So one should rather move from a universal floor level social security to sectoral and occupation specific security because workers in some sectors might be needing additional kind of support. So what would be the universal social security components? All these food security, affordable and quality health care sanitation, education for children, housing rights, minimum wages. This is well defined in the ILO conventions and ILO deliveries. I think it should move towards some kind of decent jobs in the informal economy as well. But here are some of the key points, key ways of designing a policy. It should be inclusive. Identification itself might lead to exclusion of some workers. The way there is a digital divide in our society and we expect workers to register themselves in digital platforms, particularly given the digital divide and gender divide that we have in the society. Similarly, the process of providing the service itself might create exclusions of various kind. And it is not a question of percentage. We have achieved 90% of the workers, for example, are registered. The point is those 10% are probably in most need of state support. That is the question of accessibility in terms of location, language, institutions, COVID-19 has taught us and even before that many state governments have welfare scheme, particularly let us say through construction workers, for construction workers. But the way it is structured, migrant workers who cannot approach or cannot go there to the offices, the institutions are such that they do not accept them as legitimate claimants. Language can be a barrier. So accessibility question has to be addressed in the design of the programs. Affordability, small financial costs, private costs of availing benefits, going to the offices, doing the rounds, doing their credentials, these might be substantial for migrant workers which might lead to their exclusion. Affordability is often highlighted. Of course, if we do not delink the entitlements from the domicile status, I think it is not going to be helpful for migrant workers within or beyond the states. Divusibility, some migrant workers leave their families behind. So if they are accessing the let us say PDS at the origin, a part of it should be accessible in the destination as well. In terms of what kind of, I will not go into the details of it, but what kind of institutional mechanism will be needed for this kind of a program. There is no alternative to a decentralized democratic and cooperative federalism because we have seen during COVID-19 crisis that capacity at the local level, at the state level, Panchayat and urban local bodies level is crucial to design effective policy implementation. However, it is not easy because it will require not only a sharing of burden among states, so we need a democratic institution's horizontal coordination among center and the state, but also among the states, particularly bilateral coordination mechanism between the states which will be needed to take care of the truth to provide entitlements without any problem to the migrant workers. Of course, we need more data on that, I will not dwell on this point. Finally, I will, I am not, you know, I don't study this part, but normally a question is asked, where will the money come from, how will you pay for it. There are enough studies available including a report by ILO, social protection floor for India and then the calculations of the national commission for organized sector workers, I think and there is this physical space is there if there is political will. Various options can be and combinations of options can be tried, take session of particular targeting wealth inequality, expenditure reallocation, sharing of burden across states, convergence of programs. Take for example, the construction and building workers says, there is a law by which construction, certain amount of says is collected and we see highly uneven way of spending that money. Many states that money remains unspent, so probably the binding constant is not fiscal in terms of availability of enough money for expenditure rather it is a question of political prioritization. I will just stop by highlighting a few, I know I am exceeding my time, but I will just highlight some of the theoretical implications of what I have said. The first thing is, and before I come to that, the first thing is that. Please feel free, don't stop me sir, at least you can take. Thank you very much. The first thing is that our understanding of a lewisian process of transformation has led to some kind of a sectoral approach to labour. I think the continuing significance of the agrarian origins of informal labour is an under-emphasized and under-appreciated aspect of migration of labour. The relationship between the rural areas and the urban areas are complex. One of our studies for example shows that migrant workers move out based in West Bengal. Migrant workers move out at a very young age. They work in construction sector, first of all during much of their youth, but after some time they return back and when they return back the skills that they have learnt, whatever skills they have learnt becomes completely redundant in the rural context and their health has deteriorated to such an extent. They find it very difficult to even work in demanding jobs in the rural context as well. So this leads to a process of out-migration which might be beneficial. We still look at it in a specific time frame, but we take a lifetime of the migrant workers. We find that the advantages of slightly higher income and remittances which was there in the early phases of migration soon dies out, in some cases not in all cases at least. Another aspect, normally it is expected that those who are moving out of agriculture gradually will lead to a weakening of ties between agriculture and the out migrants. May be that is happening. We will see over a period of time, but as of now petty commodity production that is producing for the market but without accumulation which is the dominant form of production in agricultural farms. We find that relationship of this petty commodity production in agriculture and out migration is complex. Sometimes out migration is actually giving a new lease of life through remittances to petty commodity production in agriculture for which small farms are able to survive. We have seen another instance. This year for example the foundation for agrarian studies they have done a village survey which finds and this is also corroborated by other secondary sources that has expanded in agriculture. There are more people employed in agriculture today primarily because they could not go back, some of those who had returned they could not go back. They had no way to go and so agriculture has emerged as a kind of shock absorber in the context of the crisis. So the first point is that theoretically we need to understand more about the linkages between agriculture and informal economy. So that we understand how vulnerability in one sphere translates into vulnerability in other sphere. Second point. Informality is not easily going away. Not because it is desirable. I don't think those kind of livelihoods should be there. But the point is the way Indian economy is getting integrated into the global capitalist economy. That provides again a new lease of life to the informality. The theoretical anticipation that as you become a more advanced economy in terms of pocket income your production structure will be more formalized and the labor market accordingly will change is at least not seen in the last couple of decades. We do find that there are some aspects of formal employment increasing but largely we see that this informal sector is getting intertwined with the global capitalist economy in a way in which this reserve army of labor of migrant workers, vulnerable migrant workers acts as cheap labor providing surplus value. We looked at the way migrant workers send their remittances in one of the services. And the only conclusion that can be drawn given the percentage of money that they send back is that they are living in a way where they are trying to survive with minimum costs at the urban areas. They are sharing accommodation, they are sharing food, they are trying to survive with minimum expenditure in urban areas so that families back in their villages can survive. The way women are contributing to this migrant migration process as vulnerable workers as in fact workers who are discriminated against because they are not really paid equal wages for the same work as family members of migrant workers living in slums and in other urban areas and as part of staying back families. What they are doing is they are trying to reduce the cost of reproduction of labor for capital. So this vulnerable migrant labor force is in essence trying to exploit themselves at times so that cheap labor can be there. One might argue that but most of the cheap labor, most of the globally integrated farms are based on IT enabled sectors. That's about more skilled workers but the skilled workers are also cheap in relation to their counterparts in the developed countries. And one of the reasons why they are cheap is also because of the services, cheap services provided by the migrant workers. So my last point is that this is one kind of integration to global capitalism where cheap labor becomes a cornerstone of our successful integration. But then the price of this integration is being paid by a section of labor force literally they are contributing to the cheapening of labor costs at great cost themselves. There could be an alternative way of integration if you can't imagine anything else then an alternative way of integration could be decentralized development based on innovation skills and investment in the capacity of labor. I'll stop here and I will wait for your comments and criticisms. Thank you. Thank you Prof. Mishra. I believe everybody will agree with me that it was wonderful experience listening from Prof. Mishra with his rich experience of working in this field as well as in other domains. He has woven very intricately the various facets of migration. Thank you sir. If I can open up the chat for everybody but before doing I would just like to refresh the memories of everyone. Prof. Mishra started, I beg your pardon my connectivity is very poor here. I started in a brilliant way by explaining the context of migration of out migration particularly for the people from the rural area to the urban areas where they mostly add up to the informal economy and their access to the informal economy is the main reason why they emerge as vulnerable. If I have rightly put it, now obviously employment in the informal economy is without social security and that is the major reason for the distress that we had witnessed during the COVID pandemic particularly last year. It is in this backdrop that he comes out with various points about the why vulnerability is persistent at the origin at the destination and obviously he leaves towards a possible migration policy where he considers that yes there are opportunities for state to intervene particularly regarding bringing in certain policy issues so that the vulnerability of the migrant workers can be addressed and he expects that our experiences from the past can be used for developing the current scenario. Obviously he strongly believes that migration policy should be oriented towards reducing the vulnerability of the migrants at the origin. But the state intervention can be of various ways and he would like to focus more on long term intervention so that we can have a long term game and he believes that access to livelihood assets particularly through asset redistribution would be of great help particularly for the migrants because that would be an address, that would also address the livelihood vulnerability at the destination. Obviously at the origin of the migrants who are really in most cases move out because of lack of alternatives. Now, obviously in this backdrop what emerges at many a times is this issue of migration encompasses seasonal and cyclical variation and here also issues of intergenerational migration comes up and what he has rightly observed believe and support is about his views is that many of the migrant workers when they move out from the rural agrarian sector to the urban informal sector the kind of jobs that they are akin with they work upon the skill that they develop upon on their return that is hardly useful. So this is an area where when we think about migration policy we have to focus upon and well, the major issue which requires addressing is universal social security and basically it's the focus should be more for vulnerable migrants and it is in this backdrop that I would like to open up the floor. We have a few questions which I believe Mr. Sir can you just have a look into the chat. Yeah, I can see that. Yeah, I would like you to take up the theoretical issues first and then if we can come down to the specifics because the queries from Prof. Jati Borua, Mr. Pranjeet Borua these are more related to the neoliberal conditions if you can read it out then no point in me repeating the questions if you can take up these two at one go and then we move on to other queries that is what I would like. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you Prof. Indra. Now, I mean let me address this the question that is common to two of these questions one is can the can we I mean since since it's a neoliberal state can we really think of any alternative. Will it be it's difficult because the dominance of neoliberalism. It came about in various ways but I am you know being an academician and an economist of some kind so my interest is is is to see how exactly the ideology of neoliberalism was must behind a series of theoretical propositions which were presented as neutral. Even, you know, unquestionable conclusions of a sophisticated economic analysis the so so so neoliberalism is not only about a set of academic ideas of course it is about a kind of, you know, ideological tool to make certain kinds of policies more acceptable to the society than others. But at the same time, it is possible to constantly question neoliberalism through research excellent and other political means, so that an alternative consensus can be generated I'm not saying that you know it is going to be easy. But at the same time let us look at the diversity. Let's look at the diversity within major capitalist countries. And we find numerous instances of state intervention in favor of labor in diverse forms existing in today's, you know, capitalist economy. There are lessons to be learned, for example, the public investment in health in the context of COVID-19. The rethinking about states role in the economy in the context of the 2008 crisis, the varieties of capitalist state that we see particularly in these Scandinavian countries. These are these point to the possibility of creating or at least suggesting alternatives. If we look at the response of Kerala in the during the pandemic, we find that long term investment in labor rights in labor in education and health of the population and strong state presence at the grassroots can make a difference. So I'm saying that it's difficult obviously, but it's not completely hopeless because even neoliberalism in a democracy has to confront the popular opinion in the society. So to the extent that we can bring an impact, we can highlight the gains from an interventionist strategies in some context at least, it is possible to overcome that deficit. That's the first, you know, because that is about political this thing. Now, perhaps a Varuva's question, Jyadip's question is that the rights of workers, the universal rights, and if I understood correctly, this is the link between universal rights, and specific nature of incorporation of migrant workers into the labor market and the vulnerability and specific vulnerabilities that, you know, that are generated. How do we reconcile these two points? I think that that is why I think that it is better to start with a minimum but universal floor of social security, which is accessible to each and every citizen without much many preconditions. So that workers, when they move between sectors or across locations, they are able to get some of these basic entitlements fully. It will, however, not address specific vulnerabilities. Domestic living workers, for example. Bonded laborers in wheat making industry, for example. There are sector specific issues, which cannot be addressed through such a general framework. But it can be built upon that general framework. Once that right is provided, on the basis of that, again, there can be specific rights, nurses, for example, women workers working in call centers, for example. All of them are, the Northeast migrant workers in Delhi, for example. All of them need support of very different kinds because of their specific vulnerabilities. But then these specific vulnerabilities can be built, addressing these policies, addressing these specific vulnerabilities can be built on the basis of a floor level concept. If the floor level social security, instead of being a minimum, becomes a maximum, then obviously these layered experiences of vulnerability cannot be addressed through this framework. I am hoping that, but on the other hand, if you go into too much of sectoral approaches, it increases. Take, for example, the construction and other building work and other building and other construction workers welfare boards. Now migrant workers, they come to the city, let us say work for some days in the construction sector, and then they move on to other sectors or maybe work, maybe they try to find a livelihood at the self employer. Each time they do that, they have to prove that they have worked in the construction sector for so many days and they have to renew their membership and all these act as further tools of negotiation in the labor contract. So to that extent, sector specific approaches in the absence of a universal social security might lead to problems, but I am hopeful that it is possible to design specific or address specific vulnerabilities in the framework of a universal social security. What do we do about the gap between policy intent and the outcomes that has been highlighted as well. Now there is no other option than learning from our experiences. And instead, I mean that is one of the classic neoliberal arguments. Because state intervention has failed in area A, B and C, it in general fails, but then if state has failed in crucial areas, but that is not the logic which is applied while supporting capital. If you take the state policies which are designed to attract investment for example, there are numerous instances where they have worked and where they have not worked. But then you keep on improvising the interventions and try to be more attractive to capital. In a similar way, the answer to relative underperformance of specific policies is to press for better policies, not abandonment of any concerns for state intervention of certain kind. This is of course what I am saying will require political will as I already mentioned, but I think the gaps between intended outcomes and the real outcomes of policy can be emphasized. And the other thing is about convergence. Take for example that the fact that the urban local bodies or state intervention is required to provide certain basic infrastructure services for any kind of industries including the MSMEs to grow in a particular area. Increasingly there is a demand from citizens for provision of services from urban local bodies. Can these requirements be combined with a commitment to provide employment? So there can be a convergence of different objectives and that is another way to move forward. Investing in capacity building at the Panchat level and ELB is again something which is accepted across the board. But what I am saying that instead of just relying on the routes for the privatization, it is possible probably to combine various kind of service provisioning with employment generation of some kind. Yes, so there is also a third political, there is also a question about I think tea garden laborers which is related to this. As I said, although my own field work in tea gardens is quite dated so I will be rather cautious here what is happening but I am not surprised to hear that that labor has returned back to the gardens. Because that is one of the, that is one example which will underscore the significance of investing in education and health. In our study on the tea garden labor market, we found that the labor market is not confined to, within the gardens is not only confined to, first of all it is heavily casualized. But then the terms within which the labor is moving out provides a number of clues to categorize it as a distressed diversity. Without much social capital, facing discrimination of various kinds and having very low levels of education, which is not accidental, which is a policy outcome of the way schools are located and school system works in the gardens. Results resulted in outmigration of labor to again not to very well paying jobs but mostly as construction workers, domestic servants and so on and so forth. So now that there is a crisis, obviously there is no choice but to go back, this will further depress wages and there will be further competition for whatever employment is available. One of the striking results of our initial survey was that even when labor move out of tea gardens, they return to tea garden during the flocking season. So that means that they are moving out to places where they are not secured, they do not have a secure job where they can even earn enough as a casual labor and they have to come back. Which is good because it keeps the, for those who are employing the laborer because it keeps the wages down but it creates a cycle of vulnerability. So, like agriculture, they are coming back to the gardens, if they are coming back, then it is because of the lack of alternative choices. The best way forward is to educate, create capabilities at that end. Finally, political question, political vulnerability of migrant in a country like India. Let me emphasize another political point here. If we see the experience of neoliberalism in various countries. We find that initially it is proposed, I mean it was exported from the top, I would say, through various conditionalities of international financial institutions to the ideas in academia, dominant ideas in media. It was exported as top but when it reached various countries, it took its own forms. It had to interact with the specific nature of the polity in the different countries. So, what we have seen that neoliberalism on its own has not succeeded. It has succeeded, in order to succeed, it has made alliances of various kinds. Welfare program sometimes, selective populism at times, right wing Savinism at times. So, neoliberalism requires or you just rather these kind of opportunities to create alliances. So, that doesn't mean that there will be no alternative mobilization, there cannot be any alternative to that. At the same time, there is greater awareness, there is greater understanding at the popular level about the problems of discrimination, about racism, about gender discrimination. So, in that sense, that is why I said, non-discrimination has to be one of the foundations on which you can build any migration policy. As long as migrants and host populations are treated differently by law in some cases they are or by institutional design or through political mobilization. Even in the states with best of the outcomes, you see routine discriminations against migrant focus. It is very difficult to eliminate vulnerabilities. But then, there is no other way but to strive to create a polity which is more inclusive. I think that is all I can say at the moment. Thank you, Prof. Mishra. I am not sure if you would just like to have one more minute in addressing the specific query about from Pranav Shri Kiya. Particularly, many focuses about the aspect of skilled migrant workers not giving enough opportunity. Thanks for reminding me about this question. Skilled migrants face various other crises, various other kinds of constraints as well, skilled migrants. First of all, the process of skilled migration of skilled labour, even when it is backed by state supported institutional mechanisms is not free from expectation. If we see the out migration of moderately skilled, semi-skilled young women and men to various destinations through, I mean backed sometimes by NGO support or state support of some kind, we still find that at the destination they are contractual workers. They are not necessarily in the payrolls of the, there are studies which show that they are not necessarily found in the payrolls of those who employ them. Moreover, and in the more extreme cases, even their housing and movement and other things are controlled by those who act either as intermediaries or as employers at the destination. So, simply because someone is skilled doesn't mean that they are not part of this process of vulnerable workforce. But, however, there are sections of the skilled workers who do not find employment and they quickly become redundant labour. Their skills become quickly redundant or they themselves, in the absence of any opportunity, immediate opportunity, they find themselves at an extremely vulnerable position leading to various kinds of skill mismatches. One of our PhD scholars has in fact recently submitted a thesis on the extent of skill mismatch in Assam, in urban Assam. And that is, it's huge in terms of those who are in a job in which for which they are overqualified or they are in a job in which they are not using their skills, the percentages are very high. Even in Assam, urban Assam, so we are expecting that it will be probably more in other states. You need a very different approach for skilled migrants in terms of addressing institutional bottlenecks, but a more critical point there is in fact creation of jobs. Prof. Rajit Ghosh has recently worked on what has happened in the recent past in terms of job market and we see a clear division in terms of outcome for low skilled semi skilled workers on the one hand and those at the top end. So those vulnerabilities could have been addressed through, as I said, a dispersed growth of activities, enterprises catering to the needs of the youth. That is why youth unemployment rate is very high. Those who are skilled and educated are not getting employment. They are reflected in the, at least they are manifested in the employment as unemployed, but they are also a category of workers, particularly women who are simply discouraged workers, they are not even seeking any job. So these can be addressed through structural change policies. I do not see any other way to address this problem. Thank you. Thank you. I believe the participants you had your responses to the queries that you had posed from Prof. Mishra. Since we do not have any other pending queries, obviously I had the privilege of being part of this wonderful session. It was really enriching for me and I thank the organizers for calling me in. One point I would just like to bring forth here is that yes, Prof. Mishra has covered almost everything. Even though he has made out in one of his slides he said this is not exhaustive but it appears to be very exhaustive the way he has addressed. Obviously the vulnerability issue I think has one more dimension particularly in the recent times on the gender perspective and more specifically for the out migrants, female out migrants, young female out migrants from the northeastern region who are working in the hospitality and wellness sector. I think they are also facing a lot of crisis and that's an area which I believe researchers from the region can also explore in future times and so I fully agree to what you have said. But very interestingly, one of the major sources of data on migration is census that we generally have every 10 years and the 2021 census has been differed. It has been differed and even the 2011 census data on migration came out very late. But very interestingly what we observe is the data that we have on the census shows a lot of other dimensions that it is not just work and employment which are the major causes of migration. There are various other causes and I believe one of the major points, one of the reasons which migration data sites is moved with household which means about the dependent family members. I think particularly increase of vulnerability for work related vulnerability that the major household head faces. The family members are exposed to greater threats and they are part of a bigger number because only it's 9% around 9% are migrants for employment and work as per census data. Whereas family members comprise for almost 15%. So when we are talking about vulnerable policy, migration policy for addressing the vulnerability issues I just the worker or the head of the household that should be the focus. The focus should also be on the family members because they are also facing the brunt. That's all I would like to submit to the audience. I would, Prof. Boruwa, it's wonderful thing from my side. I would like to hand over the pattern to your team. Thank you. Thank you for calling me. Okay Mr. Rishmita you can now propose the vote of thanks for the mailing. I would, good evening everyone. I Dr. Rishmita Dora, faculty of social work on behalf of the Kutjagumar Bhuya School of Social Sciences would like to extend my heartfelt thanks to Prof. Deepakumar Mishra for your illuminating talk on the vulnerability of the migrants in the present context of the pandemic and focusing also on the informal sector workers, the necessary interventions, the significance of migration policy, upholding the right space approach and social security of the migrants. I thank Prof. Indanil Bhumi for your introductory and summative concluding remarks on the talk. I extend my heartfelt thanks to our honourable Vice Chancellor Prof. Anil Sharma Sir, Director of SKBSS Prof. Joydeep Boruwa for your support, the professors, colleagues and all the participants from here. Our team is also thankful to the IT cell for your technical support extended for the successful conduct of this program. Thank you all. Boruwa Sir if you have something to say you can go on. No, it's okay. I mean it was wonderful. It's nice to see you and also listen to you after a long time. And I hope to meet personally and then connect and then also we will have some occasion to talk about more this time. And in Nalinda also thank you very much. It was a pleasure. So thanks to everyone. So let us conclude here and then we will gather for the next talk.