National Security
Migration Of Workers
Dt: 20/12/13
Migration Of Workers
Dr T.H.Chowdary*
Central & State Governments have been spending lakhs of crores of Rupees every year on rural development. About Rs. 40,000 cr are under National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREG). Government spokesmen and media fed by the government are propagandizing that the NREG and some other schemes are meant among others, to stop the migration of workers from rural areas. This aim is irrational and is against historical experience.
- If there were no migrations from overcrowded Europe to the newly discovered Australia and America, Europe would have been pauperized and the world would have been less prosperous without the wealth of these two continents.
· The less prosperous Spanish- speaking South American workers are migrating to the US and thus satisfying the need for manual workers in the USA. A few million skilled persons like electricians masons, carpenters, fitters, plumbers, welders, drivers and construction workers from Kerala, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu are working in the Gulf countries. If these people are not migrating to where work is, they could not have been fed and housed and uplifted here in India. It is their remittances that are adding to the prosperity of the families at home.
· Lakhs of Indian engineers and other professionals are migrating to the US and to some other developed countries in search of jobs. Their remittances are helping India. The skills of the returning people add to the talent pool in India.
· Punjab’s agriculture will wither if workers from Bihar do not migrate to that state. Here, within Andhra Pradesh, farm workers migrate from one district to another for so many agriculture operations like transplanting and harvesting.
· Tens of thousands of physical labour men and women are migrating from Srikakulam and Prakasam districts into the construction works in Hyderabad.
· So many educated people and entrepreneurs migrate from one state to another from one country to another for full and better utilization of their talents. Encouraging the educated to migrate and confining the unskilled agricultural labourers to the village, may ensure garnering votes of the poor.
2. Migration is a historic phenomenon. It can be seasonal, for short periods or permanent. Any scheme that is designed to contain India’s rural population in the village of their birth itself is a retrograde step. Villages cannot sustain so many unskilled labourers and not so literate labour. By creating useless “work” we are promoting dependency among the unfortunate rural, illiterate and unskilled population. This is indeed a social crime.
3. The example of the my village Angaluru in Krishna district will illustrate how good money is being thrown away for bad results. Out of 1000 families, 800 had registered themselves as BPL, seeking work under NREGA. So far, it was 100 days at Rs. 100 per day. Even at this, 80,000 man days of useful work in a year is impossible in a village and that too, year after year. Now this is sought to be doubled. The result is, wages for agricultural labour have gone up by 2.5 times and agriculture is becoming increasingly unviable. Farmers feel that it is better to sell the land and put that money in F.D in a bank. For eg: one acre of agriculture land sells at the minimum of Rs. 10 lakhs. If this is sold and the money is put in a F.D, the annual return is Rs. 90,000 . By cultivating that land, no farmer is getting more than Rs. 10,000 to 15,000 in a year. What incentive is there for cultivation?
4. Those who are registered for NREGA are just mustered for attendance and since there is no work that is required to be done, they go home. They are paid for no work or little work. This easily obtained money is spent largely on consumption of liquor. Rs.15,000 cr per year of worth of liquor is being sold in Andhra Pradesh. One can easily guess where the NREGA money is going. This is a social crime.
5. Arm chair economists and do-gooders are in the National Advisory Council, an unconstitutional body presided over by Smt Sonia Gandhi. It is at her instance that more and more schemes of welfare are being launched. Most of this money is being looted and some spent away in consumption of liquor. We are promoting dependency and idleness and destroying the work ethic. Instead, we are promoting the welfare ethic. The late Rajiv Gandhi had said that 85% of the money spent for welfare schemes is not reaching the target. It is estimated that excluding the subsidy on fertilizers, Rs. 4 lakhs crores of subsidies and throw –aways like pension for the old are spent under welfare. 85% of that is about Rs. 3,40,000 cr are every year turning into black money, shared by government servants, business men and politicians. More the welfare, more the black money and greater is the destruction of the work ethic.
6. In the pursuit of government power, winning elections by spending huge sums has become necessary. These sums can be generated by the vast amounts of money spent on “welfare”. The discourse about welfare and the trickle that reaches the poor are acting as opium for them. The poor get the crumbs. For whom politics is the profession and government power is the goal welfare and the poor are the enablers. Welfare spending for the poor cannot be criticised on moral grounds. It is the instrument for aggrandizement of a few. We are not building an egalitarian society. Wealth is being created by the educated and enterprising. Much of it is accruing to politicians in power and their crony businessmen operating the leavers of power. The wealth created is getting concentrated in a small minority of the populations. Inequality and inequity are increasing. These are not good for the country. These things are happening because ignoble people are choosing politics as the least risky profession to get government power and using it for accumulation of wealth, keeping the poor opiated by trickles of welfare. (1000 words)
END