This morning, on the dirt road that takes us to the Tata-Dhan Academy, we drove passed a caravan of people, walking. There were some men and many women. Maybe 50 people overall. On their heads were perched large plates holding food, water, tools, blankets. It seemed they were on their way to a picnic.
"Where are they going?" I asked a colleague.
"Work was approved for today," she said.
The Indian government has set up a job scheme, where rural workers are guaranteed 100 days of work per year at 60 rupees per day.
This troupe was participating in that program. And today was a work day.
Though the scheme has been plagued by cries of corruption, the NGO community should take heart: The projects are helping rural India adapt to a changing climate.
"Over the last three years, 4.7 million projects have been taken up, roughly 50 percent of them relating to water conservation," says a recent (extremely positive) report by The Hindu.
One of the research project I'm writing about for work is a 40 year, longitudinal study of rainfall in Tamil Nadu. According to this study, in the last 40 years, rainfall had shifted from one monsoon season to the next; the the number of days of rainfall had significantly decreased, and that overall amounts of rainfall were also on the decline.
These changes leave rainfed farmers in a dire position.Tank restoration and other water conservation efforts will become increasingly critical.
Other positive side effects of the government's guaranteed work scheme: valuable work experience for people out of work, opportunities for women to earn their own money, and the creation of a standard wage that workers can demand - even from private employers.
It seems like an example of an effective stimulus. First question: is it?
Second question: Could something like this work in the US? Clearly these two different beasts. The US stimulus package aim at an entire economy. This program focuses specifically on the needs of the poor and out of work.
Would it be useful, instead of just throwing hundreds of billions of dollars around in the name of "spending".... to stimulate spending by stimulating earning - by providing work (maybe even in green industries or some other common tragedy) thereby making progress on that issue AND giving people some money to spend?
I'm not at all an economist. Just wondering.
My version of “Eggs in Purgatory”
4 years ago
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I'm intrigued by this concept of guaranteed work, and hope you'll write more about it. I echo your questions, and particularly wonder how effective it really is.
ReplyDeleteMy relatively uninformed opinion of Communism is that it failed in part because being a worker sucks even if you're not being exploited, and if you don't have to worry about getting fired, or being totally destitute without work, where's the motive to throw yourself into it?
However, if the people participating in this program are motivated to gain real work experience, or to be independent and empowered in a way they otherwise couldn't, then I suppose it could be incredibly effective -- both in India, and in the U.S. How does one participate? Is it enough to live in a rural area, or do you have to demonstrate a need beyond that? I wonder how such a program would best be implemented in our own country.
Contemplating this is so much more interesting than working on my paper....