Issues Still Remain After 2nd Tranche of Eco Package

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman yesterday announced a slew of measures for migrant workers and street vendors; however, how effectively these steps will help the undocumented section can not be determined yet. FM Sitharaman introduced ‘one nation one ration card’ to enable migrant workers from any depot in the country on the same ration card, issued in any state. The workers’ family members’ Aadhar details will be seeded into the ration card, using technology and database. The government also decided to convert the government-funded housing in major cities to affordable rental housing complexes for urban poor migrants. Besides, the government has allowed the state government to use the disaster response fund to arrange food and shelter for the migrant workers, which will incur a cost of Rs 11,000 crore to the centre.

Considering the nationwide lockdown has caused the street vendors to earn a zero income, the government has announced a special credit facility of Rs 5,000 crore. Within a month, the centre will launch the scheme for 50 lakh street vendors. The FM has pledged an initial working capital of Rs 10,000 for each street vendor. 

However, most of these vendors are unregistered, along with the migrant workers who frequently keep changing their jobs. This raises questions on the effectiveness of the government’s measures since data is hazy.

How will the package reach the recipients when most of them are undocumented? The modalities, it seems, haven’t been as thought out for it to truly be beneficial. This is too little, too late.

There are serious doubts about how the benefits will reach those who are most in need and for whom they are intended for. The opacity and the invisibility of India’s informal workers seem to be a major hindrance in realising this goal, based on how ineffectual similar endeavours have been in the past, such as the Unorganized Workers Social Security Act (2008); hardly any worker possesses smart cards as per the Act.

Even as the government acknowledged that more needs to be done for the migrant workers, street vendors, and other marginalised segments; unclear statistics have made the measures appear far from being pragmatic. This crisis has pointed out glaring shortcomings in not only understanding their needs and their roles in nation-building but also something more basic – complete lack of data.

Similarly, many other announcements yesterday were welcome reforms, but those will take a long time for fruition. Take for example government to launch a scheme for affordable rental housing for migrant workers/urban poor to provide ease of living by converting govt funded housing in cities into Affordable Rental Housing Complexes (ARHC) under Public-Private Partnership (PPP)mode through concessionaire. It is much needed to ensure better living conditions, and some dignity, to workers, however, it is not going to happen soon. Similar shortcomings can be pointed out in the ideas of nationwide ration cards, saying that measures providing rations to even those who do not have ration cards will remain critical for some time to come.

The FM also said that 14.62 crore man-days of work has been increased, which is actually 40-50% more men enrolled, compared to last May. Hence, 2.33 crore more wage seekers can be engaged by the new move. Though the step has been mainly for the rural areas, similar steps in the urban areas were desirable too. The mention of 40% to 50% more people on-year enrolling in MNREGA this May has given an indication of the magnitude of unemployment in the country. Hence, after announcements about MSMEs to generate some jobs in urban areas in 1st tranche, the demand for something like MNREGA in urban areas has taken a front seat.

The farmers need more than anything else the proper price for their produce. They want a rationality in Minimum Support Price (MSP) keeping in view yield from arable land quality, availability of irrigation facilities and farming conditions. Crop insurance has been beset with several problems such as lack of transparency, high premium, delay in conducting crop cutting experiments and non-payment/delayed payment of claims to farmers. Claims of crops damaged due to rains or hail storm are calculated block wise on 70% loss of combined crop loss of farmers. It is of no use to farmers if the farmers are paid Rs 12, 20 or 50 or 500 as loss compensation. It is a mockery of farmer's welfare scheme. Do insurance claims are disbursed, in case of say vehicles or property, only if 70% policy holders meet with misfortune in an earmarked particular area?

Hence the issues still stand where it were. All that is needed for the poor daily migrant wagers is cash in hand for demand generation, production and also business for banks.