The government sets out to do the right thing and then cancels it out. Take, for instance, the idea of automatic inclusion in the Below Poverty Line category. It could have been an opportunity to support all home-based workers, or rather to reward them, especially if they are weavers, potters, bangle makers, etc. It could have been an opportunity to support landless villagers. It is another matter that none of these is among categories listed for automatic inclusion.
Now, the government cancels it out through an automatic exclusion criterion, making inclusion everything but automatic.
Last week, the government seemed to have got it right when it suddenly developed sympathy for weavers and the loom that once adorned the national flag, the charkha, which was replaced by the chakra. It announced a package of Rs 6,200 crore for the country’s 150 million weavers. It turns out that it is mainly a loan waiver, which would benefit those lucky ones who took loans from institutional channels. Now, who would expect a poverty-ridden family, mostly unlettered, to be taking loans from banks? For the rest, to be sure, the government would arrange credit cards. Will this ensure that a family in eastern Uttar Pradesh that earns about Rs 2,500 a month, weaving saris day and night, deploying even children at the loom while they abandon their studies and other activities, would be better off?
The nation is in debt to the weavers, rather than the other way round. But again, an opportunity to repay the debt to weavers if it may be said so, was lost. Congress leader Rahul Gandhi’s appeal on behalf of the weavers went wasted.
But should the weavers’ fate be dependent on the sympathies of politicians?
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If every household is a production unit, as in the case of weavers, then rules should apply. No law sanctions unpaid and underpaid labour. Should there not be employees’ state insurance, maternity benefits, education allowance, pensions and other such benefits?
Here is one more example of government annulling its own good intent. Every child is entitled to education. But there is plenty of documented evidence, the latest being a documentary by Doordarshan, which proves that weavers in order to earn at least Rs 500 a week are forced to use children to work day and night at the loom. So, there goes Sarva Siksha Abhiyan into the finely woven patterns of the Banarasi sari.
Who will ensure assured minimum wages to a family of weavers? Shouldn’t a family that produces, say four saris a month, deserve at least Rs 10,000?
It is easy but unfair to call this subsidy. Shouldn’t a fund for home workers, specifically weavers, ensure a regular income to cushion them from a permanent state of desperation?
International Labour Organisation Home Work Convention 177 ratified in 1996 points at such enabling measures for home-based workers. It guarantees minimum wages, social protection, maternity benefits and rights to form unions.
The Self Employed Women’s Association, or Sewa, played a leading role in lobbying for such a convention. But the irony is 15 years on, India is yet to ratify it.
This is so when according to the National Sample Survey’s 55th round, home workers number around 27 million, with 56 per cent being women.
Just seven European countries have ratified this convention so far, which does not justify the fact that India continues to ignore the labour rights of home-based workers.
Only one category of home-based workers in India — the bidi workers — has been ensured the rights of minimum wages and social protection, according to the Bidi and Cigar Workers Act of 1966.
The others are still lost in the crowd, hoping for packages and other such miracles to happen to save them from what seems like eternal penury.