Corona virus - how the masks are off

This is NOT about politics, NOT about patting myself on the back but just some observations in an unprecedented global crisis where we are like caged animals while the animals roam free.

I have been involved in a volunteer activity to help support a program to help the hungry, dispossessed, sick and elderly and this effort is in a small geographical area that covers around 7.5 lakh people which is 0.057 % of the Indian population but to me is a representative example of the reality out there in India – for better or worse.

Through the day you get calls from daily wage labourers who have zero earnings, no savings, no ration card or even a formal roof over their head. These are the people who we used to see every day as we went about our lives going to offices, pubs, restaurants, parties etc. They would be painting the sidewalk, repairing some road, working on a construction site be it a small house or a mansion or an apartment complex. If you were one who ventured into specific areas of your city which stored cement, steel, engineering items, wholesale markets then you would see them carrying loads of items.  

We didn’t give a second look at them, probably even admired the level of economic activity and whenever needed we even used them for our physical back breaking work that we are unfit, incapable or refuse to do. We didn’t even think once that these people have families, children and yes, their own dreams, aspirations. 

India unfortunately has its major employment statistics amongst these. What we think as employed are actually these daily wage workers who have no idea whether they will have any job the next day.

We have for long harped on the golden period of economic growth of 8%, poverty reduced by more than 50% and while these are indeed aspects to be proud of, the reality underneath this mask of economic development lies a information that is rarely known to most of us because we prefer to be uninformed, shy away from the inconvenient truth.

More than 50 ~ 60 % of the so-called jobs are self-employed, informal, 60 ~ 70 % of those classified as earning a wage are casual labour. In rural areas hardly 9% have regular/salaried jobs and in urban areas this is around 44% but the casual/self employed is a whopping 90% in rural areas and 55% in urban areas. Every one of these brute majority of people if they don’t earn for a day, they & their family go hungry for that day.

To digress for a minute, when global corporations esp American decided to move offshore to China for manufacturing activity millions of similar people lost jobs but it didn’t get the attention it deserved. If there were any protests it was passed off as socialism/communism/leftist.  When formal jobs started getting affected the cry went out that people were being “Bangalored”.

As long as campuses in India found anybody who looked human being picked up for a job in the IT/BT sector nobody complained. The moment this started getting hurt for whatever reasons, suddenly job statistics became important and every two-bit politician and economist started talking of lost jobs. Not one even paused to think that these so-called jobs being lost were a negligible fraction if you will.

Coming back to the present the Covind crisis is showing up the ugly underbelly of India – the large brute majority of citizens without earning, food and literally going hungry. All of us volunteers have got calls from so many seeking food, saying that they haven’t eaten, that they are likely to lose the temporary roof they had in a construction shed because the owner/ contractor wants them to leave. If you can’t see them, you can’t feel guilty, can you?

People call up saying contractors haven’t paid them and run away, owners are asking them to vacate houses they live in. In one case an elderly gent who worked as a security guard for long in an apartment complex and then being old shifted to washing cars in the same place fell sick. Nothing serious but had flu like symptoms that’s all. He was asked to leave the complex in less than 24 hrs and every one of those living there who had utilised his services for long came together to throw him out. One lady, privately called begging us to help him somehow because the whole complex was refusing to listen to her. Trust me however politically incorrect I would not mind shooting down the whole lot of those educated, high flying vultures living in that complex who were proving Charles Darwin right.

In one case something in the voice, choice of words made me think it was serious and raised it as a SOS and within the hour somebody was there and he called to say that the couple were cold with hunger and had almost passed out. Every day you get such calls which is the reality of India. That at least in my city, my area there is active effort that is sincere by the govt and other agencies is fact even if it still falls short of reaching 100%.

You then have other calls - again my politically incorrect language may be pardoned – where the young yuppie, rich brat working from home is sitting on his fat sorry bottom and makes his aged parents call us seeking help to buy groceries, provisions, medicines and a volunteer does the job only to find this young lazy slob who used his aged parents to trick us. Delivering to a poor family you find the nearby rich neighbour living in a mansion verbally attacking the volunteer why the govt was neglecting him but giving free stuff to others. He then proceeds to demand that free ration kits be given for himself, his family. Its not easy walking away from such situations and trust me if murder were legal like in the Texas wild west of the past, most of these chaps would be dead by now.

One lady posted that except 5 families and of which 4 were fauji related everybody else in her apartment complex had decided NOT to pay their maid, car wash guy, other help. If tomorrow one of those maids/car wash guys were to slit their employers throat in anger believe you me, all my sympathy will be for the killer.  

I have said this before and I say this again, the poor, hungry, jobless, daily wage casual labour are a million times more ethical, human, honest and grateful than the educated who have good jobs and live well. The good thing is that such people are still a minority, but they have the most vocal voices, heard the most protesting on SM, carry a disproportionate influence and manage to derail even the efforts of others. A govt initiative to deliver daily needs at home during this crisis was actually PROTESTED with 5 column headlines and lies. Cases as below are being commonly heard and you wonder how they call themselves educated and responsible.

https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics-and-nation/bengaluru-coronavirus-case-wife-father-in-law-of-google-techie-booked-under-epidemics-act-says-report/articleshow/74650102.cms

When you have the hungry wanting to eat just rice and salt to survive – yes literally many ask for just rice and salt - you have insensitive brats posting pictures of the wide variety of dishes they have been having every day, how their children are attending video sessions of classes, doing video group exercises etc and bragging about every minute of their lives. I have no issue with citizens locked down sharing stuff in their group of friends but at least be more sensitive, more humane and above all they demonstrate they are so far removed from reality that it is frightening. The guy incessantly complaining about not being able to visit his favourite microbrewery and have that gourmet pizza does not even know that thousands are wanting just rice and salt so they don’t die of hunger. The video classes they rave about when thousands more go without schooling because they don’t have computers, tablets.  

A whole bunch of people out there, friends included, are so out of touch with reality and inward looking that one wonders what kind of leaders are they in their organisations? Will they develop their organisations, teams, workers or are they so lost in the smoke of whatever they inhale that they can’t see life around them? The sheer ungratefulness and selfishness of so many educated is appalling and these numbers are large, are people you know, meet and you always thought were – oh such nice folks. Covid has ripped many a mask off those around us in this crisis.

The one and ONLY way to prevent such human misery going forward is to increase the number of formal jobs, salaried jobs, have social security cover even for the self-employed, register and log every single casual/ daily wage labour so that help in cash/kind can be routed to them with the assurance that it will reach them. Call it NPR, NRC, Aadhar or whatever the hell you want, but this must be done on a war footing and to hell with all those who protest. By the time this crisis will be over, more people would have died from other causes like hunger and poverty than the virus, more people would have developed diabetes/ BP/ obesity from over eating and many of those at the bottom of the pyramid who had started climbing will find themselves pushed back into the trenches.