In India, there’s a spate of news in recent times about deaths and suicide of workers. An ambitious young accountant joined a private firm. But she died of heart attack within four months of joining the firm. Reason - extreme hard work, stress and overtime. A young man working as manager in non banking financial corporation committed suicide. In his suicide note, he wrote about extreme work pressure and deadlines. He was unable to sleep for 45 days and was under threat of firing.
We rewind the clock and refer to Polanyi’s thesis on the economic and political transformation of world in 18th, 19th and early 20th century. The transformation of savage and primitive society into society based on self regulated markets and liberal democracy. In this era, the man was stripped of his traditional cultural protection and his livelihood. The labor surplus - the man himself, was commodified to be sold in labor market. Today we are accustomed to labor markets and labor as a commodity but a couple of centuries ago when the transformation began, it unleashed greatest dislocation and disorder in society.
Labor isn’t really a commodity as Polanyi elaborated and an attempt to treat it as a lifeless inanimate product will result in abuse, exploitation and oppression of human being that has been ‘fictitiously’ tagged as a commodity. But in great Capitalist transformation, labor was forced into becoming a commodity. And with addition of social darwninism philosophy to economics, the dehumanization and destruction of labor became acceptable. In early days of capitalism especially since around 1850s, the labor was put into the grinder. It has to work at market wages or it has to starve, such was the principle of markets and fate of labor.
In following century, the labor fought for its rights. For workplace safety, fairer wages, collective bargaining, social security, humane working environment etc - variety of laws and regulations were made. In developed world, the social Darwinist view of the society was rejected especially since New Deal era. But things didn’t move so positively in poor countries and developing parts of the world.
The poor nations, the developing countries like India have very limited capital (industry, infrastructure, ecosystem of employment and production) and very large labor force. The competition is fierce as workers have to compete for scarce employment with massive reserved army of unemployed. And with technological innovation, the scope for labor is further shrinking.
In such economic environment, the labor is recklessly used with total disregard, dehumanized and destroyed with strenuous work, lack of job security and lack of social benefits. In unorganized sector, the workers do toil in farm sector or construction sector for minimal wages. There’s little outreach of government regulation over informal workers despite several legislation made to give them protection. The manual scavenging is among the most notorious work done by informal workers. I witness it quite often in my city Delhi. The workers are made to enter gutters, septic tanks and sewers only in their underpants to clean up choked drains.
(i decided to not put up image of manual scavenging because it’s so gross)
The drains are full of toxic gases and hazardous waste. Workers often die in this dangerous environment. In affluent nation, it’s difficult to imagine humans degraded to such an extent. But even in western world, now there’s a rollback of labor standards like children being forced into dangerous work environment as in meat processing plants (1, 2). In India, another notorious practice is exploitation of peasants. The small landless labor who are forced to work on minimal wages for long hours. Sometimes, the employers (landlord masters) only pay labor with two food meals as a payment for work. The practice of ‘bonded labor’ is outlawed in India but it still exists in rural parts especially due to caste system. Section of society are forced into degraded professions (scavenging, tannery, peasantry etc) solely on basis of caste.
In organized sector, the workers toil in corporate offices for long hours, overtime and sub-optimal pay. In big corporations, even if pay is handsomely high, it entails such strenuous work that it destroys personal life of employees. Such is India’s work culture and economy. In such economic environment, toil and submission to exploitation are regarded as virtues. The billionaire pundits preach that India’s workers need to accept 70 hour work week to compete in the world. The governments also oblige to billionaires demands and loosen labor laws to help India’s corporations more competitive in global markets.
India’s IT sector is priced jewel of Indian economy which reaped the most benefits from outsourcing and globalization. You may know the famous joke. Every time you call for tech support in America, you are answered by an Indian call center worker. Now with technical progress and innovation, the labor share of work is shrinking, putting more pressure on workers. Workers must do long hours of work to sustain profit margins of giant Indian tech companies. If they refuse, they are happy to quit as long queue of workers is standing outside corporate office for enrollment.
The crisis of labor conditions is not limited to India. Much of the third world has same problems. You know the condition of textile factories in Bangladesh which manufacture clothing line of western corporate giants. The wages of workers in these factories is abysmally low, there’s hardly any safety checks and standards. The notorious cases of factory disasters in Bangladesh has often made headlines (1, 2). Such fire accidents are also common in India.
China was once the world’s sweatshop by providing cheap manufacturing base to transnational corporations. China has made progress but now is stuck in ‘middle income trap’ where it has overcome acute poverty but finding it difficult to join the ranks of affluent nations in overall prosperity. While China now focuses on high-tech industry, there’s employment opportunities that see some shift towards 3rd world including India.
But how will Indian labor market reap the benefits of this? For example, the iPhone factory in India was discovered to be a slave factory. Similarly, the transnational corporations were found to be discriminating against married women employees in hiring. The problem of commodifying labor is universal. Whether in America, China, 3rd world & poor nations. Whether the employers are local landlords, tech firms or giant multinational manufacturing corporations. Without the adequate protection for workers, they are bound to get abused to the harshest degree.
Even after nearly 200 years of industrial revolution, the plight of labor remains. There is however a large gap between condition of workers in first world countries to that of 3rd world. This was basic premise of globalization. The labor in developed nations attained many rights and refused exploitation. The poor 3rd world nations then became attractive option for corporations to outsource employment due to cheap labor and lack of environmental standards. Thanks to technology, internet and globalization of supply chains, all this became possible. The corporations (tagging along with corrupt political class) made sure that labor in poor nations don’t get their basic rights and fairer wages in tandem to labor of first world. Otherwise, the entire exercise of globalization would be a meaningless exercise.
Regarding India specifically, i will soon present a broader picture of problem of its human resources and its remedies.