30/10/2020 - Government Policies

KEY POINTS

·       Slum residents have been hit hard by the pandemic, arguably harder than people in similar circumstances in rural areas. Having exhausted their savings, piled on debt at ever-higher interest rates, and mortgaged or sold their meagre assets, slum families are finding it hard to cope.

Multiple informalities

·       Informality of different kinds fill the lives of slum residents with risk and uncertainty. Only a tiny share of slum residents have formal jobs with written contracts. Most are liable to lose their jobs in an instant, as they did at the start of the pandemic.

·       More than 70% have homes without titles, and 40% lack identity papers needed to access entitlements. Being liable to losing one’s job without prior notice or seeing one’s home demolished, with no access to official assistance or political support (because you don’t exist on paper), makes their lives enormously volatile and vulnerable.

·       Policy interventions that help reduce the ill effects of informality are necessary. The Western experience holds a lesson. Recovery and resilience are much harder if there are dark clouds on slum residents’ horizons because of rampant informality.

Few good jobs

·       A different dynamic is in play now. As the urban labour forces grows, regular factory jobs are not growing alongside; there is a huge deficit. As automation progresses, and each new car requires fewer labour inputs, the growth of good jobs will become even slower, forcing people into the informal sector and the gig economy. These trends need to be countered by engendering various opportunities.

The need for policies

·       Progressively reducing the worst effects of informality is essential, first, for reducing risks and stabilizing livelihoods.

·       The conditions of employment must progressively be made more secure , with workplace protection, old-age support, and health care benefits. Similarly, the process of slum notification needs to be expedited, so the threat of demolition passes, even if individual titles are not given immediately.

·       Since stories of the worst-off in slums almost invariably involve families ruined by high medical expenses, affordable and reliable health care is necessary, which the government seems to be pursuing, albeit haltingly, through Ayushman Bharat. Harlan Downs-Tepper and Sujeet Kumar contributed to the article.

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