Skip to main content

The Workers' Plight

"We will run out of food in a few days," says Ramesh Kumar, "and I can't see my children hungry." He, like his fellow daily-wage earners, is faced by the dreadful concatenation of circumstances. With no respite in sight, their horizon remains bleak. To risk catching Coronavirus, or to risk starving without it.

Labourers across India face a daunting spectre. It looms over them in the shadows, waiting for the opportune moment: the spectre of unemployment! Yet the privileged few of us who have the torches of regulation and knowledge can foresee and prevent it. However, those of us who do not see the spectre will be whisked away by its scythe. Those labourers we must protect - the daily-wage labourers, the migrant workers, et al. 

When the Indian PM, Narendra Modi, announced a 21-day lockdown, contractual labourers were already apprehensive. The move destabilised the contractual sector and sent thousands into unemployed poverty. Although the lockdown in India is by good faith and meaning, we must remember the costs of the undertaking. Nevertheless, relentless persistence is not a strategy India can afford to take without taking good care of its consequentially affected citizens. The migrant labourers today are cut off from the meagre savings they have remitted to their families. The daily-wage earners have been removed from their now nonexistent jobs and must rely on their depleting reserves. This state of affairs is not one which will disappear with the disappearance of the pandemic. The problem must be solved, and swiftly solved, to prevent an economic meltdown from permanently handicapping the nation. 

These labourers, even months after the lockdown, will not be offered employment by corporations. The apprehensive firms will not hire more workers than they currently have unless the job salaries come at low costs. This apprehensive and cautious nature (which is unbecoming of capitalists) is due to the prediction of a reawakening of the coronavirus soon after summer. Additionally, these firms will face a credit crunch as banks behave apprehensively while loaning out large sums as capital. This would imply a greater chance of being 'laid off' unless the workers work at abysmal salaries.

Many of us, dear reader, are privileged to be safely tucked away during this crisis. We may be stranded in a strange city, or confined to the boundaries of our houses, yet we are safe. Our families go to sleep without hunger; our families awake under a roof. People like Ramesh do not have that luxury. Remember that, when you curse your situation. Remember Ramesh, remember his plight.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The Dawn of Isratin

  ‘The metaphor for Palestine is stronger than the Palestine of reality’ – Mahmoud Darwish, Palestinian Poet. Dark plumes of smoke rose in the air, heralding a doom of unendurable potency. Widow and Widower, Orphan and Vilomah, all formed in an instant – as a missile crashes into their building. They are the unwilling victims of a war they are not part of. As children cry for their dead fathers, and vice versa, who really cares about the idea of Palestine if it comes at a cost which cannot and should not be borne. Except there is no alternative. Palestinians would not hesitate to live in Israel, but they are not allowed. Persecution, oppression, execution: that is the only fate which meets those who try to cross those imaginary lines which mark Israel from Palestine. And for those imaginary lines, wars are fought, homes are ravaged and people, precious people who are born with one and only life, are killed, mercilessly, causelessly, and inhumanely.  Although many people mark...

Math: Invention or Discovery?

  Why is one plus one two? Why is anything into zero zero? Why is two to the power zero one? Any mathematician would categorically reply to you, sighing deeply, that these are axioms in math; that they’re obvious . But are they really that obvious? And what really are axioms? Most significantly, what even is math, using certainties in a world where only uncertainty is certain? Is the universe really just math, or are we being presumptuous of our talents? Was math invented, or discovered? What are axioms? Merriam-Webster defines an axiom as ‘a statement accepted as true as the basis for argument or inference/an established rule or principle or a self-evident truth/a maxim widely accepted on its intrinsic merit’. A common feature of any mathematics textbook, they are those statements which we commit to our memory without question and utilise for the rest of our lives. If you are reading this, it’s almost guaranteed that you have studied some level of mathematics (as you are literate)...

Beyond Paradise on Earth: Kashmir

On a quintessentially frosty midwinter morning, a lone conifer stands tall, cursed with eternal greenery, looking onto the icy virgin snow by the glacial river while basking in the glory of the icy peaks behind it. This is Kashmir. Paradise on Earth. When the winter clears, the land will coruscate with its verdant scenery all around, completed by the frolicking of animals, birds, and children. Or rather, if winter clears. For the wintry dark hands of indifference, deceit, manipulation, hatred, and jealousy control Kashmir now. Where there used to be nature and villages, forming the milk of human kindness, there are now ugly machinated military camps and their soldiers, forming the dung of inhumanity. Where there once was heaven, there now is hell. Kashmir is a land that has been long embroiled in the Indian subcontinent’s gratuitous power struggles. These struggles and their subsequent pyrrhic and temporary victories have extracted a heavy toll from Kashmir. Who can we possibly blame f...