PRAHAR (Public Response Against Helplessness and Action for Redressal) a Delhi based NGO dedicated towards finding solutions for problems of the helpless,

GREATER NOIDA TENNEWS REPORTER LOKESH GOSWAMI 

INDIA ON THE VERGE OF A LIVELIHOOD-LOSS EPIDEMIC

 550 jobs disappear in India every day; by 2050 India would have lost 7 million

jobs while growing population by 600 million

 Doing business in India gets tougher at the bottom of the pyramid

 Millions of Indians employed in farming, petty retail, and informal

sectorsgrapple with falling incomes and rising stress levels

 Unfriendly regulatory environment and lack of ‘livelihood-first’ economic

policies taking livelihoods away

New Delhi, 7 November 2016:

PRAHAR (Public Response Against Helplessness and Action for Redressal) a Delhi based NGO

dedicated towards finding solutions for problems of the helpless, today unveiled its national

research conducted to understand India’s livelihood challenges against the backdrop of its national

conference ‘Livelihood Challenges in 21 st Century and Action for Redressal’, held in NCR today.

The conference was attended by close to 1500 participants representing India’s largest workforce

segments of farming, retail and unorganized sector.

PRAHAR’s study conducted among more than 1000 farmers, farm workers, street vendors and

unorganized workers across India, unearthed some interesting findings:

 70.8% farmers felt that their incomes have been decreasing, while 75% of street vendors felt

that they have been losing their incomes.

 59% farmers feel that the drop in income has been the sharpest during the last 5 to 10 years,

while 50% street vendors feel that the income drop is sharpest in the last 2 years

 Besides falling incomes, rising stress is a big cause of concern for farmers, street vendors and

unorganized workers. They feel more stressed to retain their incomes. 78% farmers feel

stressed, while 93% street vendors say they are feeling more stressed.

 Forget the global ease of doing business ranking, Indians at the bottom of pyramid feel getting

business in India is getting more difficult.

 For both farmers and street vendors, unfriendly regulatory environment and support is emerged

as a top reason for rising stress levels and falling incomes. This is surprising as the popular belief

is that these sectors are unregulated.

 Under the garb of welfare measures, there exist many regulatory interventions or dependencies

enveloping the masses, which are killing livelihoods. Government of India needs to constitute a

think-tank which can help weed out such unfriendly regulations.

Speaking on the occasion, Mr. Abhay Raj Mishra, President, PRAHAR, said, “Indian intelligentsia and

policy makers backing of glamorous sectors like information technology, automation and services to

solve India’s economic problems is a flawed approach. It is farming and SME sectors which are

source of livelihood for 99% of Indian’s population today, with organized sector catering to a

minuscule 1%. To achieve economic nirvana, India needs ideas which reinvigorate and galvanize the

farming and SME sectors as a singular focus. This is PRAHAR’s focus and top priority”.

“We need livelihood-first ideas in India. We need to promote businesses which require more people

and fewer machines. Any economic activity which cannot deliver three to four times the global

averageof jobsshould be declared illegal in India”, he added.

“Instead of indiscriminately spending on welfare schemes, Government needs to invest in cultivating

local champions, who create livelihoods at the bottom of the pyramid. Government’s role should be

like a venture capitalist, which identifies talent in farm, petty retail, street vending and SME sectors,

and enables them to create businesses which are employment friendly”, he concluded.

With aggressive focus on technology and automation and the stifling government regulations,

people dependent on agriculture and the unorganized sector like small retailers, street vendors,

manual labour and so on see employment opportunities dwindling and their livelihoods under

severe stress. As per World Economic Forum data, unemployment rate in rural areas rose to 5.1 % in

2015-16,up from 4.7% in 2013-14. More than a third of farmer households today live below the

poverty line. According to the study by PRAHAR, while automation is threatening cotton, sugarcane,

rice, wheat, vegetable and fruit farmers, the tobacco farmers face financial distress with excessive

regulation in the tobacco industry. Clearly the Hon’ble Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s promise to

double rural income in five years to lift farmers out of poverty is not expected to meet the deadline.

As per PRAHAR’s internal studies and analysis workers who are worst affected by the livelihood

losses are farmers and farm labourers across India, small retailers, hawkers and unorganized retail,

contract labourers and construction workers in the same order.

Data from the PRAHAR study also reveal other startling facts. 46% farmers believe that their

livelihoods are under threat, with 17% believing that there is a dramatic reduction or it is becoming

impossible to sustain themselves from farming. 18% farmers believe that toughening or harsh

Government regulations coupled with multitude of Government agencies is making farming

unviable. 94% of farmers have farming as their primary source of livelihood. 100% farmers employ

farm workers whose livelihoods depend on the success of farming activity. 55% farmers believe that

the main reason for livelihood threat in farming is the mismatch between cost of cultivation and

price realization of farm produce.

According to the data released by Labour Bureau of Government of India in early 2016, India created

only 1.35 Lakh jobs in 2015 in comparison to 4.19 Lakh in 2013 and 9 Lakh in 2011. Also, according to

Census 2011, the average growth rate of the economy was 7.7 per cent per annum, when it was only

1.8 per cent for employment. These data clearly point to the fact that job creation in India is

successively slowing down, which remains alarming.

Agriculture contributes to 50% of employment in India followed by SME sector which employs 40%

of the workforce of the country. The organized sector actually only contributes a miniscule less than

1 percentage of employment in India. India has only about 30 million jobs in the organised sector

and nearly 440 million in the unorganised sector. According to the World Bank data, percentage of

employment in agriculture out of total employment in India has come down to 50 per cent in 2013

from 60 per cent in 1994.

The labour intensity of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) is four times higher than that of large

firms. The multinationals are particularly capitalistic a fact vindicated during investment

commitments of US dollar 225 million made for the next 5 years during the Make in India Week in

February 2016. However, what went unnoticed is that these investments would translate into

creation of only 6 million jobs. Highly capitalistic multinationals want to start factories in India to sell

their products to the white-collar middle class but will not create the manufacturing workforce the

country is longing for.

About PRAHAR

PRAHAR (pronounced as प्रहर in Hindi which means ‘gatekeeper’) is an NGO based in Delhi which

stands for Public Response Against Helplessness and Action for Redressal. As evident from the name

itself, PRAHAR attempts to address ‘Helplessness’ which citizens’ experience, as they struggle with

their everyday lives, and find themselves all alone in dealing with them. PRAHAR is dedicated

towards finding solutions for problems of the helpless. A key character of helplessness’s is that it

cannot be fought alone. PRAHAR collaborates with supporters, influencers, organizations, like-

minded people and donors to provide direction, voice and resources to seek solutions to these

problems.

PRAHAR’s national campaign on livelihoods include following activities:

 Carrying out studies to go deeper into the subject and identify the real areas which need to be

addressed. PRAHAR would conduct a national opinion poll among the most vulnerable sections

of the society to understand their concerns and their views on what could arrest the problem.

 Take up the issues directly affecting the aggrieved class of participants, who could be farmers,

small retailers, factory workers or others.

 To arrive at a charter of demands from the weaker sections of the society who are facing

unprecedented livelihood challenges and take their concerns to the policy makers and the

custodians of the constitution of India.

 Identify specific solutions and set up redressal forums to deal with specific challenges or threats

whether they pertain to a class of workers or a particular sector of the economy.

 Prepare an action plan for reinvigoration of livelihood creation and generation of new

opportunities for the emerging young class, while safeguarding current livelihood opportunities

which are constantly losing ground because of arrival of technology or other changes.

 To constitute a Monitoring Committee with a calibrated representation of stakeholders and

experts to keep track of recommendations made and results achieved.