Africa

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Photo courtesy: Pratham Institute

By Annette Francis
MUMBAI, India, Nov 12 2018 (IPS)

The image of the ‘struggling’ daily wage labourer in India is one that stakeholders from across the development sector aspire to transform. Financial security, quality living conditions, and opportunity to thrive are the buzzwords in a conversation about the needs of this bracket. These workers—usually associated with the informal or unorganised sector—are assumed to represent the outliers of the national economy.

By definition, the informal sector includes those roles which aren’t taxed or monitored by any form of government. Recent findings however, indicate that 81 percent of India’s employed individuals work in the informal sector, of which 64 percent are engaged in non-agricultural forms of employment. Thus, while the informal sector may only contribute a sliver to national income charts, it clearly takes up a sizeable slice in the national employment pie.

These individuals aren’t guaranteed job security or minimum wage employment, and often lack essentials such as identification documents, bank accounts, insurance coverage, access to quality education, and more. If 81 percent of the nation is working in the informal sector, it implies that the work done by 81 percent of the nation isn’t formally recognised as ‘work’.

 

Challenges around formalising the informal sector

81 percent of India’s employed individuals work in the informal sector, of which 64 percent are engaged in non-agricultural forms of employment. Thus, while the informal sector may only contribute a sliver to national income charts, it clearly takes up a sizeable slice in the national employment pie.
If the problem is so apparent, then why has it been allowed to persist? To understand the wider challenges surrounding this situation, let us explore the case of the construction sector, one which contributes heavily to the migrating population and is widely recognised as a part of the informal economy.

 

1. Tracking and monitoring

For starters, monitoring this extensive cohort is a difficult task, owing to the widespread migration of the labour workforce. It is estimated that there are 5 to 6 million interstate migrants a year in India, growing at a rate of 4.5 percent annually. This includes undocumented workers who migrate seasonally across multiple locations, working for various employers, potentially across numerous sectors. These dynamic parameters make it challenging for government bodies to effectively track informal workers over a long duration. As a result, they are often excluded from state policies at both the source and destination.

 

2. Turning policy into action

For workers in the construction sector there are legal provisions, set within policies such as the Building and Other Construction Workers Act (BOCW, 1996), which aim to protect them from exploitation at the workplace.

However, converting these plans to action continues to be a challenging task. For instance, the act stipulates a cess collection, which is to be directed towards worker welfare. However while INR 70,000 crore had to be collected by the various Welfare State Boards, the actual collection amounted to only INR 26,962.18 crore rupees. Utilisation of the funds collected is even lower still.

The hierarchy of power set within this sector places contractors and sub-contractors at the top, while pushing labourers to the bottom of the barrel. The work hours are long and, the working conditions strenuous. Additionally, frequency of circulation of workers is high owing to the changing nature of skills required in a construction site. Since awareness about BOCW is limited among the workforce, there is hardly any demand for welfare measures.

 

3. Lack of capital

But the problem doesn’t end with worker’s rights. A closer look at the lives of contractors reveals that despite being higher in the hierarchy, they are handicapped by lack of capital and the irregularity of their revenue cycles. As a result, the job security of those employed under them is also at risk.

It is apparent that for these blue-collar entrepreneurs, there are several financial obstacles which prevent them from running their enterprises efficiently and ethically. For example, lack of collateral and poor credit scores prevent them from availing bank loans. Even if they manage to procure loans, the stringent frameworks set within financial institutions reduces the amount of working capital available for utilisation.

 

Entrepreneurship offers a solution

There are organisations working with entrepreneurs to help them overcome the challenges they face.

1. In 2016 Pratham (the organisation I am a part of), deployed the ‘Good Contractor‘ programme, which provides financial assistance, mentorship, and training for upcoming contractors. The USP of the project is that it has defined an ethics matrix with guidelines for labour welfare, and a candidate’s eligibility to continue in the programme is dependent on how they fulfil the requirements in the matrix.

By recognising upcoming contractors as entrepreneurs, the programme has managed to impact the lives of nearly 400 labourers through 35 contractors over two years in Mumbai. The financial autonomy and mentorship that this programme provides, should be recognised as the key drivers for participation from the workforce.

2. At the start of 2018, the Udhyam Learning Foundation launched the Udhyam Vyapaar model, working on a one-one basis with 30 entrepreneurs. The programme empowers youth at a grassroots level by providing one-one mentorship, to help overcome the challenges which they may be experiencing in running their enterprises.

The objective in this case is to foster entrepreneurs from low income backgrounds, irrespective of the sector or scale of the proposed business plans. The organisation plans to partner with NBFCs to provide funding for entrepreneurs in the nearby future.

3. Having worked on a voluntary basis for 5 years within Aurangabad and Nagpur,  Vruksh Ecosystem has been increasing awareness about the same within local communities, reaching out to over 5000 youth from both rural and urban backgrounds. It has managed to support 30 to 40 entrepreneurs working on enterprises within the sectors of agriculture, healthcare, clean mobility, and sustainable cities, and will officially be launched in, November 2018.

The common denominator for each of these organisations is the message of social impact at a grassroots level, while ensuring profitability for entrepreneurs. The numerous spill-over benefits which are generated through entrepreneurship, scales these models beyond the direct beneficiaries.

The chain reaction which can be generated by starting with a small cohort is what makes them truly click. The rise of these initiatives by nonprofit organisations, strengthens the idea that the solution for improving worker welfare lies in the overall systemic change that may be accelerated through entrepreneurship.

 

Role of civil society and CSR

With the push towards entrepreneurship created by the Start-Up India movement, workers in the informal economy cannot be excluded from the picture. While they may be at a disadvantage when compared to their counterparts in the white-collar end of the spectrum, it mustn’t be forgotten that these blue-collar entrepreneurs could open the doors required to organise 81 percent of the working Indian population. This is a mammoth task, which cannot be accomplished by simply creating amendments in policy. So, what do we need to do?

 

1. Inclusive entrepreneurship

We need to recognise that fostering entrepreneurship in an inclusive manner, is steadily becoming the need of the hour. In both rural and urban communities, programmes which focus on employability and foundation skills could begin to spread the idea that entrepreneurship is an accessible career path for people from all walks of life.

 

2. Training and mentorship

Once the message is out there, the next step is building programmes which can help these aspiring entrepreneurs navigate the challenges they will face. These individuals will require mentorship, training in communication, digital literacy, financial literacy, programme management, and so much more. The goal of their training and mentorship would be to enable them to build a sustainable future for themselves, while creating new job opportunities for others.

 

3. Financial support

Financial limitations are one of the primary bottlenecks which prevents interested parties from entering starting their own enterprises, and so corporates play a significant role in the success of entrepreneurship models. When the matter of CSR funds arise there needs to be greater willingness to experiment and invest in these models.

Microfinance institutions and NBFCs should be willing to grant business loans to entrepreneurs who are vetted and vouched for by partner nonprofits. With innovation comes risk, and funding entrepreneurs with limited collateral and personal finances is a gamble, but it is one that is necessary to ensure the success of their ventures.

On a final note, dignity of labour is a message that is yet to be accepted by the Indian community, and while we need skilled workers, the need for job creators is greater still. The cause of bringing the informal worker cohort to the forefront of our economy is one that needs to resonate in all corners of the nation. With a working age population of more than 850 million, we cannot afford to ignore the potential that 81 percent of our national workforce represents.

 

Annette Francis works with Pratham’s vocational training and entrepreneurship arm known as Pratham Institute. She currently focuses on research and innovation projects being pioneered by the organisation. Her primary area of interest is researching technology-based solutions for mitigating challenges in the development sector, specifically within the livelihood and education space. She has previously worked in a teaching capacity with nonprofit and for-profit organisations based in India and Scotland.

This story was originally published by India Development Review (IDR)

The post Bringing Informal Workers to the Forefront of Our Economy appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

With 81 percent of India’s employed workforce being in the informal sector, we can't afford to ignore their potential. Here's how entrepreneurship could offer a solution.

The post Bringing Informal Workers to the Forefront of Our Economy appeared first on Inter Press Service.

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By Farhan Bokhari
Nov 12 2018 (Dawn, Pakistan)

The ill-advised euphoria following Saudi Arabia’s promise to lend at least $6 billion to Pakistan will hardly end the many challenges faced by the country — mostly of our own making. And it will cut no ice with the visiting IMF team that is here to negotiate the terms of a possible loan package. The stock market had welcomed the Saudi promise with a robust rise. But a fast reality check is now needed. Three months after Prime Minister Imran Khan formed the new government, several challenges have continued to emerge.

Farhan Bokhari

After years of recurring and widespread abuse of authority under successive regimes, many of Pakistan’s institutions remain weak. While the ‘naya Pakistan’ government has promised to practically reinvent the country, the regime faces the danger of losing direction. The push to fix everything under the sun, beginning with a comprehensive plan to be unveiled after the fast-approaching first 100 days, is clearly a non-starter. Rather than placing too many entrées simultaneously on the table, Pakistan needs clarity and radically improved coordination of action to tackle just a narrow set of key central challenges.

Some of the world’s best-performing governments have succeeded with setting a broad direction and addressing some of the main obstacles upfront, while letting the rest fall in place.

In Pakistan’s case, the biggest pitfalls that have caused today’s disarray have emerged fundamentally from failing performance in three broad sectors: the economy, internal security and religious harmony. On all of these fronts, the performance of successive governments has been dismal.

Pakistan must address three problems before turning to the rest.

The economic crisis of today caused by the reckless spending of the past half a decade will not subside anytime soon. In sharp contrast to the celebratory mood in the corridors of power following the latest bailout and expectations of Chinese aid, there should be a period of mourning instead. More debt will further weaken whatever is left of the country’s sovereignty, unless a fast-paced push gets under way to aggressively fix a dilapidated system of revenue and tax collection.

Other notable aspects of a push to kick-start the economy include an aggressive campaign to fix the widening international trade deficit, along with the internal management of the economy whose growth is held back by a weak policy environment. Challenges such as widespread inefficiency and corruption are the natural consequences of Pakistan’s failure over time to bring its economic management at par with the changing global environment.

The PTI’s message of cleaning up Pakistan will remain hollow unless backed by a clear line of action. History has proven time and again that pauperised states inevitably lose their freedom of action, and there are hardly any exceptions to this proven norm.

A second element to addressing Pakistan’s challenges lies in reforming the country’s internal security conditions to remove the prevailing sense of widespread discomfort in daily lives. Notwithstanding the army’s success of recent years in pushing back the advance of the Pakistani Taliban, much more still needs to be done on the militancy and extremism front. Besides, across Pakistan, the pervasive thana culture rules, with little evidence that this will change soon. The policing network for the subcontinent was initially built in colonial times to serve the ends of a distant power. That construct still exists.

Meanwhile, across the lower judiciary, the daily lament of the public ranges from unusual delays and incompetence surrounding court proceedings to accounts of massive corruption. Taken together, the Pakistani public finds little relief in an area which should be the central responsibility of the state.

Last, Pakistan is in urgent need of a strong push to promote religious harmony in society. As the country advanced its interests in the name of ‘jihad’ across its neighbourhood in the 1980s and after, intolerance in the name of religion grew by leaps and bounds within. Over time, one government after another has simply abdicated its responsibility to ending violence in the name of religion. They have failed to lead Pakistan towards greater unity among members of different sects and religions.

For the prime minister, a journey to a successful and enduring turnaround for Pakistan will be a nonstarter unless the government’s priorities and vision incorporate an inclusive, national mainstream that has Pakistanis from all faiths and beliefs living in peace and security.

These three objectives are both narrow and wide. But a clearer focus on them could eventually resurrect what was once a promising future for Pakistan. In contrast, filling the plate with too many choices runs the risk of shifting the focus away from where it must matter the most.

The writer is an Islamabad-based journalist.
farhanbokhari@gmail.com

This story was originally published by Dawn, Pakistan

The post Three challenges appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Farmers spread their produce under the sun in the courtyard of their home in Ghool village of the Chakwal district, Pakistan. Credit: Saleem Shaikh/IPS

By Ahmed Raza and Daud Khan
ROME, Nov 12 2018 (IPS)

Despite the fact that Pakistan’s industrial and services sector continue to grow in importance, what happens in the agriculture sector remains critical to the performance of Pakistan’s economy and the wellbeing of its people.

According to data by the Government of Pakistan almost 60% of the country’s population live in rural areas.  For most of them agriculture forms the basis of their livelihood and spending on health, education, housing and clothing are critically dependant on the performance of the sector.

Poverty also tends to be more concentrated in rural areas and, as a consequence of the migration of many young males to urban areas, the bulk of tasks in agriculture and related rural activities are now carried out by women.

Better agriculture performance therefore also means greater wellbeing for a large segment of the population, less poverty and more money in the hands of women – something that is critical in bringing about a more gender balanced society.

In recent years the performance of agriculture has been lackluster. Since 2011/12 growth has averaged only 2.4% per year and in 2015/16 the agricultural GDP actually fell for the first time in Pakistan’s history. This resulted in strong protests from farmers and rural populations about the low priority given to agricultural and rural development by the outgoing PML-N government.

In recent years the performance of agriculture has been lackluster. Since 2011/12 growth has averaged only 2.4% per year and in 2015/16 the agricultural GDP actually fell for the first time in Pakistan’s history

Pakistan does not have a national level Ministry of Agriculture or of Rural Development.  Most of the responsibilities for agricultural development have been devolved to the provinces as part of the decentralization process that started in 2010 under the 18th Constitutional Amendment.

However, there is a Federal Ministry for National Food Security and Research (MNFSR) and it has a critical role to support and guide agriculture development across the four provinces.  In addition, a number of key policy levers related to trade, tariffs, support prices and regulations related to seeds and fertilizers remain under their control.

A new minister, Sahibzada Muhammad Mehboob Sultan, was appointed to the MNFSR in early October.  The new Minister has an important but uphill task ahead of him. This should not daunt him as many of the critical elements of an action plan are in place and it needs some strong political lobbying to get things moving.

More critically, as argued below, what he does will not require is more money and in fact a review of the current subsidies may actually reduce public outlays – something for which his counterpart the Minister of Finance will be grateful in these tough times.

 

Below is a list of four things the new minister should do:

 

First, operationalize the National Food Security Policy. A new National Food Security Policy was approved at the end of the tenure of the last Government – just before the dissolving of the assemblies. The new Minister should not see the National Food Security Policy as a legacy document of the previous regime.

The Policy has taken several years to complete and the exercise has been consultative and holistic, with strong involvement of the provinces, development partners and other stakeholders. It provides the necessary framework for visualizing the role of agriculture and food systems in the production and consumption of adequate, safe and nutritious foods without compromising the country’s natural resources while at the same time improving the incomes of vulnerable populations.

The new Minister should focus on translating the Policy into action. The focus should be on better managing trade and pricing policies – in particular liberalising trade in products such as wheat and sugar which are important to the poor and which can be imported at low prices, and, at the same time freeing up domestic markets for fruits, vegetables and livestock which are still subject to government monopolies and price caps; improving legislation particularly those related seeds and other inputs as well as to intellectual property rights which act as a brake on national and international investment in machinery, equipment and inputs; leading the way on top-end basic research especially with regard to new and emerging issues such as climate change;  maintain international collaborative agreements especially with regard to transboundary pests and disease control.

 

Second, support provinces with managing public expenditure in agriculture. Almost all development expenditures for agriculture and rural development are in the hands of the Provincial Governments.

Often much of these funds are inefficiently spent with poorly planned projects, slow implementation and high expenditures on recurrent costs, the bulk of which are salaries of support staff. All four provinces have formulated their own agricultural plans and strategies to relaunch growth in the agriculture sector which reflect the growing demand for horticultural and livestock products from the expanding urban population.

Public expenditures, both development and recurrent, will play a large role in bringing about this change. The new Minister should work with his provincial counterparts, supporting and helping them with the more technical complex and difficult tasks such as the restructuring of the public services, revamping their research systems and reforms of land tenancy arrangements.

 

Third, advocate for the phasing out of inefficient subsidies. Presently, inefficient subsidies in the agriculture sector, particularly on fertilizers and the procurement, storage and distribution of wheat, curtail its growth potential.

By the government’s own admission in the National Food Security Policy document, the subsidy on wheat costs the national exchequer close to 200 billion Pakistan rupees, and should be revisited. According to a recent report by the International Food Policy Research Institute, the gradual phasing out of subsidies could allow reallocation of public funds towards higher investments in rural infrastructure (such as roads and markets), agro-processing, food logistics and distribution, research and development, and extension services.

In addition, redistributive policies could provide the necessary impetus for enhancing inclusivity in the agriculture sector through better targeting of social safety nets to smallholder family farmers, leading to improved human and social capital in rural areas.

 

Fourth, foster coordination with other sector and related ministries.  Alleviating poverty, eradicating hunger and malnutrition and transforming food systems are challenges that require coordinated and coherent actions across food, healthcare and education sectors. The MNFSR should take on this task , taking advantage of international agreed and supported initiatives such as the national Zero Hunger Programme which integrates agriculture, nutrition and social welfare.

 

Ahmed Raza Gorsi works in international development specializing in food, agriculture and nutrition. Views expressed here are his own.

Daud Khan has more than 30 years of experience on global food security and rural development issues. Until recently, he was a staff member at the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. He has degrees in economics from the LSE and Oxford – where he was a Rhodes Scholar; and a degree in Environmental Management from the Imperial College of Science and Technology.  

The post Considerations for Pakistan’s New Minister for National Food Security and Research appeared first on Inter Press Service.

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Picture taken after the signature of the armistice in the Forest of Compiègne. Credit: Public Domain

By Manuel Manonelles
GENEVA, Nov 11 2018 (IPS)

What is the link between the current civil war in Syria, the austerity policy imposed by Germany during the last economic crisis or the Arab-Israeli conflict? Its origin, which lies in the world that was born a hundred years ago, inside a wagon in the middle of the Forest of Compiègne, northeast of Paris.

Indeed, it was on November 11, 1914 that the signature of the Armistice between the Allied powers and the German Empire took place, in the above-mentioned wagon. This event marked de facto the end of World War I (1914-18), a conflict that changed the world and still today projects its shadows.

The Armistice was followed by the Paris Peace Conference and, as a consequence, the Treaty of Versailles, that of Sèvres and many others. The birth of the League of Nations, the policy of “reparations” or the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian, German and Ottoman empires, and in part the Russian one, were other outputs of the end of the Great War. The consequences of some of these historical events are still present today in the international agenda and determine the lives of millions of people, one century later.

 

The Middle East, Kurdistan and Syria

The dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, through the Treaty of Sèvres of August 1920, opened a Pandora’s Box that we still strive to close today. Three examples: the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, the civil war in Syria and the case of the Kurdistan.

Let us start with the last one, with Kurdistan. Sèvres foresaw the holding of a referendum to decide its future, a referendum that never took place. The uprising of Kemal Atatürk in Turkey, the subsequent war and the Treaty of Lausanne (1923) were the main causes, but the disunity between the Kurds we could call “pragmatic” and the supporters of a greater Kurdistan also influenced. Similarly, the fact that Sèvres planned to include the oil rich province of Mosul within the territory of an eventual free Kurdistan (which the British were coveting) helped to tip the balance in favor of Turkish interests.

Another unfortunate legacy is, in part too, the current civil war in Syria. It is widely known that the origin of this conflict is related to the emergence of the Arab Spring, the resilience of the al-Assad regime, the infiltration of radical jihadist groups, and the interests of many regional and global powers.

However, part of the current war’s cruelty is intimately related to a State, Syria, resulting from the end of the WWI, with their borders designed to satisfy, exclusively, the French and British colonial interests. A division based on a Franco-British secret agreement taken before the end war, the Sykes-Picot agreement of 1916, that unscrupulously mixed and divided diverse ethnic and religious groups.

Even more, we cannot ignore the icing on the cake of all conflicts, the Arab-Israeli conflict. Its origin is linked to the Balfour declaration (1917) before the end of the Great War. This declaration was assumed by the San Remo Conference (1920) -also linked to the Paris Peace Conference- within the framework of the complex maneuvers of the great powers, and other influential groups of interests, during the reshaping of borders of the post-Ottoman Levant.

 

Inheritances in financial policy

In another vein, one of the main elements that also defined the treaties resulting from the Paris Peace Conference, and especially the Treaty of Versailles, was the policy of “reparations”. This policy mainly entailed that the countries that lost WWI had to face the payment of enormous sums to compensate the Allies.

This policy, so aggressive, led to the resignation of a young economist from the British delegation at the Peace Conference, called Keynes, who warned of the destabilizing effects in the economic and financial field that this could have. Indeed, this was one of the main causes of the German hyper-inflationary crisis of the years 1920-23, in which a loaf of bread reached the cost of billions of German marks. The influence of this crisis on the discrediting of the Weimar Republic and the consequent rise of Nazism is well known.

This sequence of events is at the base of the almost pathological animosity of the German economists to inflation. Since the establishment of the Federal Republic of Germany, German official economic and financial policy has been always conditioned by a strict control of inflation: perceived as the mother of all possible and imaginable evils. This was the policy that Chancellor Merkel imposed, not only in Germany but also in the rest of Europe, during the last economic and financial crisis; a restrictive policy that would avoid the supposed danger of inflation. With the consequent austerity policies and their consequences…

All of this and more, a hundred years ago, started in a wagon inside the Forest of Compiègne, northeast of Paris.

Manuel Manonelles is the Delegate of the Government of Catalonia in Switzerland, as well as Visiting Professor at the University Ramon Llull – Blanquerna (Barcelona)

 

The post Inside a Wagon in the Forest of Compiègne appeared first on Inter Press Service.

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