Razzak Ahmad, 27, a resident of Malhaur in Lucknow, who runs a mobile shop called Razzak Communications, recently ordered 20 high-end smartphones of different brands in the view of the coming festival season, but is yet to taste any profit. 

Ahmad, who has been running this mobile store for the past six years, says that this has been the first time he could not sell even a single high-end mobile phone for so many days.

“I invested a few lakhs of rupees in mobile phones and also in the accessories. Customers are coming and buying mobile accessories and getting their phone repaired, but they are not buying mobile phones even with maximum possible discounts and lucrative offers, like giving some freebies, with the mobile,” he says, adding, “I initially thought that people might be going for online shopping, but then we started giving a one-stop solution and even the after-sales services. Then, we got to know about what you call a slump or a slowdown in the Indian market.”

“It has been about four months that sales have fallen to a drastic low and despite getting easy finance schemes and other lucrative offers, people are not investing money. I do not know what the reason is, as Modi ji is doing so good and Pakistan is begging for money. But the cash flow in the market has decreased, which is not a good sign for business,” he says.

Meanwhile, Dishad Hussain, a Rashtrapati award-winning artist of brass metal in Moradabad has been running from pillar to post to get a new order from any firm of any size, as he claims to be sitting without any order for the past six months. 

“Our industry hardly gets hit by a recession or any slump because it is related to utensils or home décor. But this kind of situation has arisen where the brass businessmen have been sitting idle for the last few months and have only been eating from their savings,” he says while speaking to NewsClick.

“Big players, who deal internationally, are still safe, but the small, medium and micro size players have been affected a lot due to the uncertainty in the demand and also in the market. Initially, the note ban [demonetisation] broke us while the rest of our capacity was killed by the very bad execution of the GST; and now, this slowdown is going to make our kids starve,” he says.

The brass artisan further says that now the kids of the most skilled workers in the Peetalnagri (Moradabad) are not ready to join this profession.

“If this continues, then China and Malaysia will take over us very soon and Indian artisans will not get any work like what happened with Bangladesh in the late 90s. The market is crumbling with every passing day and I do not know about other sectors, but the brass work has been hit badly,” says Hussain.
Hussain is even contemplating writing a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi to fetch his attention towards the metal industry of Moradabad. 

Om Kumar, an architect with a leading firm in Lucknow—which has designed many five star properties in India—says that the firm has kept all the projects on hold.

“The situation has become even more serious than it was during the demonetisation. There is hardly anyone who wants to invest in the real estate sector these days and the condition is getting worse every day,” he said, adding, “The banks have also stopped lending loans and private investors are washing off their hands.”

“Earlier, a lot of people used to invest money in our sector because the rate of return was too high. A man, by investing lakhs of rupees, could get twice or thrice in return within two or three years, but now the market has drowned. The rate of properties remains sky-high with no people left to invest the money,” he says. 

Talking about the project his firm is doing, he told NewsClick, “At the moment, we are working only on two high-rise projects because over 70% of the work had been done and on a few floors, we have also given the possession. We have kept our four high rise projects one three star hotel and a mall project on hold, as there is not enough money with the firm to start the construction. We have failed in raising investment because due to uncertainty, we were unable to tell the investors about the return on investment and other important things.”

Courtesy: Newsclick.in

 

Sonbhadra: Could the heinous killing of 10 tribals by an upper caste mob, allegedly led by the village headman, over a land dispute in Uttar Pradesh’s Sonbhadra district been prevented if the police had not played a questionable role?

It does seem so, if villagers are to be believed. Some villagers accused the Ghorawal police of being “hand in glove” with the accused village headman and helping him in every move in the past two years, including carrying out the carnage a couple of days ago where 10 Gond adivasis were gunned down.

As per preliminary investigations being done by intelligence sources, shared with this reporter on the condition of anonymity, a few policemen from Ghorawal police station, including the beat constable for Umbha village, had prior information about the planning of this carnage. Incidentally, the Sonbhadra police arrested 29 people, including the main accused, within 24 hours but has not yet disclosed the location from where these people were arrested.

Sonbhadra’ superintendent of police (SP) Salman Taj told Newsclick over phone that four arm licenses and six trolleys which were used in this incident were confiscated by the police. But villagers/eyewitness have claimed that more than 300 men came on 30 tractors armed with weapons and committed the carnage.

The accused (village headman) and his henchmen had planned everything in advance, including absconding and remaining underground. Nothing, not even a needle, was found in the accused’s house, said sources.

Meanwhile, a pall of gloom has descended over the sprawling Umbha village about 60 kilometers from the Robertsganj district headquarters in Sonbhadra district of Uttar Pradesh after the killings.

Delhi-based journalist Kumar Sambhav Srivastava, who records land conflicts with his initiative Land Conflict Watch, says the problem lay in the Indian caste system and the laws made by the then colonial government in India which turned tribals into encroachers overnight by passing a law in 1927. 

“These tribals belong to the lower section of the society and have been denied land rights. This has contributed to the mindset among upper caste people that tribals or people from lower castes cannot own a piece of land,” he said.

The Gond tribals have been living in this village much before Independence and have been getting their bread and butter from cultivating the controversial piece of land. Despite the land being transferred in the name of an administrative officer in 1951, 1955 then to the Adarsh Society Scam and then again to the pradhan, the tribals were never stopped from farming on this very fertile chunk of land.

The villagers, ever since 1951, have not been given the lease of land for farming and have been practising agriculture by simply giving some sort of lagaan (tax) to the headman of the village or to the landowner.

The problem over this controversial 100 bigha piece of the 145 bigha land started in 2017 when the main accused, Yagya Dutt, who held the position of pradhan, and his family members started attempting to take possession of the very fertile 90 bighas of land. It is to be noted that Dutt bought the land in the same year and was now trying to sell this piece at Rs 45 crore, as per the Umbha villagers.

After buying the land, Dutt got a police case registered against the Gond tribals under Sections 506, 504 and 447 in a bid to get hold of the land, but tribals resisted. Dutt, through his relatives, got two more police cases lodged against the tribals in October in 2014 under Sections 506, 504, 447 and 149. Despite this, the Umbha villagers did not step back. These Sections of the Indian Penal Code imposed on the villagers amount to trespassing, criminal intimidation and breach of peace. I

Interestingly, the Ghorawal police station did not hear out the Gond tribals and continued detaining a few villagers, who was released later.
As per the villagers, the land and revenue department was informed when the pradhan bought the land chunk and tried to get the Dakhil Kharij (mutation) done. The Dakhil Kharij, as per advocate Nityanand Diwedi, who is representing the Gond tribals, was reportedly done in 2017 and its record is being taken out to be produced in court.

Incidentally, the Supreme Court, in a recent judgement held that dakhil kharij in no way confers/extinguishes land title. It only means that land revenue can be collected by the person in whose name the entry has been done.

Courtesy: News Click

Workers waiting at the Chinhat labour hub

Wearing a striped sweater and a muffler wrapped around his head, Baran, 48, explained why, despite being a “staunch” supporter of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, he was disappointed with the BJP-run central government’s inability to provide jobs.

“They have failed me,” said the illiterate daily wage worker. With a lunch box wrapped in cloth, he travels 9 km one way, changing two buses that cost him Rs 22, until he reaches the city’s largest labour hub, the Chinhat industrial area, where he waits every day for a temporary job.

Ram Baran, a daily wage labourer, is one of many at the labour hub to express disappointment with the ruling government

This has been Baran’s routine for two years after he was fired from an electric-rickshaw factory called Srivastava Automobiles, one of many small-scale companies that either laid off employees or shut down after Modi’s November 2016 decision to withdraw 86% of India’s currency, by value.

“I was paid Rs 12,000 per month for the job, but post demonetisation, sahib asked me to leave,” said Baran. “He is a good man and did not want us to leave, but he did not have any money to pay his workers.”

Baran was one of around 3,000 labourers who mourned the loss of financial stability after demonetisation at the Chinhat industrial area in the capital of India’s most populous and politically important state, Uttar Pradesh (UP). While most labourers at Chinhat were from Lucknow, others had come from adjoining districts like Sitapur, Hardoi, Rae Bareli and Barabanki in search of jobs.

Some workers–among them graduates, engineers and post graduates–were dressed in torn garments, others wore a mix of worn blazers and lungis. Most held a bidi in one hand and held a small lunch box in the other. Several women joined the throng, dressed in colourful sarees with a loose shirt on top and a child slung over their shoulders. Of nearly 400,000 labourers across Lucknow’s labour hubs in Lucknow, only an estimated 40% find work today, said Ashish Awasthi, a labour rights activist.

Pandit Sunil Bharala, chairman of the labour department, denied a jobs shortage in UP. “There is nothing,” he said, referring to an increase in unemployment. He refused further comment on the subject.

This is the sixth in an 11-part series (you can read the first part here, second here, third here, fourth here and fifth here), reported from nationwide labour hubs–places where unskilled and semi-skilled workers gather to seek contract jobs–to track employment in India’s informal sector. This sector, which absorbs the country’s mass of illiterate, semi-educated and qualified-but-jobless people, employs 92% of India’s workforce, according to a 2016 International Labour Organization study that used government data.

As India begins voting for the 2019 general elections, this series provides a reported perspective to ongoing national controversies over job losses after demonetisation and GST by delving into the lives and hopes of informal workers. The number of jobs declined by a third over four years to 2018, according to a survey by the All India Manufacturers’ Organisation, which polled 34,700 of its 300,000 member-units. In 2018 alone, 11 million jobs were lost, mostly in the unorganised rural sector, according to data from the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE), a consultancy.

Baran was trained in various industrial jobs, such as lifting large metal sheets with forklifts. “Despite work experience of 15 years in the automobile sector in Lucknow and Kanpur, no one wants me,” he said. Baran now accepts whatever comes his way, from loading goods to simple, cleaning work. Sometimes, he works at construction sites.

On average, Baran finds work for two weeks every month at Rs 300 per day. His monthly income has dropped by half since demonetisation, to between Rs 6,000 and Rs 8,000.

More youth, fewer jobs
Home to 200 million people, UP is India’s second-poorest state by per capita income, ranks 29 of 35 states by literacy, according to Census 2011, but because of its size, it has more illiterates than any other states. Coupled with the fact that it has India’s largest youth population (15-24 years), more than 40 million as of 2011, the state–with an economy half as large as Hong Kong, which is smaller than many UP districts–requires millions more jobs.

Instead, demonetisation ended an uncounted number of jobs and made existing ones less remunerative, as Baran’s experience showed. Now, as the 2019 elections unfolds, UP’s unemployment problem is likely, said experts, to be reflected in reduced support for the BJP, which won 73 of 80 UP Lok Sabha (parliament’s lower house) seats in 2014.

Rudra Pratap Dubey, PhD, a Lucknow-based political expert, estimated that every second youth in the 15-to-24 age group is unemployed in UP. PhD holders, doctors and engineers routinely apply for positions as peons and sweepers. To address widening unemployment, the state government launched two programmes, Start UP India and Stand UP India, but there has been little effect.

While the youth are enthused about Modi for his muscular nationalism–embodied by an air strike against Pakistan, they still do not have jobs, said Dubey, The middle class–in particular, the lower middle-class– is “highly upset” with the BJP, he added, predicting a fall in the party’s vote share in upcoming elections. 

“There’s a chance that the BJP may get votes from the youth,” said Dubey. “But their parents may not vote or support the BJP.”

Whoever wins UP will have to deal with an ever-growing population of youth looking for jobs. UP’s fertility rate is 2.7 children per woman–above the national average and the replacement rate of 2.2–its “demographic window of opportunity” is “fully open” and will continue until 2061, according to a 2018 United Nations Population Fund report.

Like five other poor states (Jharkhand, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan) UP has a potentially large demographic dividend–the economic growth that accrues from a large working-age population–but this can be easily squandered without adequate education and employment.

Broken promises and dreams

In 2017, the BJP stormed to power in Uttar Pradesh state assembly elections, despite the lack of a chief ministerial candidate. By riding on Modi’s popularity, promising jobs to youth–within 90 days of coming to power–farm-loan waivers, free education for girls and an end to corruption, among others, the BJP won 325 seats of 403.

That victory came at a time when UP’s unemployment rate was 13.25%, on average, between January 2016 and 2017, according to CMIE data, registering a high of 18% by June 2016, five months before demonetisation. This high rate was the culmination of widespread problems that companies faced in renewing leases to industrial land or buying new plots, which resulted in several moving to Uttarakhand or West Bengal, said Neeraj Shukla, an assistant professor and economist at Lucknow’s Khwaja Moinuddin Chisti University.

But employment data in UP are contradictory and possibly reflect the difficulty in gathering such data, said deputy chief minister Dinesh Sharma. The UP government has provided jobs to 1.5 million under various programmes over the last two years, said Sharma, who also added that data gathering “is not yet completed”. There “should be no doubt” that jobs are being generated and the state government is “doing its best”.

Between January 2017 and July 2018, the unemployment rate fell to an average of 3.9% over 19 months. In August 2018, Swami Prasad Maurya, state labour and unemployment minister, told the state legislative council that more than 2.1 million youth were registered as unemployed in UP. The actual number, he said, was not known.

UP’s employment data may be suspect, but the loss of opportunities is evident and now an issue for the BJP’s supporters, such as Baran.
Baran said he voted for the BJP in 2014 because of their promise to construct a Ram temple. When demonetisation came along, he was impressed by the logic offered by Modi–that it was a strike against unaccounted money and terrorism–but he did not realise it would affect his life.

“I do not know the long-term impact of these reforms (demonetisation), all I know is that my family has suffered due to my unemployment and low wages,” he said, emphasising he would vote for a party that guarantees jobs, although he did not specify which.  This sentiment was echoed by several others at Chinhat.

Mukesh Yadav, 28, a daily wage labourer from Barabanki district, said he rebelled against family political loyalties to the Samajwadi party to vote for Modi in 2017. That led to a fall out with his father, who called his son’s vote a “breach of trust”. Yadav said he voted for Modi and the BJP based on their promises of constructing a Ram temple and providing Rs 15 lakh to each citizen.

That faith has now faltered.

“I never knew all the promises made by them were nothing more than jumlas (rackets),” said Yadav, describing how his wages had fallen more than 33% to Rs 9,000 since demonetisation. “I will now vote for Akhilesh Yadav (leader of the SP). I am never going to fall for any poll promises.”

As the only earning member in the family–he has a wife and two teenage children–Baran struggles to afford three meals every day, with a quarter of his monthly wages spent on a monthly rent of Rs 2,000.

“If I am not able to feed my family and provide them with better living, what is the use of this government?” asked Baran. After completing their class 12, Baran’s teenagers will start looking for jobs and–hopefully–boost their household income.

“I always dreamed of my kids becoming engineers,” said Baran, “But that seems impossible.”

Demonetisation devastation
Demonetisation and the goods and services tax–widely criticised for its hasty, often chaotic implementation–crippled many industries, from real estate to automobiles, said D S Verma, executive director of Indian Industries Association in Lucknow.

The subsequent cash crunch left industrialists struggling to pay suppliers, buy raw materials and pay daily wage labourers, said Verma.
Pradeep Kumar Srivastava, 47, was one of them. The owner of Srivastava Automobiles and Baran’s former employer, Srivastava said he had to let most of his employees go as he was left with no cash to run his operations.

“My production was hit due to the demonetisation drive,” he said, with anger. Before demonetisation, Srivastava employed seven permanent and four temporary workers at Rs 12,000 a month; today he has just three, who he pays Rs 7,000 a month, struggling to do so. He outsources most of his work to reduce costs.

After a loss of almost Rs 200,000, Srivastava, the only breadwinner in his family, said his business had not recovered. “Losing skilled labourers is a big loss,” he said. Before demonetisation he could  manufacture more than 10 e-rickshaws a month. That is now down to seven or less.

The Chinhat labour hub is close to an industrial area created by the UP government. Employers and contractors from the automobile and real-estate industries come here to hire skilled and unskilled labour. While a skilled worker today gets Rs 400-450 for a day’s work, down from Rs 500 before demonetisation, an unskilled worker gets paid Rs 250-Rs 300, down from Rs 350 or more for eight hours.

Tata Motors, one of the largest industries in UP, and 193 industries are registered in Lucknow, according to the Uttar Pradesh State Industrial Development Corporation. Many have stopped operations. Small and large ancillary industries, such as those that produce fuel tanks and stainless steel parts, built chassis for trucks and buses and manufacture battery clamps have shut down. These industries hired unskilled labourers for a variety of jobs, including cleaning machinery and loading goods.

But having skills does not necessarily improve job prospects.

Skilled workers, contractors hit
With jobs hard to come by, commerce graduate and mason Sujeet Kumar Rawat, 28, said he found “no use” for his skills.

“What is the use of skills when you are underpaid?” said Rawat, who waited for a job at Chinhat. The average daily wage of a mason was about Rs 600 before demonetisation, while an unskilled worker earned about Rs 350. Today, masons earn between Rs 350 to Rs 400, he said.

Since wages of both skilled and unskilled workers are “the price of peanuts”, competition is stiff. “It is becoming hard, very hard to survive,” said Rawat.

Since 2004, Rawat–the sole breadwinner for his family, a wife and a son–has been travelling 14 km both ways to the Chinhat labour hub on a motorcycle gifted by his father-in-law. His average monthly income is down from Rs 9,000 before demonetisation to Rs 6,000-Rs 7,000 for 15-18 days of work.

A senior mason taught him to build industrial furnaces, but those skills are rarely used, said Rawat. “In the last two years I think I have constructed only two furnaces, while earlier, I would construct at least one furnace a month,” he said. “Now I construct houses and I am not paid according to my skills.”

It does not help that industries use middlemen.

Arvind Kumar Shukla, a labour contractor at Chinhat–who charges a 10% commission for finding a job–said industries prefer using a contractor to hire labour because they can cut expenses, such as bonus and insurance: should a worker demand extras or increased wages, contractors are ready to supply a replacement.

Yet, even Arvind Shukla has suffered from the recent downturn.

Turning the pages of his register, he said from Rs 30,000-Rs 40,000, his earnings have fallen to between Rs 22,000-Rs 25,000.

The number of labourers looking for work has increased, and industries that use labour contractors pay an average of Rs 220 per day–62% lower than the regular rate of Rs 350–and some desperate workers even agree to work at Rs 150 a day.

Government programmes to help informal-sector workers are mostly ineffective.

State schemes on paper
Workers registered with the government are eligible for various welfare schemes, such as housing assistance (for construction workers), marriage grants for daughters of workers, skill development, pension and national health insurance, according to the Building and Other Construction Workers (BOCW) board.

Worker registrations rose after demonetisation, according to the BOCW, from 685,652 in 2016-17 to 781,640 in 2017-18. As many as 16,241 labourers were trained under the Kaushal Vikas Mission (Skill India Mission) since 2014, according to the UP labour department, In 2017-18, 7,029 workers were trained, the highest so far. That is far from adequate, given the millions in search of skills and jobs.

“Many a time, people who are graduates, engineers and even post-graduates come to us for jobs,” said Arvind Shukla, the labour contractor. “Most of the labours with me at Chinhat industrial area are high school or intermediate pass.”

“There are more than 100 polytechnics in Uttar Pradesh alone, and they produce thousands of skilled people every year, but hardly 50% of them get jobs,” said Awasthi, the labour activist. “There is no social security in private jobs, and this is going to be a very serious problem in the time to come.”

The labour department’s Bharala said skilled labour demands higher wages, which industries are reluctant to pay. So, unskilled labourers with minimal training are used and paid less than the standard wage. “To deal with this problem, the department is contemplating increasing its training programmes,” said Bharala. “If there is a large number of skilled labourers, then we think this problem will end.”
UP’s employment problem does not have easy solutions.

There is a “mismatch in the demand and supply of education and skills” that translates into unemployment, said a 2017 International Labour Organisation  report. Though there is a shortage of skilled labour, workers are often not trained in different skills primarily due to lack of education and awareness about opportunities. The high rate of unemployment among educated youth, said the report, was a “matter of concern”.

This is the sixth of 11 reports. The previous stories from: Indore, Jaipur, Perumbavoor,  Ahmedabad and Kolkata.

(Sharma is a Lucknow-based freelance writer and a member of 101Reporters.com, a pan-India network of grassroots reporters.)

Courtesy: India Spend