A crisis of livelihoods

It has now become widely recognized that the COVID-19 contagion has triggered off a serious crisis of livelihoods across the world. The situation has been the worst in India, with unofficial estimates putting the number of persons who have already lost their livelihood – lost both employment and income – due to prolonged lockdown at about 12 crore. While several lakh migrant workers have managed to reach their respective homes, many migrant workers are still stuck in their places of work despite shutting down of factories and other places where they were engaged, trying to reach their families and safe places. Though the Assam government had launched an initiative to provide such migrant workers of the state with some amount of cash, this sum – of great value despite being too meagre – has not reached many. Stories of thousands of such migrant workers from Assam located in different far-away states, with no money in hand and no food to eat while employers have practically thrown them out have been carried almost on a daily basis by the states media, whether print or electronic. There have been also stories about landlords and house-owners asking such people to vacate rooms, while many have also faced racial discrimination simply because of their facial appearance. Sudden end to remittance flows from such migrants to their families back in their respective villages have on the other hand put thousands of people – mostly elderly – in serious trouble because the paltry sum sent by their sons from Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra or Gujarat was the only available cash for them. The remittance flow, which was very important for poverty reduction, on being curtailed has sent many families starving. Next to them are a few more categories of people - small traders and daily-wage earners and farmers — who have also lost their livelihood on account of the lockdown. These small traders and daily-wage earners and farmers put together account for about 60 per cent of the total employed people in India. These people have no cover whatsoever against the loss of livelihood in the lockdown. Rickshaw-pullers, barbers, cobblers, washermen, the roadside tamul-paan sellers, the domestic maids – there is no end to the list of categories of people who have lost their livelihood.