Work From Home maybe one of the few positive outcomes of the NCOVID 19 Pandemic II Part 1
By Malini Shankar
Digital Discourse
Foundation
Work From Home (WFH) emerged as
the most practical and viable option in trying to mitigate NCOVID 19 after the World Health Organisation of the United Nations declared on 11th March 2020 that the
Novel Corona Virus or N-COVID 19 has become a global pandemic.
Following this, Indian Prime
Minister Narendra Modi called for a one day self-imposed curfew for 19th
March and then a 21 day “Lockdown”. Narendra Modi asked employers not to
retrench workers and to pay them during the Lockdown, which he said may be
longer than initially envisaged. PM Modi called for Work From Home and
reassured Indians that there will be no shortage of food supply, medicines and
essential commodities and services.
For assuming that everyone is
connected to an internet connection on computers, Indian Prime Minister
Narendra Modi was criticised by political parties and activists; they accused
Modi of not understanding the plight of the migrants and daily wagers who could
not quite work from home (WFH).
20 million people work in the
unorganised sector without livelihood security as they work as daily wagers.
They are the underbelly of the cash economy of India where the rich get richer
at the cost of the starving millions.
The Indian economy was tottering
within four hours of the announcement as millions lost work and starvation
stared at them bleakly. With fear gripping them as they became out of work,
homeless and facing starvation the migrants embarked on life threatening foot
marches cross continent tormented by loss of job and food security.
India’s economic underbelly
snapped. The unplanned move jolted the economy and the workforce very hard. Social
distancing - experts aver - is here to stay until we find an effective vaccine to
the disease.
The coronavirus pandemic has
disrupted lives and processes personally and professionally for people across
the globe. With few signs of the virus relenting and a vaccine still months if
not years away, the world is realising that one needs to learn to live with it
- stay calm and carry on.
WFH will be a sustainable option
for economic development given its advantages. There will be a drastic
reduction in fossil fuel consumption as well as in Carbon emissions. It gives
flexible work timings especially to women, who can attend to their dependents
at home. Gender harassment at workplace will hopefully be a thing of the past.
Yet domestic violence may increase as UN Secretary General Increase in domestic
violence horifying: UNSG agonised after the Lockdown started.
WFH gives access to the internet
to a larger proportion of people at the homes of the employees, thus giving
time and space for diverse thinking and harvesting of more talent. Rewarding
such nascent talent can be ignored only at the peril to the economy and
sustainable inclusive development. WFH is user friendly to the differently
abled workforce too. Streamlining segments of the brick and mortar economy for
a thorough fit then, is the need of the hour.
“In a large country like India,
thinking this through and delivering the social protection measures within the period
of Lockdown is a challenge. With careful planning and strategizing, it can be
done” says Professor Janki Andharia Dean of the School of Disaster Studies in
the Tata Institute of Social Sciences in Mumbai speaking to Digital Discourse Foundation
WFH can potentially develop Block
chain solutions for anthropocentric challenges like the migration triggered by
COVID 19 related Lockdown in India. Think of community kitchens dotting the
rural landscape catering food security for migrants on the highways… Block
chain in tandem with e commerce is an immediate solution that comes to one’s
mind.
“Companies which insisted on
their employees coming to the office daily and be present in the daily stand up
meetings have figured out that stand-ups / attendance in office can be
conducted via Webex and Zoom; your availability status on Skype marks your
attendance and you have one less excuse to give for coming late - caught in
traffic” says Arun Gopinath, Project Manager in a leading MNC in Bangalore
speaking to Digital Discourse
Foundation.
When the Lockdown was announced India’s
National Biodiversity Authority was in the midst of negotiations
with more than a dozen stakeholders, and 270 participants to propose amendments
to the Biodiversity Act 2002 – a law that regulates Biodiversity Conservation –
an area of work so esoteric that it is beyond the realm of forest conservation.
The officers in the negotiations
transited successfully to online meetings on Zoom and Webex to carry on the
negotiations, seeking to arrive at consensus for amendment to the complex
legislation.
Sectors like fisheries cannot
benefit from WFH
But this kind of online
negotiations or transactions cannot easily manifest in sectors like fisheries
or vegetable marketing. In Tamilnadu the fisheries department launched an app Meengal to order fish online.
“Customers order the name of the
fish and the quantity they want and this is delivered to their doorstep. But
this is limited to Chennai Circle only. Again, digital platforms need to
synchronise” with e commerce platforms for delivery and logistics says Ms. S. Velvizhi
marine biologist in charge of fisheries in the M S
Swaminathan Research Foundation in Tuticorin, in Tamilnadu, in an email
interview to Digital Discourse
Foundation
Day-to-day earning of fishers is
affected in all coastal districts of Tamilnadu. Small scale fishers who fish
near-shore are struggling to market their catch with new norms and (in the) short
time available for sales during the Lockdown.
Rates are about 30 per cent lower
now. Income of fish vendors, mainly women, has been badly affected due to the
pandemic as people are purchasing less fish at lower rates. The compromise will
be on food security because the stress of micro finance adds up to the squeeze
for women fish vendors who market the catch while men do the fishing. Their
meagre earning is directly proportional to the food they eat.
Migrants are the worst hit
Migrant labour has moved to
Kerala and Karnataka for fishing activities. They are without work now due to
national lockdown and they are unable to come back given the premium in train
travel after the Lockdown is being gradually lifted. Some households of the
migrant labourers have been reduced to one meal a day.
“With the export market also on
standby, the entire fishing sector supply chain and its allied sectors are
adversely affected. For example With supply chain disrupted, thousands of
ice-plant workers, fishers and vendors and youth engaged in diesel supply to
the boats are losing their daily wages” adds Ms. S. Velvizhi.
The largely illiterate and semi
skilled workers toiled hard in an alien land to earn their bread and butter. Digital
literacy has hardly been their priority so far. Expecting them to become digitally
savvy is unreal according to politicians and activists.
Indeed their foreboding was
prescient to a large extent... Having lost their jobs, without savings and fear
of starvation, millions of migrant labourers started walking back to their
hometowns without public transport, food, water and sanitation.
Tragic stories of exhaustion,
avoidable deaths and accidents emerged awakening the conscience of the
corrupted economic order which in any case struggled to fake concern by
offering food packets water, medicines and other essentials only to the
destitutes known to them.
Cynical millionaires refused to
give cash donation for they don’t get income tax exemption. They even said
“give a hungry man fish and he will come back for more, give him a fishing oar
instead”. Indeed that caps the sorry tale of the cash rich but struggling
Indian economy.
Daily wage earners are largely
engaged as domestic helpers, cooks, cleaners, drivers for the millionaires; not
entirely computer savvy, the digital world of internet based economy is not
quite for them. Their skill set indeed drives the underbelly of the Indian cash
economy itself.
Ajith Kumar Behera from
Kendrapara in Odisha works as a part time cook in eight different households
daily in Bangalore @ of about 2 hours per household to make ends meet. “I
cannot even open You Tube by myself on my smartphone to understand the
fantastic recipes my employers send me by Whatsapp! How can I then cook such
fantastic looking food for them? Recipes are in English or Hindi, I can barely
read Odiya he exclaims, exasperated.
“Now that is my vocational
challenge” he muses half in jest “but the government expects us to know how to
operate digital wallets! How do you expect me to understand the digital world
of banking, e wallets and travel booking etc? All these services need computer
literacy, and working dexterously with emails etc on computers. That is not for
us” he tells me steadfast.
"I am a little sore that the
Government of India was deaf to our plight. If I go back to Odisha I do not get
paid work like I get in Bangalore. So I would rather stay here. Fortunately for
me my employers in Bangalore have been kind but I know many of my regional
compatriots who are caught between the Devil and the Deep Sea” Behera told Digital Discourse Foundation
To be Continued
Good points brought out in the article. But WFH is mostly for the urban elite.
ReplyDeleteFor the internet based economy to succeed in the hinterland telecom infrastructure is critical. That is when a bricks to clicks economy can succeed.
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