Mind! As if it Matters
When 25O million people being provided employment for at least hundred days are considered to have only mouth, legs and hands, surely the planners do not think that mind matters. This is a tragedy of monumental nature which deserves wider debate in the country. How could a country aspiring to be a knowledge society aim at providing jobs only of menial nature without involving mental and thinking power and knowledge intensive jobs? Let me state at the outset that I have nothing against menial work, if the
planners also include this in their daily routine: they start their day with cleaning the
latrines and urinals in planning commission, finance ministry (which any way need some
cleaning), PMO and the rest of the similar places where all the wisdom resides. In fact,
Gandhiji inducted every new comer to his ashram by asking the person to clean the
toilets. He believed that one could not take up bigger responsibilities of freedom struggle
without learning a lesson or two about dignity of labour.
But then to engage the poorest people only in back breaking work adds no dignity to
labour. What could be the assumptions behind such a policy for more than a hundred
years, ever since Deccan riots took place more than a century and half ago?
Till recently, the Food for Work programmes used to lead to assets which did not last
even for single rain. Making the same roads over and over again was the destiny of most
such programmes. Employment Guarantee Scheme in Maharashtra started after 1971
drought was first attempt to provide guarantee of employment within five kms of the
workers. When a group of such workers demanded work, the state was obliged to
provide the work. After the renewed focus on watershed programme in drought prone
areas, the activities dealing with soil and water conservation, afforestation, etc., were
incorporated in the public works programme. Since these programmes were not
obligatory, government introduced a law through which provision of employment on the
pattern of EGS became obligatory with more than six billion expenditure every year. The
nature of the work and its measurement continue to be based on physical labour.
The question one has to ask is whether millions of workers could not use their ability to
think, analyse and infer while doing work. Should reliance be placed entirely on the
physical work? I propose to argue that we can indeed make work much more
meaningful, useful and paying if local knowledge around various resources is made the
basis of employment programmes. I concede the possibility that some physical labour
would be necessary to build the infrastructure in rural areas for better natural resource
management. Out of 100 days, perhaps 60 days could be spent for that. Even for that
work, much greater input of knowledge can be ensured so that the value is added to the
quality of the infrastructure. Remaining 40 days can be spent in various kinds of
ecological resource and knowledge mapping, value addition through processing, bio
waste and other by-product utilisation, non-farm value addition and eventually building
up of knowledge and value chain from producer to consumer. The employment
programme can also be used to create creative content on the web for promoting village
tourism for which enormous potential exists.
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The specific nation building tasks proposed under knowledge intensive employment are:
a. Building and updating Village Knowledge Registers (VKR): There is a
tremendous amount of knowledge with the elders, men and women of all
communities which is eroding fast. Some of this knowledge can provide very
valuable leads for developing contemporary products such as herbal drugs,
dyes, food preservatives, weaning foods, metal and wood processing
technologies, casting, moulding, mineral processing, etc. Each village needs
to map the knowledge as well as resources. All the species of the plants,
animals, insects, etc., can be inventorised and the biodiversity maps can also
be put on the village website. Annual monitoring of diversity would help
people track the environmental disturbances. The concept of people
biodiversity registers is already provided in the Biodiversity Act. The VKR
will incorporate both biodiversity and non-biodiversity based knowledge and
it can be integrated with the National Register of grassroots innovations and
traditional knowledge at NIF and also with National Biodiversity Authority.
b. Identifying the best practices to develop value added products: In various
fields of knowledge, the elders among the workers would identify the best
practices for the given problem and the context either as such or after pooling
similar practices from other villages, new products will be developed,
packaged and branded to generate income and employment for the local
communities. Ideal aim should be that more and more people should get
employment in knowledge based enterprises and deselect them from public
employment programmes voluntarily.
c. Redefining the Khadi and Village Industries Programme for generating
employment: As mentioned in the report of the 17 th Shodh Yatra, even the
ordinary soap was brought from 400 kms far away in Raipur to the local
market in Koraput. There is no reason why large amount of non-edible oil
seeds in the region could not be valorised for soap production. In fact, every
worker in the country should be provided soap along with the wages because
large number of human diseases can be traced to the lack of proper hygiene.
d. Technology benchmarking in everyday life: Workers should be trained to do
technology audit so that one can see the drudgery and inefficiency in everyday
life. Once the efficiency gaps are identified at block, district, state, national
and international level, workers can be enabled to think of the solutions that
can help close the gap with the international best practices in those activities.
It is only the absence of such an activity which explains why the efficiency of
using fuel wood or cleaning the drinking water in more than 60 per cent
houses has not improved much in the last few centuries.
e. Creating content for cultural, ecological and village tourism and lateral
learning: Despite all the claims made about ICT revolution, there is very little
local language content available on the web developed by people themselves.
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National Rural Employment Programme can contribute a great deal in
creating content for the village website all over the country. Not only it will
promote people to people learning but also encourage more benefit to tourism.
The cultural traditions, folk songs, sayings, fables, historical anecdotes,
heritage, etc., can be put up at this site under this programme. Local artists
would get visibility and some of them may even get invitation for
performances in rural as well as urban areas. More people engage in self-
employment activities, less pressure there would be on government to provide
the opportunities.
f. Food processing and online cafeteria: Apart from documenting various
recipes, the employment programme can also support preparation of processed
foods for which local and distant markets can be identified. Once the demand
is generated, production can be supported till market can bear the cost of
entire activity. It is obvious that for various suggestions given here, there
may not be markets because of which state has to intervene. But once the
markets are created, more activities can be taken out of the purview of
employment.
g. Large number of tribal people know how to make liquour: The technological
journey towards making herbal extracts is a short one. Tremendous value can
be added if local communities can not only make herbal extracts, but also high
value herbal drugs properly tested and certified with the help of small
processing units set up by the employment programme. Various activities
under tribal development, rural employment, watershed development, social
welfare, women and child development, health and agro industries, etc., can
be pooled to create small processing units in villages based on the raw
materials available in plenty. Herbal pesticides, veterinary medicine, herbal
food preserver, etc., are some products that can be easily developed at local
level.
h. Artisanal, handicraft and handloom activities: Given the potential of
employment in craft, handloom and kadhi activities, the past practices of
spending much more resources at the sale point of the products rather than in
improving the quality and technology of the production process will have to
change. If one compares a khadhi cloth shop with a private shop, one found
more people engaged in selling much less products. The burden of this
inefficient delivery chain was borne by the khadhi workers whose wages did
not improve much. The proposed model intends to blend the public
employment with private market so that there is a competitive spirit in making
products with proper inputs of design and technology.
The knowledge intensive approach to employment suggested here combines the
menial and the mental faculties in a proportion that would be dignified and would
empower the local communities. It is natural that administration of a heterogeneous
programme is not very easy where a bureaucratic structure designed to deal with
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uniformity. But for how long can a bureaucratic constraint override the
developmental aspirations of the society. The goal of India becoming a knowledge
society cannot be met by keeping 200 million people engaged in only menial task.
Knowledge intensity has to increase. Unless we want the problems of rural unrest
evident in 150 districts already to extend to other regions of the country.