Earthing the wretched

Where do you earth Frantz Fanon’s Wretched of the Earth, asked an opinion piece and an editorial in this paper earlier in the week? What amount of money is necessary to face up to the existential threat? The poverty line drawn by the government since 2013 at Rs 3,030 a month was found to be less than a dollar a day, well below the internationally recommended bottom line of two dollars a day. And this after the official shift from the practice of costing calories and assuming an equal amount for some basic needs to improving the coverage of basic needs and changing the reference group to capture the multidimensionality of poverty! The previous practice would have eliminated poverty by now!! It would have fallen to a mere 9.3 per cent by 2013-14 rather than the 29.5 per cent based on the changed methodology. Allowing for inflation would increase the poverty line to around Rs 4,000 in 2016-17.

An individual or, technically, an adult equivalent, is thus defined as non-poor if she/he earns less than Rs 4,000 a month. Can an individual survive with this amount? The calculation of Consumer Price Index (CPI) assumes that the consumption pattern of individuals depends on their income level. That is why the CPI is computed for different income levels also. Its lowest income quintile is Rs 8,000 and below with a base period of 2007-08. In the budgets for 2017-18, the federal and provincial governments announced a minimum wage of Rs15,000 a month. It is well known that the minimum wage is not enforced. Outsourcing is commonly practised to deny workers the minimum wage. At any rate, two-thirds of the employed labour force in the non-agriculture sector is informal. It has no social and legal protection. Women, home-based and domestic workers are exploited with impunity. Farm workers are excluded from labour laws and social protection schemes.

Even if enforced strictly, the announced wage level falls significantly short of a living wage. The claim to have incorporated basic needs in the poverty threshold is belied by the fact that it lies well below a living wage. The living wage allows for the changing cost of living and a decent living standard. Access to food, education, health and affordable utilities and transport are the basic ingredients of a living wage. Workers’ organisations suggest a thumb rule of the price one tola of gold a month, which in today’s prices will come to more than Rs53,000. Experts, however, believe that the real cost of leading a dignified life is twice the amount of the announced minimum wage.

Globally and within most countries, inequality is on the rise. As the welfare state and the labour unions became weaker, slowdown of growth, unemployment and social exclusion have become a recurrent pattern. The recent Oxfam report launched at Davos reveals that the main sources of the wealth of the top count of billionaires are inheritance, monopoly and crony capitalism. This system of rewarding wealth, not work is designed to reproduce inequality by means of continuing inequality. Something has to change fundamentally. In Switzerland itself, a referendum was held to ascertain public opinion about citizen’s wage to give a guaranteed minimum income to all and sundry. Finland is also experimenting with the idea. Before dismissing it as a rich country idea, one should know that it is also being considered in India, a country with the largest concentration of the wretched of the earth. As technology displaces work, a certain percentage of national income devoted to paying each citizen may well be the only human response possible.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 26^th, 2018.

Like Opinion & Editorial on Facebook, follow @ETOpEd on Twitter to receive all updates on all our daily pieces.