PM Modi calls for self-reliance. Is India’s migrant labour returning to their villages equipped for it?

They are on their own. They are walking home. They have resolved never to return. Can the global community for once channel its anger at their plight and the guilt of our own privilege into something more productive? How about a 10-for-10 model to truly make India’s migrant labour self-reliant? Read on.

139 million migrant workers across the India, says the World Economic Forum. A majority of them belong to traditionally marginalized groups making them a little more vulnerable than the rest.

They form part of India’s vast unorganized work sector, with almost no structural support for wage-related disputes. Or even much certainty on the very basics – roti, kapda, makaan (two square meals, clothing, shelter).

It takes a global CEO 10 minutes to earn what a domestic worker earns in an entire year, I was told in a BBC interview in January.

And then, the COVID-19 pandemic hit the headlines. The disenfranchisement of migrant labour in our country is staring in our faces from across newspapers and screens instead of being an inconvenient reality that we brush under the carpet.

Picture this.

Lakhs of migrant workers stranded across the country, while states wonder whose responsibility they are.

Thousands of them gathered at Bandra station in Mumbai to protest and were lathi charged in response – at a time when social distancing is a buzzword and a life-saver for the rest of us.

Migrant labour is walking home. Walking for 800 kms, give or take a few. Walking without knowing where their next meal will come from.

Migrant labour allegedly pay for their own travels, allegedly at hiked prices while also not earning their daily wage that keeps them afloat.

The media has had its own narratives for all of these events. Governments claim they are doing what they can. They probably are, in the face of a public health crisis on one side and a socio-economic disaster on the other. But are any of these efforts sustainable? Let us say these migrant workers do get home eventually. What happens then? Where will the next meal come from, especially when most of these daily wage workers are often the only primary bread-winners in their families of 3, 5, or 10? These questions don’t have answers. Because when it comes to rural empowerment, stop gap solutions and really long range plans are all we have ever had. Somewhere down the line, governments, corporations, and communities stopped looking at migrant labour as individuals with enough tenacity, skills, and dignity to build their own lives and livelihoods. Even as we depended on them for our flyovers, roads, homes, offices, we started to think we are better than them and we know what they need. We made products for village folk – cheap laptops, inexpensive phones. But we don’t teach them how to use these devices to earn a living. We sell them sachets of shampoos and small loads of detergent. In all our urban self-importance, we called this “The Sachet Revolution”. In the same school of thought, we decided that we will build “Smart Villages”. We started to tell ourselves that these long-range plans that require crores of rupees – Rs 50-52 crores (USD 65,92,390) for a single cluster – will solve everything. Maybe it will, maybe it won’t. It is too soon to say.

But what I know with absolute certainty is that the COVID-19 pandemic and the real, on-ground situation of migrant labour returning back to the their villages holds a big truth for me and my team at Business Raja. That the time to wait for those CSR and government funds to make a sustainable impact on the lives of rural India is long gone. While we wait and hope, we need effective, simple solutions for self-sustainability of rural India that will work in the near- to mid-term. We need to empower them, not with devices but with means to earn their own livelihoods. We need to find a middle path between waiting for millions of dollars and stop gap solutions.

The Prime Minister called for self-reliance. I propose a 10-for-10 model to deliver self-reliance for migrant labour returning back to the villages. Quickly and effectively.

How did we start looking at rural India as just consumers of the products we think they need? They have traditionally been producers through agriculture. These are people who put foods on our plate. What makes us think that we know better than them what they really need? While we can bridge the gap when it comes to awareness, skills, and funding, rural India can absolutely sustain itself with “just a little help from its friends”.

Statistics tell me that we need USD 65,92,390 to develop a single cluster of villages. But the on-ground reality tells me that USD 10,000 to adopt a single village and empowering 10 individuals for self-reliance is a quicker, simpler solution. It is the solution that we need right now. All we need for this to happen is to come together as a global community to bring funds, awareness, and to get rural entrepreneurs a kick-start.

Pre-lockdown, my team has been doing a few pilots to see if rural entrepreneurship is really viable, and I speak today with a lot of hope. Here in picture are two rural entrepreneurs my team shortlisted from the district Anekal, Karnataka. Manjula could not find a job in Bangalore so returned to her village, she dreams of starting an eco-friendly packaging business. Our second entrepreneur Naveen returned to his village too from Bangalore after the cost of living became nonviable with his income. Naveen wants to establish a food delivery service and my team is helping him do just the that.

Picture this -

USD 10,000 (INR 7.5L) for one village, pooled in by a global community of “investors”.

Choose 10 best small business ideas through a rural shark tank with Business Raja.

Give these ideas kick-starter money – or what we call the Leap of Faith fund - of anywhere between USD 600-1200 (INR 50k to INR 1L).

Introduce these entrepreneurs to existing government schemes for rural and small businesses.

Empower them to find mentors, partners, and employees from within their own communities and your networks.

Build structured communication channels that helps investors and mentors keep a watch on how their funds are being utilized in these businesses.

Let them see for themselves that their misconceptions that “poor villagers just don’t work hard enough” or that “village men will drink their weight in alcohol if they get money in their hands” are often just that – misconceptions.

Start again with another village once we have all seen for ourselves that this simple model actually works.

Access to funds and networks is by far the biggest challenge we have seen in rural entrepreneurship. Starting a small mom & pop store or a chai shop outside a college on the highway – extremely small investment ideas for the scale at which corporates and big investors think – is difficult simply because rural India usually doesn’t know where or how to start. Are we, as a privileged community with regular incomes and safe homes, ready to get them started?

In April, Prime Minister Modi called for stronger self-sufficiency in rural India in his conversation with village sarpanchs. I believe it was a clarion call for all of us to make it happen beyond just the COVID-19 pandemic. Many more migrant workers, like Manjula and Naveen, are coming home. Let’s make this homecoming worth the long journey of hardship their entire lives.

Are you ready to get them started? It is now or never. Watch this space, there is more