By Avner Pariat
The MDA government has the unenviable task of putting its money where its mouth is. We may recall that Conrad Sangma had in February 2023 promised to create 5 lakh jobs if brought back into power (4 Feb 2023, ThePrint). Well, almost a year has passed by and I don’t see “no jobs anywhere” (pardon my colloquial coquettishness). We should question as well if these jobs are “bullsh*t jobs,” or if they are ones that pay a living wage (and other benefits). Before his untimely death, David Graeber popularised the term “bullsh*t jobs” in his 2018 book, “Bullsh*t Jobs: A Theory.” He defined these jobs as pointless, unnecessary, or which provide little societal value, despite requiring significant time and effort. These jobs often leave people feeling unfulfilled and questioning the broader purpose of their work. In addition, of course, they pay the bare minimum.
In my opinion, thus far, every single government in the past 10 years has been guilty of promising “bullsh*t jobs” but that said, we cannot let Conrad and Co. off the hook so easily. In fact, we must hold them more accountable as the times and situations are even more imperilled. Job creation is not just a quantitative statistic that Conrad can bandy about. It has to be looked at qualitatively. Low paying jobs with no social security net must be dismissed entirely from our imaginations. And creating good jobs is doable if we place people (especially “the working poor”) at the centre of our planning process. Unfortunately, the management consultants skulking inside the Secretariat are not the “working poor” and they are not able to perform this crucial task because they are not “domain experts.”
In fact, every single one of them should be thrown out unceremoniously (preferably into a fire-pit) and in their place, we should bring in real experts who have studied poverty, urban issues, employment etc. This would mean finding people from across the country such as researchers and practitioners in welfare economics, sociologists, union organisers etc. When we start to ‘plan for people’ it means that we will see a shift in how we think about society and the economy. We will start thinking about the welfare of the coolie, the ragpicker, the mason, the street-food vendor, the teacher, the technician etc. Our entire system would re-orient itself around Labour (“low level”) and not around the “high level.” This is possible and in fact, various schemes and programmes exist within the governmental framework but again they are futile if the interests of the elites come before the interests of the people.
Using a labour-oriented approach, we can see an immediate solution to the serious issue of Unemployment which Conrad promised to resolve. Building up Big Employers that can hire people in the hundreds. These are companies that the government can create or re-organise existing ones in order to have (A) more efficient (B) more productive (C) more profitable. Profits would not be shared amongst the “high level” management but would instead go towards providing decent salaries and social security benefits to the “low level” workforce. Additionally, the revenue generated would help the state’s revenue from taxing such companies. Imagine a scenario where the biggest construction firm in the state did not belong to a single individual or a family. Imagine if the Meghalaya Government Construction Corporation (MGCC) was turned around and was re-structured into a firm driven by – first and foremost – the interests of construction workers. This would improve the life of a mason; a plumber or electrician and his family if he got a share of the approximately 730 crore which has been earmarked for The Meghalaya Ecotourism Infrastructure Development Project (MEIDP) or if he got a sliver of the Shillong-Dawki road project, estimated at Rs 1377 crore! The MGCC could become a Big Employer. It could raise the skill sets and awareness of the workers through training and mechanisation and we could actually export our labour all over instead of being dependent on semi-skilled labour from the outside which is the case right now.
Imagine if we invested in modernising the old Meg Cannery and fruit processing centres and re-vamped the firm into a Big Employer? Imagine doing the same with MTDC and MeECL. Hundreds could be employed and the lives of thousands could be improved. But the consultants – who control the government don’t seem to care about Social Justice or Equality. I wonder if they have even heard of such concepts. It is clear most of them are deeply ensconced in their Caste and/or Class privilege. Why would they care about these issues? For them it’s just a matter of sending a report to the Secretariat but for us, this is home. We don’t get to go back to Baroda or Vizag or Delhi when our assignment is over. If this society breaks, we break. We don’t have a choice. These are our people and we can’t ignore the rampant Inequality, Injustice, Corruption and Poverty which are crippling us. Creating good jobs can go a long way (though not the only way, mind you) to ameliorating these miseries.
When I talk about Big Employers, the elephant in the room is, of course, MCCL, which has been spectacularly and dramatically capsizing before our very eyes. And by the looks of it, another upcoming disaster looms on the horizon, namely MeECL. But if the bureaucrats who are expected to lead these organisations are removed, and in their place, professional managers are brought in, the outcome would be a different, happier story. Bureaucrats are not going to rock the boat. If these managers looked at how much money MeECL is losing to the sick industrial units in Byrnihat, they would file cases immediately or discontinue electricity supply completely and find new markets. But since the sick unit owners are close to the various politicians, no bureaucrat will dare go to war with them. One of them tried and look where that got him. At the risk of being called repetitive I will repeat this – Big Employers must be insulated from interference. If we can do that, everything will begin to fall into place.
All of this fits into the Private Sector development which we desperately require right now, since I argue for a form of State Capitalist model of the Private Sector. This is because I do not believe (as I have stated in various articles) that this obsession that we have on “Individual Excellence” is healthy for our society. I don’t believe the wonderful stories I hear on Instagram and Facebook about how a single person overcame the odds to become a millionaire or an entrepreneur. We hear this sort of empirically unvalidated baloney daily. As a politician, I cannot think about just one person’s wellbeing. I have to think about what is good for the greatest number of people. This is why I argue rigorously for this model of development. Now, let us turn towards what Conrad Sangma has been doing.
As mentioned earlier, Conrad Sangma had promised to create 5 lakh jobs over 5 years. Much of that job creation is premised upon the success of the flagship programme – PRIME – and especially CM Elevate. According to the Economic Times article at the launch of CM Elevate (from Oct 17, 2023) the programme is meant to benefit 20,000 beneficiaries leading to the creation of 50,000 jobs over a period of 5 years. But 50,000 jobs is nowhere near the 5 lakh jobs promised. So how will Conrad create the remaining 4.5 lakh jobs which he has been promising? Perhaps our consultants can tell us. And as far as I know, handing out FOCUS cheques for small amounts of money is not job creation. In total, the grand amount might look impressive on paper but at the individual level it really doesn’t amount to much.
That said, let me not be too gloomy. The Government is working on building up co-operatives which is a good sign and a way forward to a State Capitalist model of Private Sector development. But they need to concentrate more on that and less on flashy, sexy, cool gimmicks which any graduate-level marketing professional can do. I fail to understand our Government’s obsession for “re-inventing the wheel.” Much of what governments are supposed to do has already been laid out. Just follow the precedents. These fancy launches and expensive events for gimmicks like FOCUS, YESS Meghalaya are pointless. Governance, in the bygone eras was definitely not cool, exciting or titillating but it seems to have had a better impact on alleviating poverty, reducing inequality and supporting social welfare. This is generally true the world over. The world has changed since then. New challenges have emerged, new problems have cropped up but abandoning tried-and-tested methods which had been prescribed by domain experts is surely erroneous.
True that the PRIME and CM Elevate programmes are important interventions but they are only a tiny part of the greater ecosystem. The faster, more inclusive route would be the creation of Big Employers. It is an old Social Democrat/State Capitalist idea. Asking people to become PRIME entrepreneurs sounds nice but what do the statistics say? According to an article on the Ideas for India website, about 50% of firms will go bust within 5 years (from Firm Survival in India: Status of Firms formed over the last 30 years). That means the potential elimination of 50% of the 50,000 jobs which CM Elevate promised to create within 5 years. So, we are back to square one if that happens. Additionally, CM Elevate would be creating too many competitors in its support. This is another important aspect that no one seems to have accepted: that competition is a reality of business. How many pickle-makers, or fruit wine-makers can we create before they start to cannibalise each other? Who will be the winners and what will happen to the losers? Can’t we bypass this sordid outcome by pre-empting the best possible scenario where they don’t need to compete unnecessarily?
Charles Fourier – a founding father of Socialism, understood this way back in the early 19th century, when he noted how inefficient it was to have three hundred wineries instead of a couple of properly managed ones which could employ many people. Again, these are not new ideas but they are important to discuss.
Unlike the government of our neighbouring state we must stop wet-dreaming of the Adanis and Ambanis swooping down to save the poor and destitute of the state. Those investments are probably not going to come anytime soon for us anyway. So, we have the chance to think local instead. Indeed, they can be “beautiful”, they can bring our communities together, we can build companies that we can be proud of; built on the vaunted egalitarianism of our “tribal” ideals. These Big Employers would have to have managers in charge of them, not political appointees at the helm. We cannot rely on the IAS to lead these firms. They are too overburdened. Besides, seeking profit out of an enterprise is not what they are trained for. They have to spend money, not make it. We need professional managers who possess both business acumen and compassion for people. Sure it is difficult to find such people because B-schools aren’t known for imbuing compassion into their students but it is not impossible to do. We had a Verghese Kurien once upon a time and I believe we can build an AMUL here as well.