2. How is the situation for workers today in India?
“India has the highest percentage of highly engaged workers at 78 percent in Asia as compared to Japan, which has the lowest employee engagement level at 39 percent.
The engagement level of the Indian worker is 20 percent more than his Chinese counterpart. This means that Indian employees are better at understanding the organization’s business goals, the steps required to achieve those goals and how their contributions drive goals, says WorkAsia research study by Watson Wyatt Worldwide”[1].
Even though, there still are poor working conditions, including working more hours than the legal ones, poor payment and children recruitment, Indian government is taking some measures in order to improve their labor force conditions:
“On 17 December 2008 the Indian Parliament passed the Unorganized Workers’ Social Security Bill, which seeks to provide welfare measures for unorganized workers. The House of Representatives in Parliament has described the Bill as the first major step in 60 years that will benefit the poor.
Amongst the workers to be covered under the Act are agricultural workers, migrant laborers and workers in the informal sector. It is estimated that 94 percent of the working class in the country employed in the unorganized sector would get the benefit of health, life and disability insurance, old age pension and group accident scheme.
The Indian Government has also introduced the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act Scheme that gives a minimum of 100 days of employment to those in the unorganized sector, through which the workers’ income will also be raised”[2].
“India has praised its recent Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and said that similar agreements were likely with Kuwait, Bahrain and other Gulf states. A number of steps were under consultation and implementation to ensure the protection and welfare of the workers. Problems arose sometimes as a significant number of them work in informal sectors, (and) they often do not have the protection of labor laws in the host country. What is required is a win-win situation for both the employers and workers”[3]
In 1943, while India was ruled by the British, an estimated of 4 million people died because of hunger. The main reason was because of a severe shortage of food production, but also, Indian Economist Amartya Sen said that the results of the Second World War, made the British rulers give low priority to the food supply.
Then, in 1947, the British left India, and due to the food catastrophe that they passed through, for the Indians, the food security became a priority, and here is where the Green Revolution born, nevertheless, it just started to be successful by 1967, because during the past 20 years, the country focused on expanding the farming areas.
The idea of the Green Revolution was to make the country food self-sufficient, and it counted with three basic elements:
1. They had a continued expansion of farming areas since 1947 as we mentioned before, but unfortunately, because the demand was way bigger than the production, because the Indian population was increasing, this method was not enough.
2. Then, the double-cropping existing farmland was the first element that make the Green Revolution succeed. They used to have a one season per year practice that was based on the only monsoon that the year had; so instead of having only one monsoon per year, they establish another artificial one building dams to conduct the water (they create simple irrigation techniques)
3. For last, using seeds with improved genetics was the scientific facet of this revolution and that thanks to Dr. M.P Singh (known as the India’s Green Revolution hero) who developed new strains of high yield value seeds like the rice and corn.
4. WAS THE BRITISH RAJ GOOD OR BAD FOR INDIA?
British Raj refers to the British rule in the Indian subcontinent between 1858 and 1947; The region called India , included areas directly administered by the United Kingdom, as well as the princely states ruled by individual rulers under the name and administration of the British Crown.
Was this administration of Britain good or bad for the country? Well there are divided positions on this subject and while for some, certain aspects were good for others they were terrible for the natural development of a country or countries in this case.
Below we are going to mention the most remarkable consequences the British raj brought for this land; presenting both the points of view in favour and those against it.
“India’s share of world GDP went from 22.6% in 1700 to 3.8% in 1952″ some people say this was because the British robbed India’s wealth. And others sustain that this was because the Western world was living the Industrial revolution at that time and that it came late to the India. They state that Britain was not responsible for this.
“They did it for selfish reasons!” Many state that everything the British did in this country was only thinking in themselves and their own benefit, others say that this statement could be right, but what should really be looked is what they really ended up doing, like the railways, the modern government and other such things. All of this are good for India and that it does not matter whether it was for selfish reasons or not.
Good governance? As mentioned before some people think that the modern government system was positive for India, but others opinionate that this was a façade under which the British could justify the greatest famines recorded in the previous 2,000 years, 17-20 million deaths from 1896 to 1900 alone, high taxation to support and subsidize colonial wars, and that the surplus of the production was often shipped to England.
Unification of all the provinces and kingdoms into a single nation?
Some maintain that thanks to this the country is too centralized. A lot of things which should be left to the states, are actually decided in the national capital, and a lot of things which should be left to local governance units are actually decided in state capitals. Other reason to think this was bad is that this country is full of differences and that Mumbai for example makes the majority of the countries revenue, but because of this it has to pay through taxes the development of poor regions. Other reason to be in favour is the fact that a lot of food gets rotten away while people is starving, because of bureaucratic problems, but if there was more than one country the food-producing ones would want to trade the food with those countries that wanted food.
Others say this is good because it’s a nation with its strengths and its downs, but as a whole it works well due to the fact that some regions, help others to develop.
There are many other factors that people discuss, but we name some of the most important and controversial ones.
[1] Indian workers most engaged in Asia. 2008. Economic Times, The (India), first quarter 2008. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=nfh&AN=2W62W61071440499&loginpage=Login.asp&site=ehost-live&scope=site. Accessed May 13 2009.
[2] Unorganised Workers’ Social Security Bill – India. 2008. United Nations Instraw, third quarter 2008. http://www.un-instraw.org/en/media-centre/world-gender-news/unorganised-workers-social-security-bill.html. Accessed May 13 2009.
[3] India praises Labour Pact with UAE. 2007. Arabia 2000. First quarter 2007. http://web.ebscohost.com/ehost/detail?vid=1&hid=6&sid=10abd82a-00b7-4b2e-bcbd-fe0df3a50e28%40SRCSM2&bdata=JmxvZ2lucGFnZT1Mb2dpbi5hc3Amc2l0ZT1laG9zdC1saXZlJnNjb3BlPXNpdGU%3d#db=nfh&AN=6FI2123195203. Accessed may 13 2009.
- GANGULY-SCRASE Ruchira and SCRASE J. Timothy, in "A Bitter Pill or Sweet Nectar?: Contradictory attitudes of salaried workers to economic liberalization in India", Development and Society, Vol 28. December 1999. pp. 259-283
- Benerjee, S. 2008. Dimensions of Indian culture, core cultural values and marketing implications: An analysis. Cross Cultural Management: An International Journal, 15(4): 367 – 378
- Drache, D. & Froese, M.D. 2006. Globalisation, World Trade and the Cultural Commons: Identity, Citizenship and Pluralism. New Political Economy, 11(3): 361 - 382
- http://www.indiaonestop.com/Greenrevolution.htm
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