Asymmetrical Information

Surely this article has got things wrong: the lowest castes in India have never had even the slightest problem finding work. Of course, it's traditional in India that low caste workers are not paid for their labor.

Water is a paradoxical commodity in that is essential to life, so a pure-market approach is almost unconscionable; but without a market-like mechanism of distributing it, gluttony and waste become endemic. I personally like the scheme adopted by a Colorado front-range city (Ft. Collins, IIRC): you pay the base per-gallon rate up usage X, if your usage exceeds X but is less than Y, you pay 2x base, then 4x, then 8x.

One wonders what obstacles prevent this sort of policy from being implemented universally in water-scarce regions (besides the concept of western-US water rights, which is overdue for some radical updating). Some have brought research to the table suggesting that there are some deeper psycological issues at stake where water is concerned, a not-entirely-surprising postulate given its unique place in biological life-processes.

But since agriculture occpies something like 80% of all human water consumption, limiting municipal waste is only a small start to addressing the broader issues...

Oh, what DO we expect from a New Yorker reporter but neocolonialist paternalism? "Indians can't solve their problem -- Western economic colonialists should solve all their problems."

"Of course, it's traditional in India that low caste workers are not paid for their labor."

Before making statements like these, Jervis, it would be a good idea to read up on the subject.
Low caste workers in India are traditionally paid. The pay was low earlier, because the work was unskilled. Now, even that is improving, because of the enormous demand for domestic labor in the cities.

I live in a state in which water is very, very, scarce and a huge percentage, on a per-capita basis, is sold to farmers at a very, very, low price, so they can grow hay, which is then fed to cattle, which are often slaughtered at a loss, due to global over-production of beef. Gosh, I wish to those free-market ideologues would stop screwing things up!

Human Rights Watch reports the following about enslavement of lower caste workers in India.

An estimated forty million people in India, among them fifteen million children, are bonded laborers. A majority of them are Dalits. According to government statistics, an estimated one million Dalits are manual scavengers who clean public latrines and dispose of dead animals; unofficial estimates are much higher. In India’s southern states, thousands of Dalit girls are forced into prostitution before reaching the age of puberty.

Bondage is passed on from one generation to another. Scavenging and prostitution are hereditary occupations of “untouchable” castes. Dalits face discrimination when seeking other forms of employment and are largely unable to escape their designated occupation even when the practice itself has been abolished by law. In violation of their basic human rights, they are physically abused and threatened with economic and social ostracism from the community for refusing to carry out various caste-based tasks.

Bonded Labor

“Bonded labor” refers to work in slave-like conditions in order to pay off a debt. Due to the high interest rates charged and the abysmally low wages paid, the debts are seldom settled. Bonded laborers are frequently low-caste, illiterate, and extremely poor, while the creditors/employers are usually higher-caste, literate, comparatively wealthy, and relatively more powerful members of the community.

http://www.hrw.org/reports/1999/india/India994-09.htm

India is recovering from a socialist system. Did the command economy provide for low caste workers in a way that the free economy is unable to? I doubt it.

Comments are Closed.