Migrant Workers' Crisis: An Unintended Consequence

tridishabharadwaj1@gmail.com

Have you ever come across the tale of James Goodfellow and his incorrigible son who happened to break a pane of glass? The story talks about the absurdity of finding profit in destruction and introduces a third person that is always in the shadows, and who, personifying what is not seen, is an essential problem of almost every public policy. Frédéric Bastiat, a prominent French economist, once made an interesting discovery relating to this story which struck a chord with me and remains relevant to this day. More than 150 years ago Bastiat, pointed out an underlying fundamental flaw in most economic policies: the lack to see beyond the immediate favourable consequences.

The ability to see the unseen may be difficult but it is the quality that separates a good economist from a bad one. A good economist accounts for all effects, direct or indirect; and pursues a greater good for the future, at the risk of a small present evil (Bastiat, 1995). I can state countless examples where economists have failed to take certain variables into account by merely regarding them as externalities. But I wish to focus on something recent that has occupied every news column in the nation.

The haunting images of thousands of migrant workers leaving their cities on foot and trudging on this arduous path has made me wonder- Was there a way to prevent this? The fact of the matter is, this sudden imposition of the nationwide lockdown by the government failed to take into account the struggles of the daily wage workers.

Over the centuries, we have observed that Government intervention always results in some form of unintended consequence. On March 24, the Narendra Modi-led government made an announcement that took everyone by surprise, declaring a nationwide lockdown as the only way to fight the ongoing COVID pandemic. Based on a combination of numbers reported by the central Health Ministry and updates from the States, the total number of confirmed cases in the country on March 24 stood at 564 (The Hindu Net Desk, 2020). The State didn’t want to reiterate the mistakes of the West and felt it was the right move, even though 21 days of lockdown might prove to be tough on the poor and vulnerable.

The unseen repercussions to the imposed lockdown: Thousands of workers stranded in the cities, begging to return to their homes and their families. They were out of jobs and without money, coupled with extreme hunger and lack of shelter. The informal workforce in India has always faced negligence but this pandemic pronounced the severity of this issue as cities shut their doors on them, pushing them to walk back to their home towns and villages.

Many experts reckon it was indeed the migrant workers’ movement that amplified the pandemic to a nationwide crisis and resulted in an extraordinary surge in new cases. Several states attribute the increase in their tallies to the arrival of migrant workers. By May 26th, the nation saw a whopping 1,50,611 cases (DH Web Desk, 2020). Hence, making it increasingly difficult to determine whether the lockdown was successful seeing the large spike in the number of cases. However, we also find a positive increase in the recovery rate from around 7 percent at the end of March to about 64.5% in July (Hindustan Times, 2020a; Hindustan Times, 2020b).

This is not to say that the policymakers were incompetent in any form; what is interesting here is that even though the lockdown was well-intentioned (like most economic policies), the dilemma of migrant workers returning to their homes was an unintended consequence that no one saw it coming. This very movement acted as one of the biggest factors leading to the rise in cases. Surprisingly enough, these unintended consequences happen so often that economists call it the “cobra effect”, named after an interesting story that happened in British India. There was a huge rise in the cobra population and in an attempt to solve the issue, the state imposed a bounty on them. This led to a frantic cobra hunting and people started breeding them in order to procure the bounty. The state soon realized this and cancelled the bounty as a reasonable response. In retaliation, people released all their cobras. This case has indeed become the exemplar of when an attempt to solve a problem ends up exacerbating the very problem that rule-makers intended to fix (Davies & Harrigan, 2019).

Dr Vijay Kelkar in his lecture, “Reflections on the Art and Science of Policymaking” lends us a few key pointers that, if adhered to, could help policymakers in evading the “law of unintended consequences”. He states that it is imperative to have all facts and complete analytical models to avoid confirmation bias (the tendency to interpret information that supports one’s prior beliefs) at all costs. He also points out that unintended consequences flow from nonlinearities(the lack of direct relationship between an independent and dependent variable); it is extremely hard to analyse the nonlinear interactions of 1.3 billion people when each one is a sentient being in the quest for life, liberty and happiness (Kelkar, 2017). Ideally, a well-planned timely lockdown could have solved the reverse migration. Setting up camps, providing the workers the basic necessities, was indeed possible. The reverse migration was extremely tough on these poor households as they had to go back to the very place they wanted to escape from. A deferred lockdown may have allowed the government to make the necessary arrangements in terms of food, cash and employment and also helped the migrants to return with dignity.

In retrospect, though, social distancing may have been the only solution in containing the spread of the virus; the migrant workers’ crisis could have been avoided with better planning. Policymakers are often so blinded by the immediate favourable consequences that they fail to see the disastrous unforeseen repercussions. As Kelkar (2017) encourages the need to promote an environment where we can disagree without being disagreeable, here’s a divergent view that may prove helpful in formulating better policies in the near future.

References:

Bastiat, F. (1995). Selected Essays on Political Economy. Econlib. https://www.econlib.org/library/Bastiat/basEss.html?chapter_num=4#book-reader

Davies, A., & Harrigan, J. R. (2019, September 6). The Cobra Effect: Lessons in Unintended Consequences. Foundation for Economic Education. https://fee.org/articles/the-cobra-effect-lessons-in-unintended-consequences/

DH Web Desk. (2020, May 27). Coronavirus India update: State-wise total number of confirmed cases, deaths on May 26. Deccan Herald. https://www.deccanherald.com/national/coronavirus-india-update-state-wise-total-number-of-confirmed-cases-deaths-on-may-26-841887.html

Hindustan Times. (2020a, July 1). ‘Steady improvement’: India’s Covid-19 recovery rate nears 60%, over 3.4 lakh recover across the country. https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/steady-improvement-india-s-covid-19-recovery-rate-nears-60-over-3-4-lakh-recover-across-country/story-Tu1TkBVFTe5UO46vrmikmK.html

Hindustan Times. (2020b, July 29). India’s Covid-19 tally crosses 1.53 million, recovery rate at 64.5%. https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/india-s-covid-19-tally-crosses-1-53-million-recovery-rate-at-64-5/story-3EzxPPylZSptZ4ExTVwy1H.html

Kelkar, D. V. (2017). Reflections on the Art and Science of Policymaking [Slides]. National Council of Applied Economic Research.

Cover image credits: Reuters.com