Factory Girls, The Indian Edition

Pranay and RSJ’s excellent newsletter speaks about an aspect of Industrial Policy in India that is going to be quite tricky: our ability to adapt to increased participation by women in our labor workforce:

The article is here; you won’t miss much if you don’t read it. It follows the predictable style of beginning with the personal story of an anonymous woman who moves from her village to work at Foxconn and using her story as a springboard pans out to the wider issues it wants to highlight – restrictive working conditions, poor food, low pay, long hours, semi-skilled work, lack of unions – you get the gist. All of it is made somewhat more poignant because these are all young women from underprivileged backgrounds who, anyway, have had odds stacked against them in their relatively young lives. This is a particular strand of reporting that always has currency in India and, prima facie, very hard to counter.

https://publicpolicy.substack.com/p/248-the-budget-line-is-real

As usual, please read the whole thing. I find myself in broad agreement with the points being made in it, because as far as I’m concerned, it really boils down to two key questions:

1. What are you optimizing for?
2. Relative to what?

And what we should be optimizing for is (as their newsletter points out) growth of the Indian economy, and greater participation by women in our labor workforce. This will not happen smoothly, perfectly or instantaneously, and the process will often involve many teething issues of many different kinds.

Second, conditions in these factories (and in the residences that have been constructed for the workers) may not be great, sure, but relative to what?

“…farm productivity in India is among the lowest in the world, and we have made the point that it is necessary for us to shift our workforce away from agriculture. We have lamented that for us to avoid ‘jobless’ growth, we need low-skilled manufacturing jobs in plenty so that we get the flywheel started, which will eventually lead to higher-skill – higher-value jobs over time. If a Foxconn factory helps us solve these issues right away, we should ask ourselves what more we can do to help them set up more factories. And not write tired old articles whose central thesis has been disproved in our own lifetime.”

https://publicpolicy.substack.com/p/248-the-budget-line-is-real

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I couldn’t agree more. We need to shift our workforce away from agriculture, and we need more women – many, many, many more women! – to join the workforce. We do not know which ways will work and which won’t, but we simply do not have the luxury of closing down some routes.

India needs a hefty plate of chuqu, and fast. Chuqu?

Chuqu:

The pay for hard labor is low—often lower than the official minimum wage, which ranges between fifty and eighty dollars a month. Work hours frequently stretch beyond the legal limit of forty-nine hours per week. Get hurt, sick, or pregnant, and you’re on your own. Local governments have little incentive to protect workers; their job is to keep the factory owners happy, which will bring in more investment and tax revenue. But suffering in silence is not how migrant workers see themselves. To come out from home and work in a factory is the hardest thing they have ever done. It is also an adventure. What keeps them in the city is not fear but pride: To return home early is to admit defeat. To go out and stay out—chuqu—is to change your fate.

Chang, L. T. (2009). Factory girls: From village to city in a changing China. Random House., Location 151, Kindle Edition