A precariat for the future?

"In the US, 31% of workers are now self-employed, freelancing or in gig economy work. But India is ahead of the US; about 75% of our labour force meets the same criteria," wrote Sabharwal and Chakraborty. About 50% of our labour force is self-employed. What is wrong with that? "This huge self-employment is not some overweight entrepreneurial gene among Indians; the poor cannot afford to be unemployed so they are self-employed." Which means that they are surviving somehow, but always on the brink of penury. "Since India has 60 million enterprises, but only 18,000 of them are companies large enough to have a paid-up capital of more than Rs 10 crore, it's clear most Indians enterprises are dwarfs that are built on self-exploitation. (Russian economist Alexander Chayanov made the self-exploitation case to Jawaharlal Nehru for the viability of small firms that comes from not having to pay yourself or your family market wages). Bad self-employment is not a solution to India's poverty." So is the gig economy working great in the US? Only for those who live in nice suburbs, it seems. They are able to rent their apartments, or spare rooms, through Airbnb for extra income. This is passive investing, like investing in index funds. For others, who find find work through apps there is no job security or regular earning. The future of those with poor education is probably in low wage healthcare sector, caring for increasing number of old people with physical problems. For such people there is no prospect of promotions or of climbing up the social ladder. But the informal sector in India, which employs 111 million people, is not growing, even as earnings of workers has increased. Gross Value Added has increased by Rs 11.5 trillion, which can only mean that there has been a substantial increase in productivity. Is it because of the government's war on cash, we do not know. The Indian economy is a tale of two narratives, wrote Sajjid Chinoy. On the one hand, fiscal and current account deficits and retail inflation are all down which are signs of macroeconomic stability. Bankruptcy law and the Real Estate Regulatory Authority are expected to help reduce bad loans in banks and protect buyers from rogue builders. On the other hand, the economy has been slowing since March last year, well before demonetization, exports have fallen drastically and the agriculture sector is in deep distress, despite good monsoons. If things are going so good why do we feel so bad, asked R Sukumar. Thermal power plants may have to shut down due to falling price of solar power, laying off thousands of workers, the pharmaceutical industry profits are down, as demand for generics in the US is weak, and IT companies are laying off workers. The precariat are perhaps a cross between precarious and proletariat. That is really poor.