Why are we changing when others are becoming like us?

"Informal sector will be main job creator in future. So equip workers today," wrote A-M Slaughter and A Hruby. In emerging economies less than 40% of people are employed in the formal sector, and even those who are employed find 'side hustles' to augment their incomes. "First, people layer multiple work streams and derive income from more than one source. Second, platform economies are emerging rapidly and build on traditional networks. Finally, these work platforms often go hand in hand with dramatic income inequality." In India only about 20% of workers are salaried, and about 70% of them do not have any written contract. 42% are self-employed and 32% are labourers, so the vast majority of wage earners are informal. The Sixth Economic Census found that 94.6% of non-agricultural businesses hired less than 5 workers, two-thirds do not hire any worker at all. Politicians hate the informal sector because a large section of this economy does not pay any tax, wrote V Kaul. so they want to eliminate it totally, claiming that they want to protect workers from exploitation. But, whereas the formal sector is not growing the informal sector continues to grow. This sector is unable to cope with the imposition of the Goods and Services Tax and those working in this sector do not have the education or skills to find jobs in the formal sector, wrote M Mastani. Paradoxically, while GST is designed to formalise all such businesses the government wants to amend labor laws so that they become less restrictive and informal, wrote Prof R Kamath. Indians are cutting down on wedding expenses as vendors insist on payment by cheque and cards, which has led to much higher costs and elimination of all the small suppliers who survived on cash. No wonder that share values of big companies have risen as they look to increase their profits. Why was the informal sector surviving all these years when large companies have the money and trained manpower to manufacture everything that this sector was providing? Because the informal sector was able to provide cheap goods and the death of this sector means that there is no competition preventing large companies from raising prices as they like. Hence the jubilation. Labor intensive manufacturing, which enabled the east Asian economies to rapidly become wealthy, is dead and India must look to hi-tech exports to revive growth, wrote SA Aiyar. As robots and Artificial Intelligence change how we work, gig and platform economies are emerging even in developed countries, wrote Slaughter and Hruby. So, as we change towards formal rich nations are becoming like us. We were the future.