English Article

It’s a wage crisis

The debate around unemployment is unhelpful — since 1947, unemployment has bounced between 3-7 per cent of India’s labour force. But reconciling this mathematical accuracy with our painful poverty — it has bounced between 25-75 per cent of our population since 1947, based on your definition of needs, wants and desires — needs an understanding of the “self-exploitation” theory proposed by the Russian economist Alexander Chayanov in the 1920s. He convinced Jawaharlal Nehru that small farms are viable because you don’t have to pay yourself rent or pay a salary to yourself..........