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I’d recommend the movie to Justice BR Gavai of the Indian Supreme Court who just described people surviving on subsidies as ‘parasites’. Maybe, he’d change his mind, and be a bit more kind.
The rising government expense on welfare is being debated widely in India. However, Justice Gavai has gone where even the harshest critics of the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi wouldn’t go i.e. free food that kept over 800 million poor people alive through the pandemic and thereafter.
“Sorry to say, but by not making these people part of mainstream society, are we not creating a class of parasites? Because of freebies, when elections are declared… people are not willing to work. They are getting free rations without doing any work,” Justice Gavai said. He felt sorry right at the start but he said it anyway.
There’s merit in the argument against rising populism. In a bid to win elections, political parties across the country are writing cheques they can’t honour once in the government. Having said that, the free food programme aimed at the country’s poorest may just be an easy target. There will always be wasteful expenditure in government but the introspection must not begin and end at the bottom of the pyramid.
People listening to the judge, or anyone else making a similar point, may be persuaded to believe that too much money is being spent on feeding the poor. However, the fact is that India has budgeted about ₹2 lakh crore for food subsidy next year. That’s about 0.6% of gross domestic product (GDP).
A country that can’t afford to spend ₹6 out of every ₹1,000 in national income on feeding its poorest would have bigger questions to answer and introspect. About 813 million people avail 5 kilograms of rice and one kilogram of pulses every month. That’s an average annual cost of ₹2,469 per person.
In comparison, the latest budget set aside ₹1 lakh crore for income tax relief for the country’s middle class. India had about 86 million taxpayers who filed returns last year and, by the government’s own estimate, over 90% of them (at least 77 million) earn less than ₹12 lakh a year. So, the latest income tax cuts would cost the government, on average, ₹12,987 per person per year.
I believe both sets of people needed the relief given by the government but only one group was called ‘parasite’.
Justice Gavai’s views on income tax cuts are not known but almost no one who rallies against free food for the poor seems to think the income tax cut is a bad idea even though it clearly comes at a significant cost. So, if money is not the measure of parasitic behaviour then what is?
Oxford Dictionary says an organism that lives in or on an organism of another species and benefits by deriving nutrients at the other’s expense is a parasite.
Here’s where watching the Korean movie ‘Parasite’ may help. Kim Ki-Woo is an English tutor in a country where, much like India, knowing the language is considered important for career success and social mobility.
Yet, the Kim family lives in an apartment half under the ground, perfectly capturing their position on the edge of poverty. A mid-sized businessman can evade tax because he’s smart but the margin for error is much thinner for the poor. A thread that director Bong Joon-ho weaves skillfully into the movie’s narrative.
If the poor depend on the rich for jobs and wages, the wealthy depend on the poor for their labour. Then why does an erring banker deserve a bailout any more than a farmer betrayed by the weather or geopolitics beyond his control?
Back home, Indian Prime Minister Modi asked the same question, bluntly, in 2016. Why is it that any dole for the industry is called an ‘incentive’ but when the same is given to a farmer, it’s disparagingly called a ‘subsidy’? Why is it that only one group is called parasites?
In a world of rising and unchecked inequity, the case for welfare is not just for the farmers and blue-collar workers like drivers, domestic helps, and civic workers. Even accountants, engineers, clerks, and tutors (as in the movie Parasite) could soon find themselves in the queue sooner than later.
That’s how rising inequality works; like quicksand. People who’d have called themselves middle class a decade and a half ago won’t do so anymore, at least not with the same conviction. Those in the bracket today are more vulnerable to deterioration in prospects and living conditions without the information, support, and choices that those better off can afford.
A programme like the Pradhan Mantri Gareeb Kalyan Anna Yojana doesn’t just save people from starvation, it improves lives too. The government taking care of the food grains allowed many (not all) to spend the money saved on adding some more protein to the diet. A healthier workforce is likely to be more productive.
The reason why a programme like free food irritates the middle class. A starving worker is likely to offer services much cheaper than a well-fed person who could demand fairer pay and better conditions. The point may not be that a poor person getting free food doesn’t want to work, as Justice Gavai put it. It may be that s/he doesn’t want to work for the money offered.
The negotiation makes the ‘middle class’ feel less powerful especially when they can’t demand better pay for their own work, leading to the anger being directed towards the less fortunate. It’s always easier to take from the mock the weak, and to snatch from them than to stand up to the powerful.
In the expanding economic universe of our times, wealth is gravitating towards a few, leaving the others to fight over the crumbs.
Read more: The search for meaning in the era of social madness
