Economic Reforms for the Poor

Laws, Liberty, and Livelihood: 
The Need for a Bottom Up Agenda of Economic Reforms

Madhu Purnima Kishwar is a Senior Fellow at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies in Delhi. She is also the Founder President of Manushi Sangathan, an organisation committed to strengthening democratic rights and women's rights in India. She is the founder editor of Manushi - A Journal About Women and Society, which has been published continuously since 1978.


This presentation will focus on the absurd laws and regulations governing the livelihoods of two of the most visible and numerically large groups of urban self-employed poor--street vendors and cycle rickshaw pullers--showing how needless bureaucratic controls trap the hard working poor in a web of illegality and make them victims of extortion rackets.


While political theorists in India have engaged extensively with the need for greater political rights and freedom, far less attention has been paid to economic freedom. Political freedom has been understood very narrowly. Economic issues have been viewed largely through the prism of class struggle, with the state being projected as the sole 'protector' of the weak and vulnerable sections of society from the greed and exploitation of the rich and powerful. Neither our economists nor our political theorists have come to grips with the often predatory role of the State and how it works to wreck people's livelihoods and self-confidence. Obsessed with the political and electoral dimensions of democracy, our intellectuals and media tend to ignore the systematic and routine loot, extortion, violence, and indignities suffered by our people as they go about legitimate economic pursuits. The livelihood concerns of the vast majority of our people remain marginalized as even the agenda of economic reforms is focused on transnational corporations, the Indian corporate sector, and government-run public enterprises. Indian and foreign corporations and the PSUs together provide employment to no more than 3% cent of our population. As against about 10% who are self-employed in Europe and America, more than 90% of people in India work in the unorganized and self-employed sector.