Paper short abstract:

Tea garden workers form a distinct population in Assam, India facing challenges that are unique to the community and thereby make them a marginalized group. With the tea industry facing a crisis in terms of productivity, the quality of the workforce is an issue that needs to be addressed.

Paper long abstract:

The state of Assam in India is a major tea growing region of the world. Like any plantation work, the cultivation and processing of tea requires a large work-force. The present labour force working in the tea gardens of Assam are the descendants of the workers who were brought as indentured labour from other parts of India during the British rule which makes them culturally distinct from other groups and communities in the state. With a view to improving the condition of the plantation labourers in India, the Parliament passed the Plantations Labour Act, 1951, which underwent amendments subsequently. Despite being governed by welfare provisions of the Plantation Labour Act of 1951, the community remains a marginalised with low levels of attainment in terms of health and education which have incapacitated the community from seeking other forms of livelihood. This is the situation at the time when tea industry in Assam is facing the challenges of low land productivity due to climatic factors, and low labour productivity. Although tea gardens are gradually becoming unviable, but the social costs of a closure of factories is an issue that cannot be ignored. This is because historically labour productivity was never sought to be encouraged by empowering the tea garden workers with requisite skills or providing them exposure to other forms of livelihood.

Paper short abstract:

This paper brings the macroeconomic and development dimension for a Right Based Economy. It deals with the elements of a macro policy, approaches the concepts of growth and development from a decolonial perspective and proposes a mission-oriented approach for organizing the economy.

Paper long abstract:

A Human Right Based Economy (RBE) is not a natural result of market forces; it requires a political intentionality and clear purposes to guide the economic organization. Thinking about an RBE is a complex and multidisciplinary task, and demands to revisit every aspect of economic relations from the perspective of rights and questioning the idea of social justice implicitly present in Economic theory and in the implementation of economic policy.

An RBE should not limit itself to the protection of vulnerable groups in the face of market failures and undesirable social outcomes. Its purpose requires rethinking the organization of the economy as a whole and the distribution of economic resources and outputs based on normative standards offered by human rights. This contrasts with the mainstream economic view that empties the moral dimension of the economy and reduces social organization to a calculation problem of maximizing individual utility. The efficient functioning of markets does not necessarily result in adequate economic organization from a human rights perspective.

This paper aims to contribute to the discussion of an RBE by bringing the macroeconomic and development dimension. To this end, its first section deals with the elements of a macro policy for an RBE. Among these, the need to rethink monetary and exchange rate policy and the use alternative instruments to fight inflation, additionally it points out that the logic of fighting inflation with unemployment is contradictory with the respect for human rights.

This section also addresses fiscal policy, which is crucial for the construction of an RBE as it defines priorities in the allocation of resources through public spending and taxation. A fiscal policy for a RBE should go beyond Keynesian full employment stabilization and must redefine the concept of fiscal responsibility including human rights as a final goal.

Section 2 approaches the concepts of growth and development and argues that the literature of Latin American structuralism can help with a formulation of an RBE with a decolonial perspective. An RBE should not be omitted from the discussion of the international system's power hierarchies and from the discussion about sovereignty and economic dependence on peripheral countries. In turn, for the progressive realization of rights, these countries should pursue a transformation of their economic structures towards the reduction of their vulnerability to external shocks. Therefore, there is an important productive dimension in RBE, and a material base necessary for the realization of human rights.

Finally, the last section proposes a mission-oriented approach for organizing an RBE. Social and environmental missions focused on areas such as health, education and decarbonization defines the purpose of the development process and seek solutions to specific problems that prevent the full realization of rights. To this end, a variety of policy instruments can be mobilized such as public spending and taxation, the promotion new technologies, industrial policies, incentives for local and sustainable production, among others.

Paper short abstract:

Human rights have been called the dominant moral framework of our time, a human rights economy requires transparency, accountability and a broad space for social dialogue, scrutiny and participation.

Paper long abstract:

Human rights have been called the dominant moral framework of our time, or the “lingua franca of justice” and there is strong consensus that economic systems and decisions have clear moral and ethical implications. There is no question that the economies we live in structure our daily experiences, opportunities and life outcomes, and represent systems which can profoundly affect our ability to enjoy our rights to decent work, to shelter, to adequate healthcare, political participation, a life free from violence and more.

However, economic institutions and structures are also seen as the key impediment to the realisation of human rights. In our initial work around a Rights-Based Economy (Donald et al. 2020), we defined the purpose of the RBE as “to guarantee the material, social and environmental conditions necessary for all people to live with dignity on a flourishing planet.” Human rights, we argue, are important to focus on in discussions about the economy, not only because of the human rights impacts our economies have, but because they constitute an internationally agreed normative framework that applies to all areas of public policy, including economic policy and economic institutions and structures of the production and consumption that are seen to be part of the market sphere of society, including re-organising production and consumption. We also argue that a RBE has important cross-border dimensions in both states and economic actors not undermining the realisation of human rights in other countries and societies by their actions.