It’s a world on the downturn out there.

And new and creative ways of handling the situation emerge. Imagine a journalist accepting some old jeans (in very good condition), some rice, atta and vegetables (and also sugar)  from the newspaper proprietor in exchange for her reporting. Meanwhile, an ad agency employee  opts for day-old newspapers and fruits for every successful slogan he coins.

Impossible?

You BET YOUR LAST (downturning) PAISA, BOSS!! What sort of moron would accept such terms?

Well, Times of India journalists Saira Kurup and Divya A. see new and exciting possibilities in middle-class exploitation of desperately poor people. Long before any fancy “downturn” (Indian journalists are not permitted to call the global recession a recession), we have all known university professors and senior government officials “allowing” people to stay in the servants’ quarters attached to their subsidised housing; taking in exchange, their day-long labour for free – cooking, cleaning, gardening, child-care.

But what if – and here’s a thought – we re-name this thing “barter”? How cool is that, huh?

So, while a companion story by the same journalists on the inside pages talks about barter as a way to reduce surplus stock and an increasingly popular option in a cash crunch situation – “from an East London pub that accepts goods and services for a pint of beer to teens swapping clothes and books on-line, to ad executives in Singapore offering advice to hair salons in exchange for a perm” – the front page story is about our favourite people, the Great Indian Middle Class.

Delhi housewife Lata Chauhan allowed a widow to live in her house in exchange for household work, her (mercifully unnamed) friend “doesn’t pay the man who cleans her car but gives him her son’s old clothes and notebooks instead”, yet another friend  in this enterprising network “barters vegetables from her garden” instead of paying the mali a salary.

In doing so, say Saira and Divya (the goddess forgive them, and perhaps they are young and innocent and pay their own household help a living wage), they have become part of  “a global trend towards barter”. Um, no. This isn’t barter, this is exploitation. The global examples they give are of of companies providing goods and services to consumers, while Lata Chauhan and her clever friends are “buying” labour for old clothes, used notebooks, or a (nominal) roof overhead.

There is, we insist – somewhat desperately, for topsy is turvy in this world in which we live – a clear, sharp and discernible difference between equal individuals exchanging commodities and unequal relations between sellers and buyers of labour.

A hair salon may exchange its perms for advertising advice, but it pays its employees.  If hair stylists (and journalists) are willing to work for their employers for bread, then we have a crisis you can’t dignify with the term downturn, my friend.

Barter has long and continuing histories outside of capital, which remained labelled as primitive until the recession hit. Now it’s a cool brand-name to cover the swinging hips of age-old practices of exploitation.

Creative, na?