Routes of labour

Living in harsh conditions, working at the mercy of manipulative employment providers and struggling with meagre salaries often paid irregularly, migrant labourers in Bangalore are up against the wall.

As the Lalgola passenger (train) chugged out of Nadia, a district in West Bengal bordering Bangladesh in the north and North 24 Parganas in the south in the first week of May, it carried aboard dreams of two teenagers, leaving their homes in pursuit of employment.

Having paid heed to the promises of another villager known to provide “well paying” jobs, Suman, 18, and Ajay, 19, left Taldah Majdia, a village about 80-km from Kolkata, without even inquiring where they were being taken to.

On May 23, after two weeks of working at a huge construction site in Yeswantpur here, Ajay lies sick in one of the many cramped asbestos sheds in his labour colony near Iskon temple. Brought to Bangalore for construction jobs, neither of them is now sure if their decision to leave their village is favourable to them.

“We did not know we will live in such conditions. We do not know what to do or where to go, hopefully things become better,” Suman said after much persuasion.

Arrangements like these are characterised by illegitimate bonds, that prevent workers from choosing their area of work or even the company or contractor they want to work for.

Everything is decided by the broker, generally a person known to villagers. “Before bringing people, the contractor (broker) pays a sum to the family, which is deducted in instalments from the persons employed,” Suman Kumar, a supervisor at one of the construction sites in the City, says.

In the case of Suman and Ajay, the person had paid Rs 10,000 to each of their families in Taldah Majdia. They have not seen the person who brought them to Bangalore since he dropped them off at Yeswantpur.

“...Some other persons who came with us, we are told, work at Marathahalli. The contractor will come on the day we get paid,” says Ajay, who was not on an authorised leave.

The post-liberalisation dichotomy between opportunity and the lack of it has seen increasing number of migrant workers in India’s metro cities, gradual destinations after the exploration of towns and smaller cities. Bangalore is not alien to the trend.

But not everything is hunky-dory for migrant labourers in the unorganised sectors in the big, mean cities, living in harsh conditions, working at the mercy of employment providers, struggling with meagre salaries often paid irregularly, and, sometimes not even being paid.

Tens of such people dot the city’s pavements, the bylanes, and other spots in the nights, lakhs more rot in the labour colonies so unfriendly for life that they are plagued by diseases.

In April 2012, Deccan Herald had accom­panied labour department officials to an inspection at a construction site near Whitefield. Grizzling in a corner of one of the many hundreds of cramped asbestos sheds he was locked in, Ramesh Kashyap was shivering with fever, unable to sit or even sleep.

Brought from Chhattisgarh just like the teenagers from West Bengal, Kashyap eventually became a bonded labourer, along with 20 more from his state and another group from West Bengal, working for a contractor hired by the Army Welfare Housing Organisation.

They were rescued, but there are many more in the City who remain helpless.
Suman Kumar (supervisor) says: “I have been in Bangalore for three years now and the biggest problem labourers face is the living conditions. With almost no accommodation affordable, they are forced to live in labour colonies, which are generally filthy, making them prone to diseases.”

He says that in a week at least 20 workers out of the 150 working under him on the project are sick. “We cannot help this,”he adds.

Add to this the problem of wages, lack of safety gear and other issues one learns spending a day with such workers and the situation gets amplified. That they are not covered under any legislation, that guarantees them some benefits makes their lives even more miserable.

The Contract Labour Central Rules, 1971, specify various health measures to be adopted by the employers for the safety of workers at the construction site.

The rules prescribe that there be a provision of first aid such as sterilised dressings, bottle containing a two per cent alcoholic solution of iodine and snake-bite lancet to name a few.

Projects also need to have in place several measures for the safety of workers like separate walkways with barricades and roadways for vehicle movement, access to upper floors with step ladder and railing and fall protection with nets et al.

However, a visit to most of the construction sites in the City reveals a harsh reality. There are few or none of these provisions, the workers are left unattended even when sick at many places but the buildings come up, adding to the skyline of Bangalore.

While those in the construction sector are the most affected, conditions that people from other sectors like security guards, those in small-time jobs in the hospitality industry and so on are also poor. Deepak Nag from Silchar district, Assam, seconding opinions of Suman, Ajay and many others like him, says: “The contractors do not take interest in our welfare, we are exploited.”

Trade unions have been trying to fight the cause of such people, but in vain. They have been urging the government to fix Rs 8,000 per month as minimum wage in the unorganised sector apart from raising the dearness allowance to four paise for every point of increase in the Consumer Price Index.

Workers have also been struggling to get basic benefits like pension, gratuity, provident fund, medical facilities, delivery allowance, education facility for children, health insurance and housing et al.

Besides, they want the governments to remove all ceilings on payment of bonus, provident fund and increase the quantum of gratuity, besides raising the minimum pension to Rs 3,000 per month under the EPF and fund it to all workers in the unorganised sector.

“They should fix statutory minimum wage at Rs 10,000 per month, make coverage universal across the country including unorganised sector workers,” an
office-bearer of the All India Trade Union Congress (AITUC) said.

But the biggest failure comes in organising this class of workers, given the nature of their job and their demographics, more so when it comes to migrant labourers.

Gopal Gowda, a Centre for Indian Trade Union (CITU) office-bearer, pointing out that only less than one per cent of the migrant workers in the City are under one or the other union, says: “Most of them are scared.

And, given the kind of influence big contractors have, they are fired as soon as the contractors know they have enrolled into a union.

Lack of protection under various employment rules leaves them with no scope to even fight this.”

He also refers to the apathy of the labour department. Many officials — hand in glove with contractors — are responsible for the kind of problems being faced by workers, says Gowda.

Labour department officials, however, maintain that they can only work in line with the laws. “Wherever there is an opportunity, we get involved. The problem is that we do not receive enough complaints about such cases and the unorganised sector is too huge to keep tab suo motu,” contends a senior official.

While the long road to solve the issues of the migrant workers continues to remain deserted, Suman and Ajay, just like their predecessors, will sink in. The drudgery will go on parallel to, but more prominently than, their dreams of earning a decent living in the big city of opportunities.