Be it the peak of winter or the burning hot summer, Ramavatar Singh’s schedule remains the same.
From the last six years, this labourer from Chamanpura, a remote village in north India’s Bihar state, has been looking for work.
Like hundreds of other men and women, every day Ramavatar goes to the labour chowk– a meeting place where labourers, gardeners, carpenters, cooks or masons looking for work can be picked up by the hirers.
This particular junction is situated in Noida, which is one of the most developed cities in Uttar Pradesh as well as a part of Delhi’s sprawling National Capital Region.
Labour chowks are a common phenomenon in major cities across India and are a direct result of an internal migration pattern that sees rural inhabitants move to urban areas in search of employment.
Although India is one of the world’s major sending countries for migrant labour, its number of internal migrants is substantially greater.
The most recent data on migration comes from the 2001 Census. While its definition of migration is not restricted to labour, it puts the number of migrants within India at 314 million.
In the decade between 1991 and 2001, about 98 million people migrated to a new place of residence, 81 million of which were intra-state migrants, 17 million were inter-state migrants and 0.7 million were international migrants.
While it is mostly the rich and middle classes who go abroad, the poor leave their villages to look for work in India’s big cities, escaping bonded labour and the uncertainty of an agricultural income.
But migrant workers – both at home and abroad – are vulnerable to exploitation and abuse by traffickers and fraudulent employers. In the absence of civil society support and an efficient judicial system, many migrants face criminalisation.
“The unskilled and those from the indigenous tribes and caste backgrounds, as well as women, face gross forms of rights violations because on the one hand the law ’Inter-State Migrant Workmen Act’ [passed in 1979 to regulate work conditions and conditions of employment]is unimplementable and on the other hand, they are unwelcome, mainly in the cities, despite growing demand for them in the labour market,” says J John, the Executive Director for the Centre for Education and Communication, a Delhi-based labour research and resource centre.
“Consequently, they are denied labour rights, basic amenities like housing, sanitation and public transportation, and thereby are forced to the peripheries of the cities,” he adds.
The problem is just as bad for many of the Indian workers migrating abroad.
“What we currently witness is the exploitation of workers desperate to find employment,” says Coen Kompier, a specialist on International Labour Standards at the ILO India.
“While migration can be a healthy way out of unemployment, there should be a way in which the abuses are stopped. Bilateral agreements between sending and receiving countries to agree about monitoring and complaint procedures for workers are an important tool that remains underused. All workers anywhere deserve the protection that is being provided by international labour standards of the ILO,” he opines.
Boom town Kerala
Construction worker Sushil Oraon originally comes from Chargara village in the eastern state of Jharkhand.
He went to school until class five [age nine], before he decided to move to Delhi with his brother to look for work to help feed his family of 13.
“Our craving for a better life and higher wages brought us to Delhi, but soon we realised that we were among hundreds who reached Delhi everyday in search of jobs.”
They quickly discovered that there may be more opportunity for them over 2000 kilometres south in the coastal state of Kerala.
“A contractor promised us work if we went with him to Kerala. It is he who brought us here to this site,” says Sushil.
The migrant flow to Kerala has been huge, with migrants coming from all over the country. Previously, migrants to Kerala were mostly from Tamil Nadu.
But the inflow of Tamil labour has reduced drastically because of job availability and better wages back home.
Krishna Kumar, Additional Labour Secretary for the Ministry of Labour and Employment in Kerala, told Equal Times that although there are no official statistics available on the number of migrant labourers in his state, “informal data shows that Kerala has over 1.3 million migrant workers.”
He predicts this figure will rise to 2.5 million people in the next 10 years.
While millions of skilled and unskilled workers toil abroad, within India, labourers flood in to Kerala – India’svery own ‘Gulf’ state.
According to Kerala State Planning Board statistics, the number of emigrants from Kerala is nearly 2.28 million and around 1.15 million have returned after working abroad.
In addition, 3.43 million non-resident Keralites and around a million Kerala migrants live in other states in India.
“There is dearth of skilled labourers in Kerala and we get the work done through workers from West Bengal, Orissa and Assam,” says Ramesh Shankar, a construction labour contractor.
“While a Malayali [Kerala native] mason takes between 600 rupees (11 US dollars)and 750 rupees (14 US dollars) per day, the migrant labourer does the same work for 400 rupees (7 US dollars),” the contractor informs.
“I work as a helper in a construction company and earn350 rupees (6 US dollars) daily,” says 32-year-old Rahamatulla from West Bengal. “The situation back home is one of utter poverty. I studied up to pre-degree, but there is no employment opportunity there. We don’t have agricultural land and so work on daily wages in different farms,” he says.
Balmiki Parida, from Orissa state has been in Kerala for nine years now. With a working knowledge of the local Malayalam language, this 40-year-old graduate makes 400 rupees (7 US dollars) daily and works almost every day. But Balmiki doesn’t see much of the money he earns. “Every month, I send about 8,000 (147 US dollars) to my family in Khurda.”
Conditions
The vast majority of the migrant workers in Kerala work in its booming construction industry.
Like migrant labourers in other parts of India, construction workers either live on-site or in shared one-room apartments rented out by the contractor or the company.
Roughly 10 to 20 workers live together in a room with only one toilet. They cook early in the morning and eat a heavy breakfast so that they can skip lunch to save money.
But even these adverse conditions are preferable for many of the workers.
“The difference in work atmosphere in Kerala is that we are not abused like in most other cities,” says labourer Shyam Sunder.
Migrant workers don’t have equal treatment. “A local labourer from Kerala does not work long hours like us, but is paid more.”
But even with the discrimination, they prefer to stay in Kerala.
Unionisation
Despite the large influx of migrant workers in Kerala, most are yet to join a union.
“Language is the major problem we face in organising them,” says Elamaram Kareem, the General Secretary of the Kerala branch of the Centre for Indian Trade Unions.
“It becomes difficult for us to communicate to the workforce. CITU has taken an initiative to develop a special cadre of union activist to organise these migrants,” he adds.
R Chandrasekharan, Vice President of Indian National Trade Union Congress in Kerala, says his union has also been working hard to engage migrant workers.
“We have initiated a project – ‘Organising the Unorganised Migrant labour’ – in Kerala with the support of ITUC.
According to Chandrasekharan, worker registration is crucial.
But many migrants are scared of joining the unions.
“We might lose our work. If thrown out from one workplace, we might not be taken anywhere else,” says Hrushikesha construction site helper from West Bengal.
Speaking to Equal Times, Kumar, Additional Labour Secretary, Ministry of Labour, Kerala, said the unions are working hard to address these problems.
“We have already submitted the Kerala Migrant Workers Social Security Bill. Most probably, the bill will be passed in this session which will make registration of migrant workers and their employers mandatory.
“The workers can register themselves by paying a one-time fee of 20 rupees (37 US cents). We shall issue them a registered identity card after this process.”
According to him, this will help the workers receive all the social security benefits that workers are entitled to in Kerala.
But until then, workers will have to continue to make do with work that may not ensure their rights but helps them to earn enough money to survive.
