migrant labour

Punkaj Bajaj, who retired as CEO and MD of Steel Authority of India’s Durgapur Steel Plant, thought he had all the time to finish the renovation work  of his  8th floor two bedroom apartment, in time for his son’s wedding slated for end April. Familiar with the ways of labour and  everything else that such renovation entails, Bajaj had factored in four days to break the old mosaic floor and lay new vitrified tiles in the living room of his flat built by the Ghaziabad Development Authority almost 30 years ago. With that calculation, Bajaj got the old floor of the living…

Pisavali is a densely populated, low income neighbourhood. Most residents of the low income settlement are working in the informal sector. Many of the temporary residents in the basti are migrants from states of Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal without a permanent home in the city. After the sudden declaration of a nationwide lockdown starting on the 24th of March, only a few of the migrants were able to go back to their native villages. The majority however was stranded in Pisavali.  Map of Pisavali. Source: Google Earth Life became difficult given the precarious nature of employment for residents…

The rotis lay strewn about on the railway track near Aurangabad - a tragic testimony to the plight of the poor in our country. Having packed their meagre belongings, with a bundle of food to be shared among the many, they only wanted to go home. Yet 16 people ended up being run over by a train as they fell asleep, exhausted, on the railway track near Aurangabad. The price for a ticket home cost them more than they bargained for.  The issue of migrants wanting to return their homes has been as big a problem as the pandemic of…

The government may have finally opened up movement for stranded migrant workers after a gap of 40 days, but their problems are far from over. In fact, a new set of ordeals seems to await the migrant, most of them daily wagers, as they are now forced to queue up in front of police stations in the quest for travel permits, after spending weeks in queues for food and rations.  Despite the central directive, uncertainty reigns supreme over the facilitation of their travel back home.  The first thing that 31-year-old Anwar Hussain and his eight colleagues, all daily wage labourers…

“I don’t see the pandemic but the hunger and starvation that comes with it as the reason for large scale unrest,” says Manaswini Bhalla, Associate Professor, Economics at IIM Bangalore. The context was the sorry plight of migrant and daily wage labourers stuck in the bigger cities due to the coronavirus lockdown. Now the migrants can go home, says the government With most migrant workers confined to shelters and dependent on charity for survival, the union government’s belated realisation that they should be allowed to get home is no doubt welcome. But there is much that is inexplicable about the…

Harshvardhan Chauhan, a-five-time MLA from Shillai, a poverty-ridden belt in the interiors of Himachal Pradesh’s Sirmaur district, has been stuck in Shimla these last few weeks due to the lockdown. “But in a way, this has been a blessing in disguise, me being here than in my constituency,” said Chauhan. “I have been able to help 250 to 260 daily-wage earners from my constituency held-up in Shimla due to the 21-day lockdown. These poor workers have run out of money, food and other daily needs. But their problem is just not of today. The crisis is much deeper for all…

Apprehension grips the agricultural heartland of Punjab as the new Rabi crop waits to be harvested. Labour shortage in the farms due to the coronavirus lockdown is, of course, a major worry. Farmers are clueless on what is in store for them, once harvest begins on April 15th, the date fixed by the state government. “I have not faced conditions of this nature in my entire life, nothing is sure anymore,” said Jagseer Sandhwan, a farmer owning 15 acres of land in Sandhwan village of Faridkot district. The government has set a procurement price of Rs 1925 per quintal for…

After three days of hell on earth, Day 4 of the Narendra Modi decreed 21-day lockdown brought some relief to the thousands of migrant labourers in Kaushambi, a part of the NCR, but in Ghaziabad district of UP. These migrant labourers from distant parts of UP in Kaushambi had been left in the lurch. Those who could had started to walk back to their homes, 700 km away. Till finally on March 28th, after a major debate on why a government that can bring home Indians stranded abroad cannot send its migrant workers home, the government relented and started limited…

[This article was co-authored by Rakesh Kumar Sinha. Rakesh holds a PGDCA from CMC, Delhi and a Certificate in Computing from IGNOU. He has worked as a research assistant in Policy and Planning Research Unit of Indian Statistical Institute.] On Sunday 08 December 2019, 43 people lost their lives in a tragic fire in a Delhi small-scale manufacturing hub. Most victims are young migrant labourers from states like Jharkhand, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar.  It was reported that factories were located illegally on residential premises, and an electrical short circuit possibly caused the fire. At least five of the 43 victims were minors, with…

When the Government of India issued an advisory on August 3rd, urging tourists and non-Kashmiris to leave the state, thousands of labourers who work in Srinagar and other areas decided to return home. However, around 150 non-Kashmiri waste pickers and their families decided to stay put in Srinagar. The city had provided them a home and livelihood for years and they believed they would be safe, despite subsequent reports of non-Kashmiri truck drivers and traders being killed Most of these waste-pickers and their families have lived in Srinagar since the 1960s, but their numbers increased in the 1990s. “A majority…