More jobs, living wages and basic rights for workers

Rajiv Khandelwal

INDIA’s economic growth has consistently relied on low-waged, precarious and flexible labour. Combined with agrarian collapse in many regions, this reality has resulted in massive distress migration from rural areas to urban and industrial markets.

The numbers are staggering. India’s circular migrant workforce is estimated to be over 140 million people. Construction alone engages nearly 50 million migrant workers — a large proportion of whom are low-waged, contractual and casual. Many other sectors of the economy — manufacturing, mining, transportation, sanitation, domestic work, vending — comprise mainly migrant, informal workers.

The lives of these workers are defined by erratic work, low wages, absence of social security and exposure to workplace hazards.

There are at least four imperatives for the government to vigorously pursue:

 

Make job creation central to social and economic policies

The first priority should be to put job creation on track. High rates of unemployment imply jobless growth or low-quality jobs for which there are no takers. Stable and rewarding jobs are missing for the young, including those who are educated, trained and aspiring to join the workforce with their dignity intact. The emphasis must be on creating decent employment, not just informal, casual work. This shift will encourage informed and secure migration and a move away from unproductive forms of work.

 

Why minimum wages, why not living wages?

The second priority should be to protect workers’ wages. We must reject the minimum wage mindset and move the needle to ensuring decent, living wages for workers. In a country where 40 percent of all informal workers do not even earn a minimum wage, the aspiration for living wages may sound unreal. Yet this commitment needs to be made. With food inflation staggeringly high and earnings so meagre, workers and their dependent families not only remain undernourished but deeply immersed in debt. Poor wages affect migrant workers profoundly. A large part of their earned incomes is consumed for mere survival in cities – rent, food and transportation — all of which add up, leaving little or none for bringing back home.

 

Ensure affordable housing, healthcare, access to rations for migrant workers

The third priority is to universalize access to low-cost, affordable and dignified housing, free healthcare and access to the Public Distribution System (PDS) for migrant workers. All of these have remained in discussion for years, a few even leading to some policy announcements.

However, on-ground implementation remains dismal. The Affordable Rental Housing Complex scheme does not yet serve the desired segment of working migrants and the urban poor. The portability of PDS across states, which would make it possible for migrants to access subsidized ration away from their home, is not yet operational.

 

Have safety at workplaces, there are too many accidents, deaths

The fourth priority should be to focus on making our construction sites, factories, facilities, units and markets completely safe and free of injury, trauma and accidents.

For Indian workers, work is an act of utmost peril. Our work sites are amongst the most dangerous anywhere in the world. In 2021 the government reported that nearly 6,500 workers died while at work in the past five years. Accidents in factories had galloped by 20 percent within a year’s time!

Most of these deaths were reported from the migrant-dense, highly industrialized and developed states, including Gujarat, Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu. Employers are able to sign out of safety imperatives at workplaces because regulations remain weak and unenforced.

Moreover, sites of work have shrunk to small, micro units where labour becomes invisible and vulnerable to all manner of risk. Undoubtedly, migrants form the largest proportion of those who lose limbs and lives while at work in these spaces of fragmented production and processes.

 

Protect rights, give social security and legal aid

We must root for universal social security and entitlement. Nearly 54 percent of all workers do not enjoy any form of social security. Further, a massive legal aid and justice programme is needed to ensure that wages of workers remain protected. Almost 63 percent of India’s entire workforce does not possess a work contract.

The attention that Covid-19 brought to the migrants’ experience has largely vaporized. The much-discussed comprehensive policy for internal migration is yet to be implemented. Instead, we have country-wide registration of workers under the e-shram programme which has enrolled nearly 30 crore workers. The utility of this massive exercise is yet to be established. Scores of welfare schemes dominate the labour narrative — these overwhelm workers’ rights and claims. The state must commit to a longer lasting and fundamental shift to workers’ welfare as a matter of their right, not a populist favour by a government seeking to win votes.

 

Rajiv Khandelwal is co-founder of the Aajeevika Bureau.