Vulnerabilities of migrant workers

In this article, Bengaluru NIAS Associate Professor Dr Anshuman Behera explained that the mass movement of migrant workers from urban areas to their homes has ripped open the socio-political apathy towards them in India.

Hyderabad:Arguably, the migrant workers have been the worst victims, so far, of the Covid-19 crisis in India. While there is an absence of a credible number of the migrant workers facing the wrath of a sustained imposed lockdown, the sights of their struggle to come back to their native places are rather disturbing.

The mass movement of the incredible number of migrant workers from the urban areas to their homes has only ripped open the socio-political apathy towards them in India over the last few decades. The buzz in the social media showing solidarity with the migrant workers and tokenism by the state machinery in terms of plying special trains to reach them home significantly highlights the multiple inequalities that they have been living with for decades now. The following sections highlight three major inequalities that have been critically responsible for the migrant workers’ plight.

A major inequality the migrant workers encounter is a new form of alienation and material deprivation. Unlike the traditional relationship between the factory owner and the workers, the migrant workers in a liberalized market economy hardly have any relationship with the capital owners.

The labor contractor plays a critical role in alienating the workers from the capital owners making them economically vulnerable and moreover, dependent on the former. The footloose workers, a major chunk of the migrant workers, mostly at the mercy of the labor contractor, unaware of their rights and entitlements and the industries they work for, are mostly unregistered. An unregistered worker serves better to the benefits of the industries and the labor contractors except for her own interests.

And this process of alienation of workers from the industries and their produce with the labor contractor in the middle of the business, has been a normal feature in India’s aspiration for growth and rapid urbanization endeavor.

During this unprecedented imposition of lockdown, both industries, and the labor contractors washed their hands of the workers pushing them to the brink of economic vulnerability. The governments’ indifference in terms of not considering the implications of the lockdown on the workers can be explained through the aspect of political inequality.

The political inequality that the migrant workers live with can be engaged through two critical factors; lack of political clout and poor representation in electoral politics. The migration of the workers away from the native place to distant urban areas makes them politically vulnerable as they hardly have the inclination or political power to bargain for their interests.

Especially, the footloose workers who keep moving from one city to another or multiple sites within a city for work are seldom treated as potential voters by the political parties. Once the political parties realize the potential of the migrant workers as vote banks, there have been pieces of evidence of them reaching out to them in far-off places.

The Chief Minister of Odisha, Naveen Patnaik, visiting Surat in Gujarat in December 2018, just before the state and general elections in 2019, to woo the large section of Odia migrant workers is a case in point. Since majority of the migrant workers hardly influence outcomes of electoral politics, they have been abandoned without much difficulties during the Covid-19 crisis.

Further, an identity as workers also adds to political vulnerabilities of the migrant workers. The migrant workers are (un)fortunately not identified through a religion or a caste. If at all, the difficulties that the migrant workers were going through were linked to a religion or a caste, the responses from the political forces would have been completely different.

Moreover, the diminishing identity of the migrant workers as a critical political force has also got lot to do with the shrinking space of communist parties in Indian politics and the very limited role of the trade unions. During this crisis, we haven’t seen much effort by the communist parties in terms of taking up the workers’ issues with the governments or providing any substantial help to the migrant workers. One can say the similar things about the responses from the trade unions for the migrant workers.

A third critical inequality that the migrant workers face is in terms of their low social status leading to large scale apathy. Studies have identified large scale migration from agriculture to jobs in urban areas. This process of migration from agriculture has substantially diluted the social status of the migrant workers.

These workers as agriculture laborers used to enjoy certain social statuses and dignity back in their native places which is unfortunately not the case for them in an urban center as they are identified as migrant workers. This process also reduces their social capital substantially.

The, subtle but very critical, transition of identity from agriculture labor to migrant workers has been instrumental in many ways for the social apathy towards them. During this crisis of Covid-19, the social status and individual dignity of the migrant workers have been diluted like never.

The unfolding of the difficulties faced by the migrant workers due to the outbreak of pandemic and imposition of an unprecedented lockdown leading to sudden loss of jobs is a result of sustained inequalities and vulnerabilities that the migrant workers have been subjected to for years. While knee jerk reactions from the state machinery only expose insensitivities towards the migrant workers, the immediacy of the issue calls for drastic changes in the mindset and policymaking.

While sympathies in terms of showing solidarities with the vulnerable might exhibit sensitivities of the citizenry, demands for empowering the migrant workers in terms of ensuring their entitlements and rights would avoid such episodes in the future.