Challenge for Vision India@2047
By Manoj Kumar Chaudhary
According to Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) 2020-21, released by Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI), the total migration rate in India was 28.9% and in rural was 26.5%. Out of the total migrant persons, around 10.8% persons were migrated due to employment related reasons.
The most of the migration in India for employment purposes takes place from rural to urban areas. The urbanisation is considered the key of development in spite of poor demonstration of resilience by urban areas. Affordable house is the biggest challenge for migrant workers after coming to the city. In addition to housing,
Urbanisation, and the growth of cities in India, have been accompanied by pressure on basic infrastructure and services like sanitation and health. The worst sufferers are the migrant workers. In real estate sector, almost migrant workers are engaged. The 2011 Census of India reveals that the urban population of the country stood at 31.16% where there are about 4.5 lakh homeless families and a total population of 17.73 lakh is living without any roof over their heads. In India, more than half of the urban households occupy a single room, with an average occupancy per room of 4.4 persons.
The Central Government interim budget has announced that another 2 crore pucca households would be constructed over the next five years starting from 2024-25. Launched in 2016, the scheme, Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojna, has supported the construction of 2.54 crore homes across the country till the end of this fiscal. Social security is a human right. It is a protection that a society provides to individuals a households to ensure access to social protection and ensure income guarantee. In a developing nation like India, which is densely populated, affordable housing is not only an aspiration but a necessity.
Affordable housing for migrant workers, provision of their health and education is necessary for inclusive development. In the blind race of urbanisation and in the market economy and capitalist system where there is a competition to earn money, there is a huge population of migrant workers which cannot be ignored. The present research paper is based on the public welfare of migrant workers engaged in the real estate sector based on grass root survey of migrant workers in Lucknow of Uttar Pradesh.
Migration in India
India, a collection of 28 States and 8 union territories, is known for its great unity in diversity. But that unity bears certain loopholes in maintaining the same in reality. Each state on India has a uniqueness of its own whether it is in culture, geographic pattern, community settlements, economic or natural resources .
There is indeed a wide disparity in development which makes rich and poor becomes poorer. As such, people living in rural part (poor regions) of India often transit between places either as a social or an outcome of social, economic and cultural diversity in India. ”Migration is a Process of Movement of an Individual from his Place of Birth to a New Place of Residence.” S.K. Das
The interstate Migration Workmen Act, 1979 defines an interstate migrant workman labour as ”Any person who is recruited by or through a Contractor in any State under agreement or other agreement for employment in an establishment in another State. Whether with or without the knowledge of the Principal employer of such establishment.”
Migration is defined as a cultural issue with regard to the ‘Right to the City’ and how best to promote awareness and representation of migrants within the city is another important concern (Bolbo2008, P. 132)
Globalisation has produced both opportunities and challenges, and the precarities of migrant labour in India’s real estate sector is a case in point. The industry is one of the largest seasonal employment providers in the country. The present study investigates the position of seasonally employed construction workers in Lucknow’s (the capital city of the State of Uttar Pradesh, India) real estate industry and the outreach of policies designed for the welfare of these workers.
The central research problem that it addresses is that while welfare policies for the migrant workers are an institutional response to manage socio-economic adversities emanating from the real estate sector, these programs suffer from a serious lack of implementation. These processes had their roots in the early-1980s and reached a tipping point in 1991 when the new structural reforms produced large-scale transformation of the Indian economy.
Globalisation has produced two faces of the Indian economy-India Shining versus India Suffering. On the one hand, the open economy which was set in motion after the 1991 economic reforms has produced a fast-growing industry and infrastructure, on the other, it has given rise to new predicaments for casual labour. The state came to assume a guardian role in supporting private capital and later, but there were no equivalent efforts to introduce welfare measures in the earlier period.
This resulted in a critique that globalisation had produced a neocapitalist state that has withdrawn from its social responsibilities and that globalisation itself produced new predicaments or new kinds of fragmentation, for instance, within the working class. It necessitated greater state intervention to address them by redefining policy goals and bringing in the concerns and demands of the newly formed vulnerable classes in the policy discourse. Consequently, special legal arrangements, as well as various welfare programs, were introduced in the last two decades to enlarge the scope of social security measures.
State and Welfare Policies Under Globalisation
A theoretical review Variations in welfare provisions are clearly illustrative of the differences in the nature of state intervention and their will and capacity to alter redistribution between the rich and the poor. The services offered have ranged from old age pension to health services and from education to childcare services. At one end of a continuum were the Scandinavian states with high social welfare and at the other end countries like the US.
But with the changing political and economic scenario after the two oil shocks of the 1970s and the rising tide of Thatcherism in U.K. and Reaganism in US, the transition from a welfare state to a neocapitalist state enforcing globalisation and large-scale entry of private forces including multinational companies into the market became an established phenomenon.
Conclusion
The distress of migrant workers under globalisation is more specifically understood in the framework of precarity by Standing [2001]. Precariat, in a globalised economy, is identified as a new class with some special features. They are seen to lead a life of instability and uncertainty within a lack of political organisation or a concerted voice. In fact, they lack revolutionary fervour as found in the traditionally organised labour class. In Standing’s seven-fold categorisation of class within the global labour market, precariat assumes the third place from the bottom.
This indicates the level of vulnerability of the class. There is, however, a lack of definitional clarity on whom this class refers to. It is observed that is no uniformity in terms of what it constitutes. For instance, in Germany it may refer to temporary workers or the jobless, whereas in Japan it is the working poor. Standing also refers to seven forms of insecurities that the precariat faces. Migrant denizens have also been categorised as precariat.
It is, however, implausible to consider that the migrant labourer faces all the insecurities as enlisted by Standing. The Indian case is a testimony to this claim. In a democracy like India, it is not easy to let go a large mass of people who are potential voters in their constituencies. This political logic still compels the government to introduce welfare policies for them while largely keeping their concerns and issues at bay. Standing’s analysis is confined to migrant labourers in the Western world.
The causes and consequences of migration may be very different from those in a developing economy like India. Here, inter-state migration may have multiple causes and impacts depending on the regional dynamics.
