[Reader-list] Fifth posting: Migrant workers on the I T corridor

[venkat t]

Fifth posting: Migrant Workers on IT corridor

Of Silence, Resignation and Struggle:

Recently we had visited a camp site just off the IT corridor. It was
being maintained by a builder who is constructing a number of
residential complexes. The population of construction workers was as
usual dominated by people from andhra and orrisa. They were housed in
a vacant land close to the work site. more than 500 in a few grounds
of plot. The locals resented this encroachment into their space and
they have been at logger heads with the builder. Add to this the lack
of sanitation facilities at the camp had made the workers use the
roads, and any open space as their toilets, compounding the resentment
of the locals. As the rains hit Chennai, the lands were flooded
forcing the workers to take up shelter on the roads and in front of
houses. This was the last straw and the residents took up the issue
with the police and on a fine morning just as the workers were waking
up to their daily chores, the police came in force accompanied by the
local assistant commissioner and evicted them. With only a supervisor
around, and with the handicap of language the workers had to move into
to the work site. Those who tried to put a semblance of resistance
were threatened with dire consequences.

Far away from home, the migrant population is learning to face the
problems of the urban poor. They live in some of the most appalling
conditions in the absence of any basic facilities to lead a normal
life. At the mercy of their contractors, they often endure worst forms
of suffering. The city steadily erodes their dignity of life. We have
often repeated the conditions in which they live and it needs no
further description. but one question that rises in our minds is Why
is their no struggle? Is there a lack of resistance or is it that it
is not visible to us?

here I am just thinking aloud from what I gather from the field. Some
of the reasons that strike me for the absence of any strong resistance
are a) the workers have come far away from the native places to a city
that is still alien to them and thus are tied to their contractor and
through him to their employer. b) In spite of the low wages they still
earn at least twice as much as they would have earned in their native
places and their families have come to rely upon their remittances c)
They feel that they are at least assured regular work in the cities
and a break with the contractors might ruin their chances. d) They
come from an environment where they have not been exposed to mass
organisation. e) and finally their sheer ignorance of their rights
makes it impossible for them to place a clear set of demands

but the larger question is Do they perceive themselves as a group of
workers, in other words is there among them a working class
consciousness? Though every worker clearly knows his/her role, they do
not bind themselves together as a unit, they are still clubbed into
their own small bands centred around the contractor who has come
brought them to the work site. Their point of contact remains their
immediate contractor and not the principal employer.  further we find
that there is very little interaction between the different lingual
groups that co habit and work together. Thus the workers are too
fragmented to put up any collective demand

secondly the workers know that they can be easily replaced with others
who continue to flow into the city from their towns and villages. Thus
the danger of losing their work is real and founded.

while the afore mentioned reasons point to the inability of the
migrant workers to organise and agitate, we have come across at least
two instances where the workers have, for brief moments, put up an
organised struggle. In both instances they had returned to work after
a  minor compromise. The strikes and the unity has not been sustained,
or at least seems to be so. The fact that they could come to gather as
a single collective shows that there is  a growing consciousness among
them, but away from the glare of the media and without a proper
organised union there seems to be little chance that such isolated
actions would ever bear fruit.

during an interaction with some students of journalism, the role of
the educated youth among the workers (of whom there are considerable
number)  in bringing about a collective consciousness was raised. It
would be interesting to study this factor as well as the smaller and
more localised protests that might be occuring. We hope we have some
more answers in the next post.

please write to me with your comments. I have only recorded my views
without any clear theoretical backing and it would be immensely
enriching to have some inputs on this as well sharing of similar
experiences.

Venkat