[Reader-list] Living and Working Conditions of Migrant Workers on Chennai’s ‘IT corridor’

[venkat t]

Living and Working Conditions of Migrant Workers on Chennai's 'IT corridor'
Third posting

The work on the IT corridor is gearing up. Large patches of land,
bulldozed years ago to make way for the corridor are being filled with
gravel and tar as more and more high rises are emerging. Every other
day the landscape is changing beyond recognition. (or is it that I
made very few trips this month). The summer heat might have put me
away from the corridor, but the work seems to go on unabated.

This month has been pretty hot in Chennai. The extensive construction
activity has made the IT corridor only worse. This had hampered our
work. We could only make very minimal visits to the sites and
therefore I do not have much to say.

But the spare time was used to plan the next stage of the research. We
have decided to look at 6-8 sites where the migrant workers are living
as well as a few of the working sites. The camp sites can be broadly
classified into three categories, a) on-site camps b) camps run by
companies away from the work site c) tenements not managed or built by
companies/contractors.

We would like to study different worksites including the IT express
way and look into the working conditions, safety standards etc. Apart
from this we would like to interview various officials as well as
contractors and sub contractors. On the other side we would also be
reading into the labour legislations to get a sense of the rules and
the ground realities. We intend to pack all this up for June so as to
give us time for more detailed ethnography.

Before I conclude let me narrate a little about one of visits. On the
16th of may, we visited a construction site, where a hospital is
coming up. The workers were on a spontaneous strike and the work had
come to a halt. After some talking the security did leave us in and
when we spoke to the workers. There had been an accident involving a
worker a couple of days ago and he had been rushed to a prominent
private hospital. "The medical expenses have come to Rs 3 lakhs and
the company has refused to foot the bill" said a worker. He also said
that there had been two other accidents in the past. While one of them
had a snake bite, another died of heart attack. The workers were
demanding that the company foot the bill and also provide better
safety standards. While the contractor had provided tenements and also
had made arrangements for non formal education for the children, on
the count of accidents and safety it was a dismal record. While it is
wrong to generalize this event, what we gather from our interviews, as
I had mentioned in my earlier posting is that accidents get under
reported and only fatal accidents come to light. Though it might be
hard to gauge the accident rates, it is very important that a detailed
study of the safety standards is made.

As we travel through the corridor we can observe the numerous petty
shops, small temples, and other petty business that are thriving.
Share autos and share vans vie with each other and the MTC to corner
the better part of the passenger traffic. On the background, mega
residential complexes and glass cased IT companies direct our vision
to the future while long luxury busses and cars ply all day carrying
thousands of IT employees. Would these two worlds blend or would one
have to give way to another?
I cannot but ponder