By Abdul Kalam Azad,
Guwahati: The capital of Assam and gateway to the northeast India is one the fastest growing metropolises of the country. Especially, after the economic liberalisation of 90s, the city witnessed a boom in the housing and construction industry. Cheap and affordable bank loan has created a huge demand for the housing apartments. Emergence of corporate and various private education institutions also have contribution towards the boom of the housing and construction industry. These huge construction works need a large work force of informal workers like mason, carpenter, plumber, unskilled labourers like helpers etc.
This demand is basically fulfilled by migrated labourers from the rural areas of the state. The socio-economic background of those people is a very poor. The stagnation of agricultural growth is one of the push factors to take up the construction work as profession by the rural people. But in case of Guwahati the main push factor is blood and erosion.
Every year thousands of people from the districts of lower Assam are displaced by floods and erosion. During 1951 to 2001, more than 7% of total land of the state has been washed away by the river Brahmaputra. For those people to earn their livelihood, working in construction site seems to be a rewarding one.
But these pull and push factors could not bring any positive changes in the life of those construction workers. Multi-storeyed buildings erected within a couple of months, but the life of the workers, who construct the building, remains same for ages.
A young lady, who was married off at the age of 12 years and had given birth to her first child at the age of 13 years, told this writer in an interview that soon after birth of the child her husband abandoned her. The devastating flood and erosion of river Brahmaputra had made the indescribable misery to his maternal family at Dhubri and forced her to be a construction worker in Guwahati. Often, she has to face the dirty look of the male, while standing at the labour bazaar at Hatigaon. This is not an isolated case. Most women workers have to gone through this brutal experiences. Women construction workers at worksite also has to face the eve teasing from the male workers as well. They are discriminated in case of wage as well. A male worker generally gets a daily wage of Rs. 350/- while a women worker gets only Rs. 250/-. The Right to Education Act is a mockery at the construction worksite. Gender discrimination is not the only issue faced by construction workers. But they have to face a series of issues while working as a construction worker. They are the most vulnerable to diseases, accident, economic exploitation, social exclusion etc. Moreover, often they are harassed in the name of illegal Bangladeshi immigrant. One of the interviewee alleged that not only the representative of so called nationalist organisation, many times police also harass them in the name of illegal Bangladeshi.
India, being a welfare state, it can’t afford to be a silent spectator on the issues of construction workers. Article 43 of Indian Constitution talks about providing living wage to all workers, pleaded for good working conditions to ensure a decent standard of life and full enjoyment of leisure. Article 47 directs the state to raise the level of nutrition and improving public health. Not only that, Article 42 also aims to securing just and humane condition of work and maternity leave. But still all of the above are distant dreams for the most marginalized and downtrodden construction workers. A construction worker said they go to work as early as 4 am and someday returns at 10 pm. There is no provision of maternity and paid leave for any construction workers in Guwahati.
At the same time, India is also a signatory of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights 1948 and International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights of 1966. The Article 22 of Universal Declaration on Human Rights says that everyone as a member of society has the right to social security and is entitled to realization through national effort. Being the signatory of the above covenant it is binding on the government to uphold the tenets of those covenants. And thus, providing social security is an essential duty of the government.
This is also would not be a fair assessment to say that the government has done nothing for the social security of the marginalised people of the country. In fact our government has some of the robust missions and programmes to enable the individuals to attain a reasonable standard of life and protect them from the unforeseen contingencies. Besides, the universal programmes like education, public health, drinking water, sanitation public distribution system etc, government is also working on the huge projects like Integrated Child Development Programme, Mid-Day Meal etc for providing social and economic security. Present government’s flagship programmes like Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, National Rural Livelihood Mission etc are also working for the upliftment of the downtrodden section of the society. Programmes like National Pension Scheme (System), Rastriya Swasthya Bima Yojna etc are also been undertaken to mitigate the socio-economic disparity in the society. But the question arises, after having such robust schemes, why thousands of construction workers are still struggling for a decent human life with basic amenities? Whereas a decent life is their human right and entitlement granted by the constitution of these country! After all where the problem lies?
The construction workers are uprooted and mostly unstable, they roam from one place to another place. They keep moving from one construction site to another site. The development programmes we have enlisted above are hardly been able to reach this most vulnerable group of people. Keeping in mind the socio-economic conditions of this section of the people in 1996 government of India introduced an Act called “Building and Other Construction workers (Regulation of Employment and Condition of Services Act) 1996”, along this Act the government also brought another Act called ‘Building and Other Construction workers’ Welfare Cess Act, 1996’. The later was brought to collect cess from the builders for the welfare of the construction workers. The Act came up with some important provisions like paid weekly holiday, safety and health measures at the workplace, provision of drinking water and latrine and urinal at the workplace. The Act also directed the state governments to establish state boards to carry on the provisions of the Act.
But the Assam Building and Other Construction Workers Welfare Board was formed in 2007 only. Our state government took more than a decade to form the board itself. It took another one year to get operationalised. The board enlisted many ambitious schemes for the construction workers. Like, providing the benefit of Rastriya Sasthya Bima Yojna, providing compensation for accidental death (Rs. 50000) and natural death and injuries (Rs. 15000), providing scholarship for the children of the construction workers, giving credit to the construction workers to purchase equipments for their works, assisting financially the unmarried women workers etc were the major benefits enlisted by the board. But some the schemes are so ridiculous that this won’t make any different to the construction workers. The board talks about the pension for the construction worker, but the amount allotted is only Rs. 150/- per month. Now government is planning to introduce another pension scheme called Swabalamban Pension Scheme, where the beneficiary is supposed to get Rs. 1000 per month after the age of 60 years.
The board is designated to perform three major activities i.e. i) Register the construction workers with the board, so that they can get the benefit of the social security schemes under the Act of 1996. Presently the state has around 40 lakhs construction workers. But till 2012 they have been able to register around 10 thousand workers only. ii) The second duty of the board is to collect the cess amount from the builders. The board is successfully collecting the cess amount from the builders. Till 2011 they have collected more than 100 crore and the board had taken target to collect 500 crore by the 2015. iii) The third and most important duty of the board is to facilitate the construction worker in case of any emergency or when he or she needs as defined in the Act of 1996. But the irony is that as per the available data, till 2013 only 24 construction workers have been benefited by the schemes so far! While interviewing the construction workers, I pointed to the big hording at the labour market of Hatigaon and asked them whether anyone of them are aware about the benefits given by the board or has anybody approached them to register themselves. Surprisingly, they nodded their head with a big ‘no”.
For how many years will we allow system to run on a turtle motion or is this merely because of the fact that, maximum construction workers are from minority Muslim community? Otherwise how the state welfare boards of state like Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, and Tamil Nadu can work far better than Assam. Kerala’s enrolment is nearly 99% and in case of Assam the figure it is nominal!
(Abdul Kalam Azad is a Post Graduate student at Tata Institute of Social Sciences.)
[Photos: Abdul Gani]
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Internally displaced persons of Assam