Unlocking The Urban: Reimagining Migrant Lives In Cities .
Unlocking the Urban:Reimagining Migrant Lives inCities Post-COVID 19Highlights of the Study
Manish ShuklaTCover Image: Tathya Macwanhe COVID 19 pandemic and the resultant lockdownin India triggered vast movements of internal migrantworkers, desperate to return to their home villages.Only a few were able to make it back. Many were detainedat borders, where they faced police brutality, were doused indisinfectants, asked to produce “health certificates” whichthey had no means of acquiring, or forced into shelterhomes en-route. Many more migrant workers remainstranded in cities and towns, where they have not been paidwages for previous work, forced to take unpaid leave, orremoved from their jobs. In panic, they are calling numeroushelplines, most of which remain unreachable, to ask forrations, wages or to let them return home.The lockdown came without adequate warning, or any planfor migrant workers in India’s urban areas, even though theyare estimated to constitute 100 million people, accountingfor 1 in 10 Indians. To fully understand their currentpredicament, it needs to be stressed that the pandemicdid not fully cause this, but aggravated long-standing,existing vulnerabilities. India’s urban-led economic growthmodel relies on the labour of rural-urban migrants, whooften receive less than minimum wages for long hoursof dangerous, manual work. They are unaccounted for bynational statistics and unseen by city level administrations.As a result they resort to living in unrecognised spaces,which further removes them from the purview of stateprovisions of water and sanitation, food and fuel,and healthcare. A chain of vulnerabilities sets in: oneexacerbating the next. The pandemic having completelydestroyed livelihoods, the situation has reached a breakingpoint. Workers no longer have wages to buy these servicesas they usually do. They do not have coverage by stateprovisions either and are left without a safe shelter or spaceto practice physical distancing, water and sanitation formaintaining basic hygiene or access to healthcare, or foodand nutrition.This report by Aajeevika Bureau examines the causes,nature and extent of migrant workers’ exclusion fromurban services, and provides policy recommendations toremedy the same. The study was conducted during thepre-COVID 19 period in two major Indian cities: Ahmedabadand Surat. The report, based on surveys and focus groupdiscussions, conducted with workers in a range of sectorslike power looms, construction, small manufacturing,hotels and restaurants, head loading and domestic work,reveals the heterogeneity of the migrant worker. This inturn informs the nature and extent of their exclusion. Thesedifferences notwithstanding, the lack of documentationestablishing their residence in the city, is a common factor,that renders workers ineligible from most state schemes.It also evaluates the state response to this exclusion, bydrawing from interviews with public officials from urbanlocal bodies and state or central schemes and missions. Aswe move towards a post-COVID phase, much needs to bedone in way of building back the lives for migrant workers.The current moment presents a unique opportunityto remedy the long persistent chain of ineligibility andexclusion that they find themselves mired in, and to finallybring them under the realm of existing state services, andurban governance.Who are the Circular,Migrant Workers? Circular migration can be short or long term, short or longdistance, by men, women and children, single or familybased. Workers remain at their work destinations between3 to 11 months in a year, but always return to their sourcevillages. Ahmedabad has an estimated 1.3 million circular migrantworkers, accounting for 1/6th of its population. They comefrom adjoining tribal areas of northern Gujarat, southernRajasthan and western Madhya Pradesh, as well as acrosslonger distances from Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Odisha andChhattisgarh. The current study conducted 285 surveyswith migrant workers in Ahmedabad across sectors likeconstruction, small manufacturing, hotels and restaurants,headloading and domestic work. Surat has the highest ratio of migrants to locals in thecountry, forming 58% of its total population and 70% of itswaged workforce. The power loom units, located at thelowest ends of the city’s booming textile industry employs
Documents% Workers WITHOUT Access (N 285)in Ahmedabad% Workers WITHOUT Access (N 150)in SuratRation Card92%99%Voter ID89%74%Electricity Bill94%97%89% (N 80 workers)N/ABoCW cardMigrant Workers’ Lack of Access to Urban Documentationmigrant workers from Odisha, Madhya Pradesh, UttarPradesh, Maharashtra and Bihar. Nearly 8,00,000 migrantsin the industry come from Ganjam District of Odisha whobelong to OBC and Dalit communities. The study in Suratconducted 150 surveys with migrant workers employed inpower loom units. Circular migrants overlap with the most sociallymarginalised and economically vulnerable groups. Whilesome workers might be able to settle in the cities with time,Dalit and Adivasi workers employed in the same sectors,are unable to move to better paying jobs or becomingsettled.No Access to Urban Governanceand Urban Residence 98 percent of migrant workers surveyed had neverinteracted with any official in a political party office or localadministrative bodies. Migrant workers live in spaces which are not recognisedby local administrations. They have no formal or writtenrental agreements to acquire urban residence-basedidentity documents. This renders them ineligible from urbangovernance schemes and services, restricted to those whohave identity documents which prove their domicility in thecities where they work.Tathya Macwan Even sector-specific welfare mechanisms have beenunsuccessful in covering migrant workers. Of the largenumber of migrant workers employed in the constructionsector in Ahmedabad, very few are registered under theBuilding and other Construction Workers’ Welfare Board.Uncertain and Inadequate Housing,Water and SanitationMigrant workers live in different kinds of housing: on-siteliving, open space settlements and informal rental rooms(Ahmedabad) and rental rooms and mess rooms (Surat).They are all unregulated, providing poor and inadequateservices. Some common issues are as follows: Due to their unregulated nature, these spaces are notcovered by urban local bodies, Community Health Centres(CHC) or Anganwadis. About 85 percent of the children inthe surveyed families never accessed any services fromAganwadis in their locality. About 83 percent accessed share toilets, with no upperlimit on the number of people sharing. Women migrantsare burdened with cleaning the shared toilet facilities.Water shortages and supply disruptions are common, andwater is not guaranteed. Open defecation is criminalised byneighbourhood groups, increasing the costs for accessingpaid toilets.On-site Living: This includes migrant workers living inside constructionsites (in half constructed buildings or temporary shacksmade of discarded material within the site), smallmanufacturing units (on the shopfloor, between machinesand boilers, or in empty lots outside the factory), hotels andrestaurants, inside head loading markets (in the godown,crammed offices, or in the open) and homes of employersin the case of domestic workers. Labour legislations do notadequately cover needs of workers’ living conditions insidetheir worksites.
Jagjit Singh Lower wages and arbitrary wage cuts for the provision offacilities on-site, or pressure on workers to work for longerand irregular hours for no overtime pay are common.They are able to access 50 litres of water per capita perday, while a minimum of 100 litres per capita per day isrecommended for a healthy life. All women migrants livingon-site in factories rely on open defecation.Open Space Settlements: Adivasi families who seek work in daily wage, constructionlabour market (nakas), live in open spaces – on pavements,near railway tracks under flyovers or in public or privatelands. They face frequent evictions by police and cityofficials. They are often forced to spend 1/10th of their monthlyincome, paying between Rs. 15 to Rs. 25 to use pay-anduse toilets one time daily for each family member. Forwomen, during menstruation or pregnancy, conditions areparticularly difficult. Access to water varies between 39- 60litres per capita daily.Informal Rented Rooms: In Ahmedabad, the average monthly rent for a 10x10square feet pucca room is Rs. 3022, which is accessibleonly to upper caste, skilled migrants. Rooms accommodate4, with 20-30 sq. ft. per person in the room. UnskilledAdivasi workers live in crammed rented rooms as singlemale migrants, with 7 sq. ft. per person. Each workermust pay Rs. 500 plus utilities to the landlord for a semipucca room In Ahmedabad’s peripheries that hazardous industries treatas a dumping ground, 8x8 sq. ft. rooms each costing Rs.1,000 and shared by 4 workers, are common. 80 litres ofwater per capita per day is accessible to each worker inrented rooms. In Surat, rental rooms of 70 - 100 sq. ft. cost Rs. 2,500 – Rs.4,000, and house from 2 -10 workers in each room. Depositpayment of Rs. 5,000 makes these unaffordable, combinedwith electricity charges that are in some cases not inclusiveof rent. In case of family migrants, such rooms double up asworking sites for women who undertake unpaid housework including cooking, cleaning and childcare, in additionto home-based work in the industry. They have noentitlements as workers, and are paid below minimumwages. The home-based work also often involves theunpaid labour of the children of the family.Mess Rooms Former factory floors in Surat are converted to mess roomsof 600 to 1000 sq. ft. where around 100 workers sleepacross two shifts (from 7 am to 7 pm and 7 pm to 7 am).Every worker gets 6x3 ft. space, for monthly payments ofRs. 400 - Rs. 600 as room rent inclusive of electricity andRs. 1,800 - Rs. 2,200 for food served at the same facility.There is no upper limit on the number of workers and theseare packed beyond capacity, hot and poorly maintained.Exorbitant Expenses forFood and FuelMigrant workers are completely left out of PublicDistribution Systems (PDS) in both cities as they do nothave access to ration cards in the areas where they live. While migrants in Ahmedabad, save on rent bycompromising on basic facilities, they spend an exorbitantamount, often upto 50% of their monthly income, on foodand fuel. Lack of storage and low wages means that workers areforced to purchase small amounts of rations daily, whichmakes it more expensive. They are also forced to purchasefrom ration shops owned by specific shopkeepers whomight provide them support and help on other matters inthe city, or from those owned by their landlords – and areoften forced to purchase at higher costs. Thus, despitethe high expenditure, the nutritional quality of food iscompromised, given that they are only able to afford bareessentials.
16Domestic work4222Headloading8Hotel/Dhaba work44178Factory work4313Construction work0104820Rent (% of income)304050Food and Fuel (% of income)Expenditure on Food and Rent as a Proportion of Income for Circular Migrants Living in Rented Rooms in AhmedabadIn Surat, while mess rooms have the provision for food,these systems tend to be highly exploitative, and dictated bythe mess owners. Workers are forced to buy basic suppliesonly from the shops owned by the mess owner themselves.They also have to procure LPG cylinders from the blackmarket paying between Rs. 900 – Rs. 1,200 per cylinder.Left out of Healthcare Systems More than 90% migrant workers in both cities reported thatthey preferred private clinics, including quacks or chemistshops, where they pay high costs, over urban health centresor public hospitals. In Ahmedabad, they pay anywherebetween Rs. 100 to Rs. 3,00,000 for a visit to privatefacilities. If they attempt to access public healthcare facilities, theyare asked for domicile-based documents, or are faced withlanguage issues and timings that are unsuitable to theirlong work hours. There is also erratic and uneven outreachin their settlements by ASHA or ANM workers, as they arenot recognised or considered residential areas.Exclusionary Urban Policiesand SchemesAnoop Sathyan Lack of enumeration at the local level: Urban authoritiesdraw upon the Census data to deploy fiscal and humanresources for provisioning of basic facilities and servicesacross cities. Migrant workers are excluded from nationalstatistics such as Census and NSSO, and migrantsettlements are not enumerated or recognised in city-levelexercises. Thus, they fall out of decision-making processesfor urban policies and schemes. Sedentary bias in design and implementation of urbanpolicy: PDS, water and sanitation facilities, options foraffordable housing or schemes by the National UrbanLivelihood Mission are not available to circular migrantswho cannot claim permanent residence in cities despitetheir presence in cities for major part of every year. Welfareschemes under Urban Health Centres and CommunityHealth Centres also require one city-based domiciledocument. While women and children are entitled toMamta cards that track immunization linkages, they cannotaccess certain welfare provisions such as conditionalcash transfers without district-based domicile documents.Schemes for urban housing are also limited to recognisedslum settlements, which circular migrants cannot afford. Development plans are static in nature: They are madeat 10-year intervals, without accounting for the dynamicprocess of migration and magnitude of in-migration intocities. Population projections on which plans are made donot feature in-migration, even in fast growing cities whichare migrant hotspots. Imagination restricted to ‘tax-paying citizens’: It reflectsa heavily prejudiced mind set among urban local bodies,that refuses to view workers as legitimate citizens of thecity. Migrant workers are understood as the responsibilityof the industry, to be regulated by the Labour Department,which is under-resourced, understaffed and unable toimplement legislations for the informal workforce.
Anoop Sathyan Ethnic and caste based stigmatization: Migrant workersare also widely victimized based on ethnicity, casteand class. “They do not treat Surat as their own city,”“They make the city dirty,” were some of the commonrefrains heard from officials. Police functionaries referredto them as “mind-dead,” “criminal,” and “always under theinfluence of substance abuse,” citing them as an activesecurity threat. Misalignment of incentives in service delivery: Severalpolicies incentivise retention of beneficiaries in governmentprogrammes to ensure sustained delivery of servicesto the target population. For instance, the ANMsand ASHA workers who are part of the AMC receiveincentives to vaccinate the same pregnant woman or childon a continuous basis, and are responsible for adding andproviding continued services to new settlements. Whilethe intent is to ensure quality and continuity of servicedelivery, these incentives are actually misaligned withthe mobile, transient nature of the work and lives of migrantcommunities and end up excluding them. No political agency to assert claims: In the absenceof voting rights in cities, migrants are stripped of anyopportunity to assert their political agency, make demandsfor migrant-inclusive reforms or stake claims to publicentitlements. Access to Town Planning process, waterconnections, establishment of Anganwadis, are routedthrough ward councilors or corporators who only respondto the voting populations.Building Inclusive Cities in theWake of COVID 19 andPost-pandemic PhaseAt the time of publication of this report, the initial 21-daylockdown has been extended for another 18 days. Adequatesystems have still not been put in place for reachingout to migrant workers, who have gone without basicprovisioning for weeks, fueling panic and unrest amongthese communities. Immediate measures taken during thisphase to integrate migrant workers into public provisioningand formal employment systems can prove effective forbuilding inclusive cities in the post-pandemic phase. Identification and enumeration of migrant hotspots forpublic provisioning: Local authorities must reach out tomigrant pockets in cities through workers platforms andcivil society organisations, conduct local level enumerationsand ensure provisioning of public facilities in these areas ona fast track basis. Universalisation of PDS: Adequate rations must beprovided to all persons occupying urban spaces on apriority basis; all domicility based eligibility barriers mustbe eliminated. This is particularly necessary for migrantsettlements in far-flung urban peripheries which might falloutside the jurisdiction of urban local bodies. Adequate and safe shelter facilities: Many migrantworkers are being removed from their worksites, or live inunhygienic, crammed rented rooms which are unsuitable
for survival during lockdown. These workers must beprovided the option of safe shelter homes, that haveprovisions for family rooms, separate toilets for women,as well as security for single women migrants, and allowmigrant groups to live together with their communities.They must ensure food and healthcare access, and mustregularly be monitored by government and civil societyrepresentatives. Access to urban healthcare systems: Urban health centresmust be made sensitive to migrant communities, be flexiblewith timings, must cater to different linguistic groups,and remove all burden of documentation from migrantcommunities. Outreach in migrant clusters through ASHAand ANM workers for health screenings are essential stepsfor their inclusion in existing systems.In conclusion, it is imperative that the processes of urbanplanning and policy recognize migrants as a legitimate partof the urban citizenry in need of critical public services.The public and policy attention to their issues in thecurrent moment needs to be leveraged to enable a radicalre-envisioning of the notions of citizenship and universalaccess to social rights, such that migrant workers areoffered hope, equity and dignity in their endeavours to stakeclaims in our urban spaces.Manish Shukla Gender specific measures: Police cooperation must besought to identify and respond to spikes in harassmentand domestic violence as a result of lockdown. Police mustreach out to and remain accessible to migrant womenin informal settlements for this purpose. Urban LocalAuthorities must set up response systems for migrantwomen in distress, which can be converted into Women’sResource Centres in the post-pandemic period. Legal liabilities on employers and landlords for theprovision of basic facilities: Migrants largely depend onemployers and landlords for accessing basic facilitiesin their living spaces. The provision of these facilities, aswell as standards for their adequacy and quantity mustbe set through executive orders, which can form thebasis of future legislations. Informal landlords might beincentivised to do this through subsidies from the statefor renting to migrant workers in return for formalisingtheir rental arrangements. In the case of small and pettyemployers who cannot provide for workers, or workerswho are engaged on a piece-rate basis or as home-basedworkers, the state must step in through extending publicprovisioning in such clusters.39, Krishna Colony, Near Khan Complex, Bedla Road, Udaipur, Rajasthan- 313 0040294-2451062, 0294-2450682 aajeevika.orginfo@aajeevika.orgThis study has been undertaken with generous financial support from Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung
and Urban Residence 98 percent of migrant workers surveyed had never interacted with any official in a political party office or local administrative bodies. Migrant workers live in spaces which are not recognised by local administrations. They have no formal or written rental agreements to acquire
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