The Covid-19 lockdown has led to an exodus of migrant workers from cities to rural areas and threw the spotlight on the vast number of Indians who live outside their home states. The global pandemic has become the immediate reason for the abrupt palpability of the migrant workers’ deplorable condition on the national scene. However, the vital reason behind their plight is deeply entrenched not just in the structure of India’s economic system but it is the interplay between social and economic alienation that expounds the issues of migrant workers in India.

The Interplay Between Social And Economic Alienation Expounds The Issues Of Migrant Workers In India

1. The vast majority of the migrant labourers are constrained by the informal and unorganised nature of their work with the mobile nature of their livelihood.
2. The perennial problems of migrant workers who migrated to urban areas entail compounded structural exclusion manifesting as lack of proper accommodation, low standard of living, low wages, inaccessibility to state given services due to lack of identity proof and other documents.
3. The wards or children of migrant labourers are precluded from obtaining basic education in the urban areas to which they migrated.
4. Tagged as ‘guest workers’, these labourers are perpetual outsiders in the states of their domicile even without access to basic ration through PDS.
5. Their precarious condition is the culmination of a prolonged existence of the capitalist mode of production coterminous with the neo-liberal policies.
6. In a perfectly free and flexible labour market, one without any labour protections, discriminatory employment, subsistence wages, underage labour, etc of the migrant labourer could all be wrongly justified and protected as simply ‘market forces at play‘.
7. Neo-liberal measures bring about skewed intervention of the government to reduce the exploitation of migrant labour by middlemen, contractors, and employers, thereby debilitating the mechanisms and mediums of economic and social justice.
8. The social aspect of the migrant workers pinpoints the fact that most of them belong to marginalized communities such as Dalits, tribal, and minorities constituting the lowest segment in the hierarchy of labour.
9. As a result of these external inhibitions, the young generations of these migrant workers are systematically alienated from their capabilities and creative skills and pushed into the margins for the rest of their life.
10. Their plight is not only the reverberation of the neoliberal nature of the state but also the prolonged historical social oppression and exploitation by those at the top of the social ladder. Thus, the interplay between social and economic alienation expounds on the issues of migrant workers in India.

Suggestive Solutions For The Issues Of Migrant Workers In India

1. Need to effectively implement existing legal provisions like Interstate Migrant Workmen (Regulation Of Employment And Conditions of Service) Act, 1979 and Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions Code of 2019 in Lok Sabha.
2. There is a need to reorient the working of the Construction Workers Welfare Board (CWWB) in each state. The CWWB provides social security to migrant workers.
3. A comprehensive database of migrant workers needs to be prepared on a war footing to establish a system akin to JAM. The immediate starting point could be the MNREGA enrolments this fiscal year, which can be compared to last year rolls and new additions could be treated as migrant labourers.
4. A basic social security framework for migrants, preferably through a simple interstate self-registration process that can be authenticated through SMSs, can be developed.
5. With the country now moving towards the One Nation One Ration Card, all the respective state governments can start working in unison to ensure the use of such ration cards for extending all benefits other than PDS. The portability of food security should be the first step towards the portability of healthcare, education benefits.
6. Contrary to international evidence, in India, language doesn‘t seem to matter in terms of migration. Thus, states must put an end to restrictive domicile provisions for working in different states.
7. Ensuring consultation with the representatives of workers or state governments while drafting the Labour reforms and codes, thereby extending democratic decision making to the working class such as migrant labourers.

The migrant conundrum is thus a culmination of prolonged structural denial of basic economic rights by neo-liberal state machinery in concurrent with the social and moral apathy towards the marginalized sections who constitute the majority of the migrant workers in India. They are dispossessed by both the state and society. The mere transportation facilities to their homes or mere labour reforms are not an all-time panacea for their problems. The change in the discriminatory social behaviour and public attitude towards workers, the inclusion of affirmative policies and a transformation in the nature of state from a neoliberal establishment to a more welfare entity can advance an egalitarian social and economic realm in which rights, dignity and respect of the workers from socially marginalized sections are assured and protected.