The great Indian labour reverse migration continues apace in the fourth iteration of the lockdown, with questions on its policy ramifications piling up by the day. From unprovoked police hostility and tragic transit accidents to active denial of available transport to return home, India’s migrant labour force is all alone in its desperate attempts to brave the existential crisis brought on by the lockdown, a lockdown which is only too apparent in its design to protect just the ones who ‘matter’.
The Supreme Court on 26 May, 2020 took suo motu cognisance of the crisis, acknowledging that far too many are still on the road. However, a court that wondered why these workers need wages if they are being provided with food, does not inspire the confidence of those seeking meaningful protection of labour interests.
At the same time, the real cause of this crisis has escaped attention, employers who are happy to make heavy profits off labour when the going is good but who do not hesitate to turn their backs on them (even illegally) if it happens to impact their bottom line. Of course, the workers are only too aware of this, with most of them proclaiming their refusal to return to such exploitative conditions.
This is perhaps indicative of the start of a trend where workers are demonstrating labour power through unorganised, spontaneous action. Even in the absence of a unified call to withdraw from productive labour, migrant workers made the desperate but necessary short term choice to retreat home from far flung workplaces.
The attempts, including by the Centre and the Supreme Court, to paint the psyche of these workers as being motivated by mass hysteria triggered by fake news, is a red herring aimed at assuaging the guilt of our collective apathy. In reality, by directly taking action, migrant workers have demonstrated to the nation in graphic detail that they cannot (and do not) trust their employers, landlords, or the state machinery to tide them over such crises.
Rebuilding this trust will require agency being reinstated to workers and not mere doles designed to hoodwink them to return to the workplace.
Academics have pointed out two major effects of this unorganised collective action in the coming months. First, most eastern and northern states (erstwhile labour exporting states) will have labour surpluses as workers look for work locally. Second, most southern and western states (erstwhile labour importing states) will face shortages of labour power.
In fact this can already be seen to an extent as various manufacturing belts, now given the green light to resume production, are faced with a shortage of labour shortage. Unless resolved quickly, millions of livelihoods will be lost along with rising prices and a reduced capacity for the production of essential goods. In such a scenario, migrant labour needs more options for decent jobs, not less.
However, contrary to this pressing need to reinforce labour protections, various states — Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh pioneering the trend — have chosen this moment to add insult to injury by proposing a suspension of several statutory labour protections in the guise of promoting industry and creating jobs.
Keeping aside the fact that flimsy labour protection hurts the economy and of course, the very notion of inclusive development in the long run, this is a double whammy for the worker. First, to internalise that the law is always dispensable at the expense of the worker, whether statutory law or the multiple government orders/advisories on payment of wages and laying-off workers during lockdown which were flouted with impunity by their employers.
Second, to acknowledge that the already thin veneer of protective rights offered by the State is being ripped away, leaving them completely at the mercy of these same violators.
The most troubling concern here may be that such measures have triggered a race to the bottom, with several states now competing in what may turn out to be a reverse auction of their workers’ rights. These suspensions are already being questioned on constitutional grounds, and one can only hope that when the time comes, our courts will reprise their role as the last bulwark of the rights and dignity of the masses.
Interestingly, several of the states which have taken these measures are the ones which are likely to have labour surpluses in the coming days. However, instead of incentivising the returning migrant workers to stay on in the long term by creating opportunities for decent jobs, they have chosen to capitalise on their plight, by offering up these workers as discounted meat for the predatory capitalist class.
This would inevitably force workers to choose between returning to those employers who forsook them during a crisis or stay on with a state which is more than happy to subordinate their interests in the hope of a short term spike in their GDP. One would assume that workers would at least be allowed to make this choice for themselves, terrible as it is, but as discussed below, sinister developments in the last few days may spell a different story.
On Sunday, the skill mapping of the first set of returned migrant workers (16 lakh) in Uttar Pradesh was completed, ostensibly as a precursor to placing them in appropriate new jobs. On the same day, voicing outrage at how UP’s migrant workers have been treated in other states, the state BJP government declared the setting up of a Migration Commission which will apparently strive to protect the interests of migrant workers looking to leave the state.
Most significantly, Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath also stated that states receiving UP’s labour force in the future would have to take the commission’s permission after demonstrating their ability to guarantee income and social security for the workers. All of this begs the question: Why is a state that has demonstrably abandoned all remaining affection for workers by enacting a suspension of labour law suddenly concerned with the treatment of its workers in other parts of the country?
One can only surmise that the purpose is to be able to restrict migration, to deny workers the opportunity of escaping an environment where their labour rights have been suspended. After all, what good is a suspension of labour rights if workers can simply leave in search of places where their rights, to whatever extent, are still available to them?
It is certain that the Migration Commission, if it is set up in the next few days as promised, would be open to all manner of assault on its constitutionality. It not only directly violates the freedom of individuals to move within any part of the country for whatever reason they wish, it is also a blatant restraint of trade for these workers, who have the right to do business wherever they want and with whomever they want.
While officials from the UP government have now hastily clarified that states will not be required to ‘seek permission’, there is no doubt that the function of the commission if set up would be to restrict migration. This is apparent from the remarks made by the chief minister with respect to the purpose of the commission as well as the strangely hypocritical reasoning provided on the issue of workers’ rights.
Even if such restrictions on migration may not be enforceable against other states, it could certainly become a dangerous tool in deterring workers on various grounds from migrating out of the state, thus trapping them as fodder for Uttar Pradesh’s new ‘minimalist’ labour regime.
Although the commission may position itself to be in the interest of labour, its role is superficial at best as any benefit that it may provide would not be in the nature of rights and would have no permanency.
Having now done away with the concept of permanent labour rights in the state, the commission, by centralising labour-capital bargains at the state level, opens the door for the UP government to step into the role of a labour contractor, even with respect to workers within its own borders.
This forebodes a situation where workers have no real say on the standards and conditions of their workplace, with such decisions being made either unilaterally by their employer or in private negotiations between their employer and the State.
If the Uttar Pradesh government is truly interested in protecting worker rights, it might be better served by concerning itself with reinstating a permanent set of labour rights within its own borders. In the short term, existing methods of mass employment such as the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) would be a better option and in the long term, improving worker welfare rather than abandoning it would be a far more effective, and not to mention humane, way of maximizing their labour surplus.
As of now, however, the future looks bleak for the workers of Uttar Pradesh, who for all intents and purposes, may be cunningly trapped inside a state which is ready to sell them out.
Sreyan Chatterjee is a researcher with Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy and Sanchith Shivakumar an advocate practicing in Chennai
from Firstpost India Latest News https://ift.tt/2ZRhQf0
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