Their Lives are Scattered but They Build for Others

Their Lives are Scattered but They Build for Others
Yogesh Snehi

The Tribune, Sunday, June 22, 2003,

Chandigarh, India

CONSTRUCTION projects involve largest women contract labour in India. Some of these are migrants who travel hundreds of kilometres for work. These women labourers move with families. They are poor and a part of the unorganised sector, since their labour is contractual or casual. A 1971 law (Abolition of Contract Labour Act) sought to eliminate the practice of contract labour and provide some benefits such as maternity leave to women labourers in this field. It, however, is often violated. In some states construction workers are covered by the minimum wages law; in other states they are not.

Phulesari, Ramvati, Kusibai, Rajeshwari, Parmila and Godavari work as contract labourers for the construction of a hostel at the Panjab University. All of them belong to Bilaspur district in Chattisgarh and are between 20 and 40 years. All of them have an agricultural background and own a house in their village. Just 50 per cent of these families own a marginal land (one acre). Though most of them wish to go home once in a year, Parmila and Rajeshwari have not been to home for the last ten years and Godavari for the last six years.

Lives of these women are interesting. Before settling down for work none of them were known to each other. The day the contractor employed them, their first job was to construct a house for themselves. They constructed these houses in a day with mud and bricks and tin/cement sheets for roofs. A mini-colony of ten-twelve families emerges in a day. Their single-room structures are vulnerable to weather and sometimes even to heavy vehicles which accidentally ram into them. The settlement has a common corridor and the doors open in it. There are no facilities for bathroom and toilets and these women have to manage it in some corner or go behind dense bushes nearby. Their living conditions make them vulnerable to 'anything'.

These women work for eight hours a day and get a meagre sum of Rs 50 per day. They are hardly aware of labour laws, according to which minimum wages have been fixed at Rs 80 per day. With this little sum, these women hardly manage savings and live at bare subsistence level. Although women admitted that men sometimes do the household work (when she gets ill), most of the time it is she who bears the triple burden of the construction work, household chores and looking after the children. If there is an elder daughter, she takes care of the siblings. Otherwise, there are no creches or any other places where children can be looked after or supervised.

Health standards of these women and children are far from satisfactory. Their diet intake includes very ordinary pulses, rice and wheat which do not necessarily fulfil the daily nutrient requirement. Although, there was awareness about the Pulse Polio immunisation programme, no child (except one) was immunised with DPT.

The children are also vulnerable to accidents from construction activity and transportation vehicles. Moreover, these women are not provided with any maternity or sickness benefits because they are essentially seasonal labourers. Very often, they are even denied accident benefits as well. All the women are illiterate. Some males have, however, passed matriculation examination.

Keeping in mind the large number of kids (one would question the hoopla over the family welfare programmes) they have (Phulaseri has four children, Ramvati and Kusibai two each, Parmila six and Rajeshwari one) and their meagre income which is hardly enough for living, they don't foresee education for them. Also, the migratory pattern of their living leaves no space for such activities. These women have earlier worked in Ropar, Kharar, Patiala, Rajpura, Ramdarbar, Dadumajra, Panchkula, Barnala and Kurukshetra.

Women have their own means of recreation. All of them are Hindus and share every Hindu festivity. Men, in their free time, sit around, chat and smoke a bidi. For these migrant labourers, the marriage of a daughter brings joy, it also brings financial trouble and, often, indebtedness. There are hardly any ways in which these women can imagine ways to improve their lives. They believe that they are used to this way of life, perhaps because they see no way to change it for the better.

In the absence of literacy and essentially militant unions and also the wherewithal to fight in courts, these women continue to earn below the stipulated minimum wages. They are handicapped in this regard because of both domestic obligations and the economic imperative of earning wages. They believe that this is, perhaps, their destiny.