The puzzle that I wish to bring to your notice is that the global experience has been that as countries develop, the pace of rural to urban migration accelerates, and deceleration happens only when the level of urbanisation is very high – usually well over 50 per cent. In India, on the other hand, migration started to decelerate at a time when the urban population was below 25 per cent of total population, and continued to decelerate over three Censuses – 1991, 2001 and 2011. This principal puzzle contains within it some other subsidiary puzzles, which I shall come to shortly.
The extent of migration between developing countries, called South-South migration, and the issues surrounding it remain poorly understood. Part 1 of this series examined data on South-South migration and South-South remittances. In Part 2, the focus is on why migrants from one developing country go to another developing country, and what kinds of socioeconomic effects such movements have on both migrants and nations.
Experiments like the one in Bangalore run against deep currents in India, whose guiding voice, Mohandas K. Gandhi, envisioned a socialist future built on the small-scale economy of the village. They also collide spectacularly with an old way of life, in which girls are kept in seclusion until they can be transferred to another family through arranged marriage. Bangalore is the first city the 37 trainee tailors have seen. They are dazzled by the different kinds of light. Picking their way through the alleys around the factory, a column of virgins from the countryside, they stare up at an apartment building that towers over the neighborhood and wish their mothers could see it.
A short documentary about migration among people in Mumbai
A heart-wrenching documentary film titled-- Forgotten On the Pyjama Trail-tells us why a simplistic understanding of child labour results in negative consequences for children. The film was made by Bengaluru-based NGO the Concerned for Working Children (CWC). The film was released on June 12 recently. "The film is inspired by true events that took place in Morocco. Forgotten On The Pyjama Trail is a story narrated by a little girl, Fathima, who works in a Moroccan garment factory in order to support her family. She is one of the children who experiences a 'ban' as international communities gear up to rescue her and her ilk," said a press release issued by the CWC.
There is no written history of different tribes of India. The tribal society is governed by the traditions and customs followed by the tribals for centuries. These traditions and customs have a strong connection with the nature. The Indian constituent assembly during its sessions also recognized that tribal society cannot be governed by the common law of the country. In the year 1996, the Indian parliament passed a law called Panchayats (Extension to Scheduled Areas) Act, in which the core of this law is to recognize and promote tribal institutions to implement Panchayati raj in tribal areas. But the ground situation is totally different, various state government ignored PESA and provisions of the 5th schedule of the Indian constitution. In this episode of Main Bhi Bharat we talk about the Padaha system of Oraon tribe and PESA.
At the foot of a hill in the central Mumbai suburb of Ghatkopar, 350 families from drought-hit Nanded and Latur districts stay in rudimentary homes. Migration from these arid districts–which lie to the southeast of Mumbai–is an annual affair, but this year, thanks to a drought that, in some parts, is one of the worst in a century, there are five times as many migrants as normal. Despite the rough conditions, migrants earn enough money in Mumbai’s construction industry to climb above the poverty line.
It is noon and Dilbar Ali is racing against time. The first truckloads of mangoes from the orchards of Krishnagiri-Dharmapuri region in Tamil Nadu have arrived. The fruit needs to be unloaded, sorted, graded and packed – all before dawn.
Without a doubt, rural-to-urban migration is a symptom of the larger problem of scarce opportunity. Though South Asian countries largely qualify as “rural” and are dominated by agrarian economies, the modern age has made way for limited growth and development in villages. This fact is no more apparent than when one surveys the cityscapes of South Asia and sees the proliferation of expansive slum communities, home to hundreds of thousands of the urban poor – the once-were-villagers.
Review of Labour, Employment and Economic Growth in India. Edited by K. V. Ramaswamy, Cambridge University Press, 2015.The salient feature of the book is Ramaswamy’s comprehensive introduction and review of issues. Without this review, the book would have been difficult reading. The book is divided into two parts. The first part deals with structural transformation and growth of employment. The second deals with legal issues related to the definition of the industrial worker through the lens of economic theory; how judiciary (the Supreme Court) has interpreted labour laws and workers’ protection in the years of economic liberalisation. I
With the advent of the 21st century, there has been a rise in the influx of migrants in various countries. Numerous people have been shifting from their native land to other nations for a better settlement. Everyone deserves to live a peaceful and prosperous life where equality prevails, and people enjoy political, economic and social freedom. However, due to political instability in the world, these diaspora dreams seem to be failing steadily as increasing number of families risk their lives to flee from the suffering that their dream nation piles onto them.
Climate refugees are basically poor, helpless people forced to migrate from their homes because of climatic changes. Even as migration stands to be the most time-tested coping mechanism of the people, the migrants—more precisely, the “displaced”—are yet to be officially recognized. The issue needs urgent attention as climate induced displacement is increasing by the day. Ranjan K Panda assesses “climate change and displacement” from a larger perspective and takes a look at the current and upcoming impacts of the growing refugee crisis in a regional context.
In September 2015, the state government of Uttar Pradesh advertised 368 jobs of peons, for which the minimum qualifications specified were a secondary school education and the ability to ride a bicycle. It received 2.3 million applications, among which there were 250 PhDs, 25,000 postgraduates and 150,000 graduates. Such instances abound. The past 12 months have witnessed agitations for reservations, spread over time and across space, by Gujjars in Rajasthan, Patels in Gujarat and Jats in Haryana, seeking quotas in educational institutions and government employment. Such agitations recur. What these apparently unconnected occurrences have in common is a desperate search for scarce employment opportunities. The scale and nature of this problem cries out for attention. In 2011-12, the total labour force in India was 472 million. This was about 55% of the total population above the age of 15 years. It was lower than elsewhere in the world because so many women do not seek work. The unemployment rate, as a proportion of the labour force, surprisingly, was a mere 2.7%. This is most deceptive and the explanation is simple. In a country such as India, poor people just cannot afford to be unemployed and find whatever work they can, simply to subsist. A significant proportion of their work, however, is neither sufficiently recognized nor adequately rewarded. There are some who work hard for a living. There are many who work very hard but do not earn enough for a living. There are others who work but are paid little for their labour. Indeed, the number of overworked and underemployed people, who cannot even eke out a livelihood, is very large. Much of employment in India is still in the unorganized sector, even though its share in total employment decreased from 89% in 1999-2000 to 83% in 2011-12, while the share of the organized sector increased from 11% to 17%. However, during this period, the proportion of informal workers in the organized sector rose from 41% to 58% of the total. Thus, more than half the workers in the organized sector have no security of employment or social protection. The unemployment rate is highest among the educated. In 2011-12, it was 5.6% for those with a higher secondary school education and 8.8% for those with any tertiary education, as compared with 2.7% for the total labour force. The problem is more acute among young people seeking jobs as new entrants. In 2011-12, the unemployment rate for educated youth (secondary education and above), in the age group 15-29 years, was 14%, which was somewhat lower for men at 12%, but much higher for women at 23%. The employment problem is more visible in the magnitude of unemployment and the quality of employment. The number of the unemployed in 2011-12, the backlog, was 12 million. The increase in the labour force is about 8 million per annum. Obviously, a reduction in, let alone an eradication of unemployment, is an enormous task. But that is not all. The quality of employment is a cause for concern. For a large proportion of the workforce, there is little, if any, security of employment or social protection. Working conditions are poor even in the formal sector and often worse in the informal economy. Estimates for 2011-12 suggest that 25% of all workers in India lived below the poverty line adopted by the government, and almost 60% of all workers lived below the World Bank poverty line of Purchasing-Power-Parity US$2 per day (India Labour and Employment Report 2014). It would seem that the employment problem has been aggravated, rather than resolved, by development outcomes in India over the past three decades. Rapid economic growth has not led to commensurate employment creation. Gross domestic product growth was 6.2% per annum over the period 1980/81-2011/12, although it was even higher at 8.4% per annum during 2003/04-2011/12. Figure 1 shows that total employment growth was far slower at 2% per annum during 1983-1993/94, 1.8% per annum during 1993/94-2004/05, and just 0.45% per annum during 2004/05-2011/12. In fact, employment growth was sustained by the services sector, because it was low or negative in agriculture and modest in manufacturing. However, during 2004/05-2011/12, when output growth was most rapid, employment growth dropped sharply across sectors. The mismatch between output growth and employment growth emerges clearly from Figure 2 on employment elasticity (proportionate increase in employment divided by proportionate increase in output), total and sectoral, for the three periods. It has a value of one when employment growth is exactly the same as output growth and a value of zero when employment growth is zero; but it can be greater than one if employment growth is higher, or negative if employment growth is negative. The figure shows that employment elasticity declined progressively over time across sectors. During 2004/05-2011/12, when output growth was most rapid, it was negative in agriculture, negligible in manufacturing and services, and close to zero for the economy. This reality is best described as “jobless growth”. The impressive pace of economic growth in India has been driven by increases in labour productivity rather than increases in employment. Such jobless growth is neither an accident nor a coincidence. It is the outcome of policies. Macroeconomic policies sought to focus on stability, defined in terms of prices rather than output or employment, so that managing inflation and balancing budgets became the essential objectives. Economic policies that stressed more openness in trade and investment sought to attain price competitiveness by reducing unit costs of production for selling abroad and attracting foreign investment at home. This called for wage restraint and labour market flexibility. Structural reforms attempted to increase average labour productivity, through the use of labour-saving technologies or through a restructuring of firms that increases efficiency. Obviously, economic policies that dampen or stifle employment creation require correctives. But the promotion of employment as an objective also needs proactive policies. For one, it is necessary to match the supply of labour with the demand for labour in a market economy. For another, it is necessary to make the unemployed employable. The pursuit of these objectives is not rocket science. Skill development is an imperative. Its importance is widely recognized. Yet, we have miles to go in this domain. School education for the unlettered, to the secondary level, would make them both trainable and employable, particularly in the manufacturing sector. Getting away from the diploma-disease, which has spread in the search for scarce employment, is absolutely essential, through vocational education or technical training, to make the unemployed, especially educated youth, employable. Modest increases in agricultural output are associated with negligible increases in employment. The informal or unorganized services sector is an employer of the last resort, but levels of income are low and quality of jobs is poor. Therefore, the manufacturing sector is the only feasible path to employment creation. It has to be the focus of employment policies. And this would be in conformity with our national comparative advantage embodied in cheap labour. India’s most abundant resource, labour, is underutilized. Employment creation can both mobilize and create resources. It constitutes resource mobilization insofar as it uses our most underutilized resource, people. The absorption of surplus labour in employment, then, is a source of economic growth. It also constitutes resource creation insofar as it increases labour productivity, from very low levels, thus introducing another source of economic growth. For workers so engaged, their wages are not only costs for employers but also incomes for markets. The same people who constitute resources on the supply side provide markets on the demand side. From this perspective, there are no trade-offs between output growth and job creation: growth can create jobs, and jobs can drive growth, reinforcing each other. Thus, employment matters as a driver of economic growth. And if economic growth is to be transformed into meaningful development, which improves the well-being of people, employment creation is essential insofar as it provides income opportunities. In fact, livelihoods are the only sustainable means of reducing and, ultimately, eradicating poverty. Inclusive growth is mere rhetoric. Any process of economic growth is pro-poor if and only if it creates employment. The time has come to think of employment as a solution rather than as a problem. This should also lead to some rethinking about the meaning of efficiency beyond the usual conceptions of economic efficiency or technical efficiency. Indeed, employment expansion is at least as important as productivity increase. In a sense, both represent the utilization of labour as a resource. Why, then, does thinking about efficiency focus on one and neglect the other? Our popular understanding of efficiency must extend beyond output per worker and productivity gains to include expansion of employment and labour-use. Jobs were centre stage in Narendra Modi’s election campaign in 2014. Later this month, he completes two years in office as Prime Minister. Yet, in government, promoting employment creation is neither on the agenda nor on the horizon. Such disconnect from the aspirations of people is unsustainable in a vibrant democracy. In the realm of politics, employment must once again become an integral part of the discourse and the process, as a primary objective rather than a residual outcome. The evidence cited in this essay, the latest available, is based on National Sample Survey data on employment and unemployment for 1993-94, 2004-05 and 2011-12.
Climate change has resulted in drastic seasonal fluctuations leading to erratic rainfalls and prolonged droughts in India. This has been posing an increasing threat to the agriculture and food security of the country, with increasing stress on rural livelihoods and resources such as land, soil, water and forests. To cope with this stress, farmers and land labourers in rural areas of India have started migrating seasonally, either temporarily or permananetly, to urban areas in search of livelihoods.The article titled 'Rainfall variability, food security and human mobility in the Janjgir-Champa district of Chhattisgarh state, India' published in the journal Climate and Development, presents the findings of a study that looks at the impact of rainfall and climate change on agriculture, livelihoods and migration among farmers from four villages of Janjgir Champa district of Chhattisgarh.
Migration is unavoidable. It makes eminent sense to facilitate and manage migration flows positively instead of trying to endlessly prevent them. At the same time, pragmatic considerations need to be expressed without false complexes. No Government in the world can practice an open door policy in the current economic and political circumstances—except in the context of relatively homogeneous economic zones and clusters of States, like the European Union. But that doesn’t mean replacing open doors by barbed wire and watchtowers.
She lights a match to start the makeshift stove, adds a bowl of rice to the boiling water and a pinch of salt before she covers the vessel, all the while keeping an eye on an impatient toddler. Sitting in a temporary shelter in Thane set up for families of drought refugees – those who fled the drought in Marathwada to look for work in the city – Lalita’s everyday chores would not have been so out of the ordinary, but she is only 11 years old. Even before she could take her class 5 exams, her parents packed her off to the city, with her uncle and aunt, so she could to take care of their children while they went out looking for work. Lalita’s village in the Mukhed taluka in Marathwada’s Nanded is in the throes of a punishing drought. “My uncle and aunt are out at work. I take care of their children and make food for them in the day,” she says, as she deftly removes the metal vessel from the stove with a pair of wooden sticks. “There’s no water in our area. We used to walk a lot in the day just to look for it. Often, people would shoo us away saying they had none to spare. It was so hard.” Her cousin Ashok, 13, adds, “I would walk to the well, at the other end of the field, to get one pot of water. Every day I had to make at least five such trips.” Ashok and Lalita moved to this shelter just three days ago with approximately 400 others — all of them from farming families who fled Marathwada and reached Mumbai and Thane in search of work. Earlier, they lived in a filthy open ground at Ghatkopar in suburban Mumbai. “That place was so dirty, we hardly got any water to drink, bathing was a luxury,” she says. Ashok adds, “We ate where we slept and there would be pigs and dogs who would roam around in the camp, stealing any food that they managed to find.” Lalita misses her school and hopes she can return home soon. Ashok knows that is only possible if it rains.
The government’s decision to allow NRIs to vote could set the stage for expatriates to emerge as a decisive force in the country’s electoral politics. This decision also, historically, removes an unreasonable restriction posed by Section 20(A) of the Representation of the People (Amendment) Act of 2010, requiring overseas electors to be physically present in their constituencies to cast their votes. There are 10 million Indian citizens staying abroad, and with 543 Lok Sabha constituencies, this means an astonishing average of 18,000 votes per constituency may get polled from abroad. These additional votes, if polled, will obviously play a crucial role in state and general elections.
The authors of the open letter claim that children can benefit from work even if they are below the minimum age set for “light work.” Although there may be benefits in some instances, many studies have found that work by young children or long hours of work are harmful to both their schooling and future earning potential. For example, research across 11 countries in Latin America found that in all 11 countries, working children performed significantly lower in school than their non-working counterparts, scoring up to 17 percentage points lower on tests of language and math.
It did not take long after the terror attack in Brussels on March 22 morning for the predictable to happen. First was the immediate association made in public discourse between the attacks and the migrant crisis, the argument being that the Islamic State (IS), which claimed responsibility for the attacks, was sending in armed jihadists with the vast migrant flow coming into Europe.
This research validated the findings of the earlier research. Based on in-depth interviews of internal migrants, employers, sub-contractors and other stakeholders it concluded that informality in the recruitment process is pervasive and there is an urgent need to formalise the recruitment process. Only then irregularities that exist in the sector can be effectively addressed. Young male workers dominate the construction sector work force, most coming from landless households. In general, they migrate more than once a year, on average spending more than six months in total at destination. Their principal objective is to secure cash flow for their households. In most cases, in addition to construction work, they are involved in other income-generating activities
The children of rural Bihar are connected with the rest of India unlike any other time in history. In the district town of Sitamarhi, a place that sits some twenty miles from the Nepal border, the skyline is littered with cell phone towers. On the streets below, walkways are filled with mud, trash, and cow dung. Passersby trough through the mess to buy flee-bitten mitahi (sweets) and the sweltering fruits at nearby stands. For the children of Sitamarhi, they live in this contrast—the severe juxtaposition of “modernity”3 and urbanization with the dilapidated infrastructure surrounding them. The villages within five miles of the district town scarcely receive electricity, prompting me to wonder how anyone with a cell phone was able to recharge their phones.4 The villages I spent the majority of my time in, Amritpur and Baksampur, gave insight into the livelihoods of children in rural Bihar. In Amritpur, every corner and passageway of the village had more and more children.
Raju Rai was 17 when his mother was diagnosed with cancer, forcing him to leave his village in Jharkhand’s overwhelmingly rural Jamtara district in search of a livelihood. He’s 22 now and earns Rs 10,000 a month, painting buildings in Bangalore, about 1,980 km to the southwest.
In one of the largest human migrations in history, 262 million workers fled rural China for better paying jobs in the city over the past two decades. Watch as we take you into the lives of two of the millions of children whose parents migrated to the city and left their kids with friends and relatives on the farm.
Over 700 million people around the world migrate within their own countries. In India over 30 Percent of the population migrate to urban areas in search of a higher standard of living, better healthcare and education for their children. In Calcutta although many migrants live in poverty they are still better off than in their home communities.
This documentary is about the ugly reality of urban migration, and the disillusionment of hopes and dreams that these people face once entwined within the vicious circle of labour and poverty. The film was shot by Wali Ahmad and Mamun in the envoirns of Aligarh as part of their curriculum at Aligarh Muslim University (AMU).
Bangladesh is ranked as one of the most climate vulnerable countries in the world. It is at extreme risk of floods, tropical cyclones, sea level rise and drought, all of which could drive millions of people to migrate. Although climate-related migration in Bangladesh is significant, surprisingly, there have been to date very few empirical studies carried out specifically on how climate change influences migration and its wider implications. This has made it hard to identify adaptation measures to deal with this major issue. As a result current policies and plans in Bangladesh do not sufficiently address the growing problem of climate-induced displacement, especially large-scale migration.
In the developing countries, internal migration is a survival strategy for many labourers in search of a better livelihood and opportunities. It is inevitable that many of them will leave their home towns and villages in the coming years, and that the future will see an increase in the number of migrant labourers in developing countries such as India. Migrant workers face unique health problems and it is important for the health system to prepare itself to face these. In this context, the system will need to address certain key ethical issues. There is plenty of published literature on international migration and its ethical aspects. However, there is a scarcity of information on ethical issues relating to internal migration. This article examines these issues in the context of India. It addresses the issues of equity, non-discrimination, the provision of culturally competent care to migrants, allocation of scarce resources, and achieving a balance between benefits and risks for migrants. Our analysis should be considered while planning any healthcare intervention for internal migrant workers in all developing countries.
An estimated six million people in China suffer from pneumoconiosis, also known as black lung disease. Almost all of those suffering from the disease are migrant workers who live at the bottom of society. China is developing quickly and the country is fast becoming an economic power in the East. In the process, migrant workers have become China's indispensable labour force but, because of the lack of information, they have no idea how to protect themselves. This film explores the lives of those suffering from pneumoconiosis in China, and documents the efforts of a journalist to raise awareness about their suffering.
Trafficking in persons (TIP) is a serious problem in Nepal, characterized by cross-border, international and internal trafficking of women, men, and children for various purposes including commercial sexual exploitation, labor, and body organs. The Government of Nepal (GON) took an important step toward addressing this abuse of human rights by passing the Human Trafficking and Transportation Control Act of 2007 (TIP Act), which establishes a comprehensive legal framework to combat TIP. In April 2012, the government publicly launched new policies to combat trafficking: the National Plan of Action against trafficking, the National Minimum Standards (NMS) on victim care and attention, and the Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) for rehabilitation centers. USAID's five-year program, Combating Trafficking in Persons (CTIP), played a significant role in supporting the Government of Nepal in formulating these policies (NMS and SOP). The program continues to strengthen the capacity of the government and civil society organizations to address the issue of trafficking in a more holistic and productive manner. This short (20 mins) documentary demonstrates the accomplishment of the government and civil society and the ongoing efforts to combat trafficking in Nepal. By providing a glimpse of victims' lives, it showcases the successes and challenges to protect victims, prosecute traffickers, and prevent trafficking.
India is perhaps the only country that has provided legal protection to street vendors for conducting their business. According to the act, between 2 and 2.5 % of the urban population is engaged in street vending. In metros like Mumbai and Delhi, street vendors number 250,000 in each. This paper presents a critical analysis of the Street Vendors (Protection of Livelihood and Regulation of Street Vending) Act, 2014.
A documentary film exploring aspects of human trafficking and human smuggling in Pakistan.
'Arrival' is a short film depicting the arrival of goods and human labour into a city from rural areas. This film explores the product-commodity-exchange value relationship. Representing in itself a variety of exchange value, money as capital destroys the natural specificity of people and things. In the process, the labourer is reduced to a mere commodity.
A limited-liability migration credit scheme, which has built-in insurance against the possibility of low labour demand at the destination, would encourage people to outmigrate during the famine.
When India and skills are mentioned together, it is anticipated that it would lead to a bright new world of high skills for engaging with the knowledge economy. India is very seldom coupled with Africa or even with other developing countries on its own sub-continent when discussing its growth and high technology status; but by contrast in the last few years the number of articles and papers and research projects which have coupled India and China as ‘Asian Drivers’ (of development and transformation) is significant.
Given the nature of industries experiencing rapid growth in recent years, employment in the organized sector would not grow in any significant manner.The multinationals that have come so far have high capital intensity and low come so far, have high capital intensity and low potential for employment generation. Much of the employment growth in the economy is taking place through the process of subcontracting, use of casual or self‐employed workers. One fall‐out of the continuous neglect of this vital and growing sector of the economy is a complete lack of standards and accountability. The informal services sector is low‐cost and equally low-value.
The development of skills for 500 million Indians in less than 10 years is not only a matter of national urgency; it is astounding in its scale. While much progress has been made with considerable help from the private sector, it clearly continued to be a supply driven system. The need to focus complete attention to the industry is now essential. This will make the system demand driven and close the skills mismatch.This report discusses and analyses the reality of the demographic dividend and urges the industry to be the focal point of all skill development activity from working with the Government to engaging through CSR and through creating sustainable and scalable models to achieve the mammoth target of 500 Mn skilled people by 2022.
This is the final report of the National Commission for Enterprises in the Unorganized Sector to review the status of unorganized/informal sector in India including the nature of enterprises, their size, spread and scope, and magnitude of employment.The Commission has examined the issue of labour market reforms and conditions of work and social security in this sector. Despite the prevailing rates of employment/unemployment, the share of informal workers is however likely to continue to be around 92-93 per cent in 2017.
India is experiencing a demographic dividend as more than 50 per cent of the population is in the working age group which can make India the skill capital of the world. However, skilling this youth bulge constitutes a challenge particularly when there is preponderance of informal/unorganised sector. As per the 66th round of NSS survey (2009-10), approximately 92.8 per cent of the total work force in 2009-10 constituted of informal workers. To understand the implications for skill development in the sector, it is necessary to reflect on the sectoral composition of workers both in terms of organised/ unorganised.
The vast majority of Indians earn their living through work in the unorganised segment of the economy. However, they produce, on the average, only one eighth of the income generated per worker in the organised segment. By the late 1990s, the more than 90 per cent of Indian workers employed in the unorganised segment produced roughly 60 per cent of national income (NDP), while the remaining 8 to 10 per cent generated nearly 40 per cent of NDP. In agriculture and allied activities, practically all the income is generated in the unorganised segment. Further, NDP per worker in agriculture as a whole is roughly one quarter of what it is in the non-farm sectors. Thus, agriculture, despite its large size in terms of employment, accounts for less than half of all income generated by unorganised segment activities. The report provides compelling state level evidence of the strong links between agricultural performance, on the one hand, and the economic condition of workers in the unorganised non-farm sector on the other.
This paper assesses the impact of labour laws on female work participation rates (WPR) in India. It is argued that women workers in the informal/unorganized sector have minimal legal rights and social protections.In the formal sector, women workers who are employed as contract labour are not covered by regulatory legislations and cannot avail of all the protections of the law in the same manner as regularized employees. Women are discriminated at two levels, firstly, at the entry level, and secondly on employment, women workers are treated differently from male workers within the organized and unorganized sectors. This paper suggests that only through effective processes of implementation of existing laws and through the formulation of new laws and policies can equality and nondiscrimination of women workers, better conditions of work and social security be guaranteed and availed of.
The President of India signed a revised set of labour laws from Rajasthan into state law. The Rajasthan government has revised the Factories Act, the Industrial Disputes Act and the Contract Labour Act. The President used Article 254(2) of the Indian Constitution which has been rarely evoked—an article that permits state law that conflicts with federal law to override the latter if it obtains the assent of Head of the State. This reflects the regionalized labour policy reform adopted by the Centre to circumvent any national-level unionized protests, thereby averting initiation of any social dialogue and bargaining process.
The current regime seeks to reform labour laws with the understanding that these reforms will improve industrial growth and expand the possibilities of enterprise. However, there is already ample evidence from within India that this obsession with reforming labour law, particularly in the way the government has done it till now, will not take us any closer in creating more jobs or a healthy industrial sector. These reforms will not help fi rms adapt to ever-changing market conditions, nor will they ensure greater security of employment.
The 100th session of the International Labour Conference (2011) adopted a two dimensional strategy on the extension of social protection which was recognized and adopted in 2012 as the ‘Social Protection Floor Recommendation’. The vast, informal and heterogeneous characteristics of the workforce in India, with growing in-formalization of employment, on the one hand denotes low levels of social protection and high vulnerability, and on the other, constrains the expansion of social protection, mainly due to the dearth of appropriate institutional arrangements and policy. It is essential to comprehend why Minimum Social Security is absolutely essential for workers both in the formal and informal sectors.
In India, only about 7 percent of all the workers are entitled for most of the benefits of the social security laws and the rest belonging to the unorganized category are not provided adequate coverage and if covered, the laws and schemes are often not implemented. Unorganized workers are compelled to spend out of their meager incomes for all contingencies and remain helpless in their old age. An attempt has been made to dwell upon the concepts of social security and unorganized worker. In this regard, several legislation and judicial decisions, along with schemes at the Central and State Levels have been analysed.
This report deals with the issues of unorganized sector workers primarily engaged in non-agricultural sector, focusing separately on wage workers, self-employed workers and women workers. It also profiles agricultural workers with special emphasis on small and marginal farmers and labourers. It proposes a package of measures for farm and non-farm sectors in the form of Action programs. The picture that it has presented is based on the latest available set of data from the Sixty-first Round of the National Sample Survey in 2004-05. This has been supplemented with data from other sources such as the Special Survey of Farmers carried out by the NSS in 2003. One of the major highlights of this Report is the existence and quantification of unorganized or informal workers, defined as those who do not have employment security, work security and social security.
In the post-reform period no opportunity has been missed out by the employers, the critics of labour regulation and the government in describing the labour laws in denouncing manner, viz. archaic, numerous, draconian, etc. No opportunity has been missed on calling out for reform of these existing laws and regulations. Nonetheless, the argument against rigidity of archaic laws begets questioning. The case in point is the Industrial Disputes Act (1947) which has been portrayed as bottleneck to growth in manufacturing.
This documentary captures the voices of the poor migrants in rural India by exploring the life of a certain migrant worker Muni in rural Bihar. By earning about 40 INR per day, she has to feed her three children. She hopes to be able to send them school one day. However, the seasonal nature of her work, she works as brick kiln labourer, ensures that she remains out of work for most part of year and thus without any income source.
Migration of workers is a human phenomenon which has historical roots and wider implications. In economic parlance, migration is perceived as when a person is engaged or likely to engage in a remunerative activity in a place of which he is not a native or national. Migration in India has been in existence historically, but, in the context of globalization and opening up of the world economy it has assumed special significance, for the country and the society.As a consequence of interspersing of historical and economic factors, there are serious income disparities, agrarian distress, inadequate employment generation, vast growth of informal economy and the resultant migration from rural to urban, urban to urban and backward to comparatively advanced regions in the most appalling conditions.
In this overview paper, basic questions related to voluntary internal migration are revisited with a view to adding some of the substantial new field evidence that has emerged in recent years and setting out the policy implications of these findings. paper addresses internal voluntary migration for paid work. It includes both permanent and temporary migration as well as rural-rural, rural-urban, urban-rural and urban-urban migration. The paper has paid special attention to a number of village studies that have used multidisciplinary approaches as these are better at capturing temporary movements that seem to characterize much of the migration of today.
One of the much talked about features of the latest available large-scale survey data for 1999-2000 to 2004-05 on employment has been the overall increase in women's workforce participation rates in both rural and urban areas. The inadequacy of official statistics in capturing the full range of women's work has always been an issue and yet their participation in the labour market has a distinct regional pattern-relatively lower workforce participation in northern states vis-à-vis states in the south and the north-east-that cannot be explained within the framework of a strict demand-supply paradigm.
The documentary has been shot in worksites of four cities of India- Bhopal, Bhubaneswar, Chennai & Hyderabad. The documentary depicts the plight of migrant children and lay forward solutions towards creating safe & healthy environment for children living in unhygienic, unsafe and hazardous worksites like brick kilns, construction sites and stone crusher units.
According to the World Bank’s World Development Report (WDR) 2000-2001, of the 6 billion people in the world, 2.8 billion - almost half - live on less than $2 a day, with 44 per cent of them living in South Asia. The majority of people in India (90 per cent) work in the informal sector. This sector produces over 62 per cent of the national income. Obviously, stimulating the growth potential of this sector will lead to a spurt in both growth and poverty reduction, since it is mainly the poor who work in this sector. There is an increasing awareness that the goal of development has to be social justice and not economic growth alone. To put it differently, economic growth is worthwhile only if it leads to social justice in the form of equitable distribution, poverty reduction and reasonable incomes; provides for basic securities such as health and education; and promotes political, cultural and economic freedom.
In spite of labour laws been widely studied decade and various recommendations to evolve labour laws in the context of globalization, the issues pertaining to welfare of labour and flexibility of the firms to grow in sync with market conditions for better industrial relations, persists even today. It was argued that labour policies in for the formal sector are pro-worker and this leads to rigidities, impacting performance of this sector. Recommendations were made in the past by highlighting the need for flexible labour laws. This paper, represents the Indian labour market condition a few years back before the onset of the global economic crisis. It looks at the initiatives and agenda undertaken then and places them in the context of literature.
That the city eventually triumphs over the village is no longer debated. Country after country has followed this trend. In most cases, the flux from the rural to urban has not been smooth and to achieve the illustrious goal of economic growth, human lives, mostly of migrants caught in transit, have suffered aplenty. India is no exception. The story of economic growth in India is essentially the story of labor migration and of migrants, who leave the increasingly poor villages with a decadent farm economy in search of better lives. They build resplendent city economies but fail to get a share of the riches; much worse, many struggle for a dignified human existence.
Domestic workers play an important part in the economy and they allow others to go out and earn money. Yet they remain invisible, unprotected and their contribution is often not recognized.For various reasons, official statistics tend to undercount domestic workers. The case of India is particularly striking given the magnitude of the difference: estimates of the number of domestic workers in this country range between 2.5 and 90 million. Paid domestic work is increasing in many economies worldwide but it remains a virtually invisible form of employment in many countries. It is also generally seen as unskilled work, a natural extension of women’s work in their own homes.
According to the Andhra Pradesh Human Development Report (2012), 42 percent of the state’s arable land (2.15 million acres) has been degraded, with recurring drought one of the main causes. The worst-hit district is Anantapur, where as much as 70 percent of land is degraded. It also has the highest number of farm suicides of any Indian district - over 4,000 in the past decade alone. Repeated droughts and subsequent suicides of the male members force women into entering sex trade in Hyderabad. With hope to find means of survival, rural women have been migrating to the city for the past decade. But with no formal schooling and absence of any established network at the destination to provide jobs, prostitution is the only option left. As of today (2012), there are over 25,000 sex workers in the city, higher than in any other city of India.
The trafficking of children, defined as recruitment, transport, transfer, harboring or receipt of a person under the age of 18 for the purpose of exploitation (including prostitution or other forms of sexual exploitation, forced labour, servitude or the removal of organs) is widely recognized as presenting a threat of global proportions.The causes of trafficking are varied and complex but notably include poverty, economic gains from exploitation of children, gender discrimination and harmful cultural practices. Although obtaining data on the extent of trafficking in India is difficult, it is recognized that India works as a source, destination and transit country for trafficking of persons, including young girls. Child victims of trafficking in India are exploited in many ways - including as factory and agricultural workers, domestic servants and beggars.15 Girls in particular are vulnerable to trafficking for the purpose of forced marriage and commercial sexual exploitation.
This paper argues that the effacement of gender in macro-analyses of internal migration in India is based on the collective inability to delineate the contours of female labour migration from the official databases. While critiquing the single causality approach to migration which overwhelmingly privileges social over economic reasons in female migration, the chapter essays a gendered macro-view of labour migration in India, for which new methods of approaching the data of the most recent macro-survey on migration in India (2007–08) are applied. The argument posited here is that the migration pattern is enhancing gender inequalities in the labour market. While the domination of services and industry in male migrant employment has contributed to a degree of diversification in the structure of the male workforce away from agriculture, the same is not the case for the female workforce.
Globalization has offered new employment opportunities both for educated and illiterate women in India. This in turn has accentuated the rural-urban migration of females who have either moved independently or with their families. But it is not sure whether the increased employed opportunities can be sustained in the long run. In case the new employment opportunities are proved to be short-lived , what will happen to these female migrants is the crucial question. The existing migration models do not adequately explain the migration decision process in cases of female centered migration. The current developments not only warrant a new theory, but also gender sensitive approaches to the provision of urban infrastructure and employment policy.
A documentary on the universal life of every migrant in the city-their journey from rural hinterlands to the slums and the associated myriad issues. This video captures the life and livelihood of all the migrants that move into the city, with the hope of finding better means of living and employment options. In this process, an entire family becomes migrant, sharing the burden of hardships and aspirations of the migrant.
In Odisha’s poverty-stricken tribal areas, recent shifts in migration trends have revealed the increasing movement of young women towards urban centres in search of work. The ‘push’ factor is responsible for such migration, but as a recent workshop revealed, the prospects such work offers leave much to be desired. Living conditions are unhygienic, the salary poor and tribal women are vulnerable to exploitation by unscrupulous agents.
Extreme poverty, lack of education and employment, and poor implementation of the government’s minimum wage system in rural India make girls more vulnerable to being trafficked. The 2013 Global Slavery Index, published by the Australia-based Walk Free Foundation, an organization that works to end modern slavery, found that almost half of the 30 million “modern slaves” in the world are from India. In the western part of India’s capital city, New Delhi, more than 5,000 domestic worker placement agencies operate out of a nondescript neighborhood called Shakurpur Basti. For years, the agencies have flourished by indulging in the business of trafficking minor girls and selling them as domestic slaves in the cities.
It would seem that child trafficking is on the rise. In 2010, almost one in every three missing children was untraced. But in 2013 one in two missing kids was lost forever. India’s National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) reported 65,038 missing children in the country in 2012. But the official agencies are limited in their ability to estimate the extent of child trafficking, and their estimates fall far short of those by researchers and activists. India is now a destination, and a place of origin and transit for human trafficking. For two decades there has been a steady rise in the trafficking of children and women from the region due to increasing trans-border mobility. Yet the legal framework for tackling this borderless organised crime is very weak. Social workers also complain that law enforcement authorities often fail to deal with cases seriously.
In India, most studies on poverty have been centered on the rural poor and urban poverty has received little attention of the policy makers. With the rapid growth of big cities, slums, the breeding grounds of urban squalor and poverty, swell primarily due to increased migration of the poor from the villages in search of better employment opportunities and improved standard of living. The deprivation of urban poor is reflected in access to financial services-more than 40 per cent of adult Indian urban population has no access to a bank account.thereby depriving them of savings, credit, remittance and other financial service facilities from the formal financial system. Against this background, this paper tries to study the issues and options involving financial inclusion of the urban poor.
An increasing pace of urbanization and the absence of affordable housing has resulted in growth of slums in urban India. The Government of India (GOI) has been incorporating certain programmes to alleviate poverty , create employment opportunities and encourage planned urban development in its public policy , yet there has been a fast emergence of slums in the Indian cities due to a number of factors. To create ‘inclusive cities’ in future there is an urgent need for improving the local government capacity to meet these challenges and ensure that the allocated funds reach the target population. There is a dire necessity for ‘good governance’ at all levels of the government. The ideal situation can be reached if institutional framework for appointing a regulator for urban development can be worked out.
Slums currently house one-third of the world’s population, reports the United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-HABITAT). By 2030, 2 billion people will be living in slums unless substantial policy changes occur. Asia accounts for some 60% of the world’s urban slum dwellers. As of 2001, South central Asia had the largest slum population in the world, with 262 million slum dwellers or 58% of the region’s total urban population. Human Settlements 2003 by UN-HABITAT. The immigrant urban poor have largely moved from the countryside to the cities voluntarily, in order to exploit actual or perceived economic opportunities. Opportunities manifest in part due to the growing urban informal sector, which is most spectacularly visible in the many growing and large-scale informal and squatter settlements in urban centers. The rapidity and enormous volume of this rural-to-urban migration intensifies slum formation. City planning and management systems are unable to adequately cope with the massive population influx.
The United Nations projects that Asia's urbanization rate could rise to 56% in 2030, and further to 64% in 2050. East Asia leads the urbanization process, with its urban population rising from 32% to 50% from 1990 to 2010. South Asia lags behind, with its urban population only increasing from 28% to 33%. Urbanization in India rose from 26% to 30%. A common image of Asian urbanization is the growth of mega-cities, cities whose population exceeds 10 million. And 12 of the world’s 21 mega-cities are indeed in Asia (including 7 of the largest 10 cities). Cities like Tokyo, Delhi, Mumbai and Shanghai. In reality, however, most of the region’s urban population lives in secondary cities and small towns. As of 2009, 60% of the urban population in continental Asia lived in cities with a population of less than 1 million, while only 21% lived in cities of from 1 to 5 million.
For decades now, the proliferation of urban slums across South Asia has inspired dialogue and debate around granting property rights to slum-dwellers. It is a controversial issue. Migrants move to cities like Mumbai, Karachi, Dhaka and Kathmandu seeking better fortunes for themselves and their families, but the price of such a move is to settle unofficially at the periphery of formal city life. The cost of living in the city is too high for new city arrivals and the poor are forced to create makeshift homes. Because the urban poor are not recognized as legitimate city residents, their tenure is insecure, and they are at the whim of local authorities that can raze their homes and businesses with little notice or consideration for what effect such actions may have on the poor’s lives and livelihoods. No matter how long the poor have lived on the same grounds, they lack any rights to property.
India’s growth story has been essentially fuelled by internal migration, and the country will grow as internal migration increases. They both fuel and feed off each other. A lot of the benefits of growth, however, actually skip large sections of migrant workers. They may be contributing significantly to high-growth industry and services, but the returns for them continue to be low. The state has largely ignored migrant workers, mainly because it is perceived as a problem. In fact, a lot of the state’s programmes are driven by the agenda to keep people in villages. The National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, for example, is built around the need to help people find local employment. Little is said about the fact that the NREGS does not fully answer people’s need to migrate. NGOs have divided their work into rural, urban, farmers, artisans, women, children, and so on. Very few NGOs actually define migrant workers as a segment requiring attention. NGOs’ work with unorganised sector workers in the labour market is actually very limited. Large corporations and the urban industrial economy, enjoy the benefits of this neglect of migrant workers. In the scenario of deregulation and lax labour laws, they reap the dubious and short-term benefits of a casual and informal workforce.
Integration is the process by which immigrants become accepted into society, both as individuals and as groups. This definition of integration is deliberately left open, because the particular requirements for acceptance by a receiving society vary greatly from country to country. The openness of this definition also reflects the fact that the responsibility for integration rests not with one particular group, but rather with many actors—immigrants themselves, the host government, institutions, and communities, to name a few. There are two parties involved in integration processes: the immigrants, with their characteristics, efforts and adaptation, and the receiving society, with its interactions with these newcomers and their institutions. It is the interaction between the two that determines the direction and the ultimate outcome of the integration process.
By focusing on the political roles of local governments in the promotion of social and spatial inclusion of migrants in cities, this booklet aims to raise awareness and empower municipal decision-makers to foster migrants’ human rights at the local level, to underline the benefits of migration for cities and to facilitate the inclusion of migrants within host communities. Migrants’ economic benefits for host cities are multiple: Low skilled migrants fill positions that local populations are no longer able to fill, high skilled migrants off er a wealth of knowledge and a variety of skill sets for the diversification of entrepreneurship; the image of the city is improved by cosmopolitanism; diasporas of various migrant groups encourage new linkages with other cities and industries etc. Local authorities have to guarantee equal access to employment and ensure the right to decent work, decent income and social protection. Special attention has to be paid to the rights of workers in informal economy,such as domestic workers and street vendors. Equality at work should be promoted through anti-discrimination and diversity strategies.
Beginning in the early to mid-1990s in China an attempt was made to erect new structures of control so as to create an “orderly flow” of migrants from rural inlands. National and local authorities began to issue a series of policies and regulations, and set up a variety of joint institutions to cope with migrant populations in the country’s cities. A central concern of this policy shift has been exerting control over migrants’ fertility, which was the subject of some of the first regulations enacted. The regulatory frameworks, which emerged place by place at first but were eventually adopted on the national level, share a tendency towards complicated certification procedures, set quotas for migrant workers and punishments for violations. At their heart lay the ongoing policy of preventing migrants from changing their hukou registration, consigning them to the status of “temporary residents” who could not settle permanently in the city, however long they had lived there.
Forced migration can be defined as the movements of refugees and internally displaced people as well as people displaced by natural or environmental disasters, chemical or nuclear disasters, famine, or development projects. A considerable amount of force migration has been accounted by nature. Almost 300 million people were affected annually by natural disasters during 2000-2005, while an average 77,000 were killed annually over the same period. Besides environmental factors, the forced displacements of population may also occur due to other factors, such as social, ethnic and political conflicts, weak states, and inequitable distribution of resources. There is another type of forced migration triggered by developmental projects. This displacement takes place through government intervention, generally for the purpose of some development-required change in land or water use.
Each year, millions of people around the globe are forcibly relocated and resettled away from their homes, lands and livelihoods in order to make way for large-scale development projects such as dams, reservoirs, power plants, roads, plantations, urban renewal, and oil, gas, and mining projects. This forced relocation is known as development-induced displacement and resettlement, or DIDR. This paper provides an overview of DIDR: how many people it affects, primary causes and key impacts, important gains in safeguarding communities threatened by displacement and challenges that remain. It concludes with recommendations for redesigning development to ensure that it minimizes DIDR, benefits project-affected people and communities, respects their rights and supports local priorities for sustainable development.
Global warming and ensuing changes of climate as such do not trigger movement of persons; however, its effects, such as natural disasters, environmental degradation or sea level rise, have the potential to do so. It is believed that between 50 to 200 million people may move by the middle of the century, either within borders or internationally. The majority of those displaced by climate change remain within the borders of their country of origin. In much of the future, much of the displacement is expected to remain internal. However, some displacement may also take place across recognized international state borders.
In India, the construction industry is the second largest employer, after agriculture. It constitutes of largely unorganized workforce (89%), of whom majority (3/4th) is unskilled. The booming construction industry and real estate market provides a sharp contrast to the plight of the workforce involved in construction. The boom 'pulls' a large number of workers into the cities. The workers, mainly distress migrants, with low level of literacy and skill are organized by labour contractors whose motivation is a daily commission from the wages of workers he is bringing to the city. Not having any skills suited to the needs of the city, they offer their labour wherever a building is being constructed. They camp down in rough shelters devoid of the simplest amenities. They work long hours and have no access to proper housing, sanitation, and electricity or even water. They move on when the works over – and they constitute a floating labour force. Their children grow up amidst this constant movement. The children are unable to go to schools and must fend for themselves as best as they can while both their parents work.
Adolescence is a period characterized by rapid physical, cognitive and social changes, including sexual and reproductive maturation; the gradual building up of the capacity to assume adult behaviors and roles involving new responsibilities requiring new knowledge and skills. It is also a period which poses new challenges to health and development owing to their relative vulnerability and pressure from society, including peers. These challenges include developing an individual identity and dealing with one‘s sexuality. India has one of the fastest growing youth populations in the world. The vast majority of adolescents, (children in the 10-19 age group) account for 22.8% of the population of India and girls below 19 years of age constitute one-fourth of India‘s fast growing population. The focus on 14-18 years is guided by the fact that there are legislations protecting children up to 14 years however no such guarantees exist for children in the 14-18 years age group, who live in precarious conditions due to deprivation of education, early marriage, unwanted pregnancy, childbearing and rearing, untimely entry into the labour force, and exploitation at home and at workplace.
India has 93% workforce engaged in the informal or unorganized sector.They work long hours for very low wages or income. They lack sufficient access to work and income security, food security and even basic social security like health care, child care, insurance and pension. The collective efforts of unions, cooperatives, NGOs and most of all, the unorganized workers themselves,backed by the work of NCEUS and the recommendations of NAC resulted in Parliament passing the Unorganized Workers’ Social Security Act (UWSSA),2008. However, three years since then, the Central Government has not formulated and notified a minimum social security package for all workers in the unorganized sector.It is against this backdrop that the NAC Working Group on Social Security has recommended ways of improving both coverage and implementation of the Act
This report is a preliminary exploration of forced migration/internal displacement in Burma in two main areas. The distinctive feature of internal displacement is coerced or involuntary movement that takes place within national borders. The reasons for flight may vary and include armed conflict, situations of generalized violence, violations of human rights, and natural or human-made disasters. The first is the status in terms of international standards, specifically those embodied in the Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement, of those people who leave home not because of conflict or relocation orders, but as a result of a range of coercive measures which drive down incomes to the point that the household economy collapses and people have no choice but to leave home. The second area is geographic. The report looks at those parts of Burma not covered by the Thailand Burma Border Consortium which concentrates on the conflict and post conflict areas of Eastern Burma.
Brick kiln industry is a labor intensive industry. It is an anachronism in the 21st century in the sense that there is almost no mechanization of any process in this vast industry employing millions of workers. Almost every brick is hand molded and manually transported. Availability of a cheap and captive work force ensures that there is no incentive for the industry to mechanize. The extreme vulnerability of brick kiln workers starts from their poor socio economic conditions and lack of alternative employment opportunities at home. Almost all the brick kiln workers belong to the most marginalized sections of society – Scheduled Castes and Minorities. Most of them are landless. The study captures the vulnerability status of workers in West UP and provides several recommendations for reducing the vulnerability faced by the migrant workers in brick kilns, based on qualitative survey carried in five districts of western Uttar Pradesh (UP).
This advocacy brief highlights five main ways in which internal migration affects and is affected by to socio-economic development. As such, these are issues that deserve attention from policymakers and development partners in Viet Nam. This paper analyses the impact of internal migration through three lenses, namely the lens of the migrant themselves, the migrant-receiving communities and the migrant-sending communities. Like many other countries that have undergone rapid economic and social development, Viet Nam has experienced an exponential increase in the movement of people both within and outside its borders over the past 20 years. There is growing recognition that these processes – development and migration - go hand in hand. Migration drives, as well as results from, a country’s social and economic development. This advocacy paper refers to the issue of under-sampling of migrants in national census surveys due to the narrow definition of migration adopted.
Bonded Labour system is the worst manifestation of the operation of the iniquitous socio-economic forces. In a highly polarised society all economic equations are heavily loaded in favour of 'organized-urban-educated high caste pole' and heavily weighed against the 'unorganized-rural-illiterate-low caste pole'. This reports highlights the existence of the bonded labour system in Chattisgarh (erstwhile Madhya Pradesh). It reports on the strategy adopted by NHRC in this state with regards to enforcement of the law and abolition of the system of bonded labour.
Migration represents an important livelihood diversification strategy for many in the world’s poorest nations. Considering developing countries like India, internal migration holds high importance in terms of development perspective. In this context, health of migrants has received considerable attention in the last few years by the World Health Assembly (WHA). The 61st World Health Assembly acknowledged that the health of migrants is an important public health matter and recognized the need for WHO to consider the health needs of migrants in the framework of the broader agenda on migration and development. This report summarizes the findings of a study conducted by the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) in several cities of India on the health status of migrants and the challenges that emerge in providing medical access to them.
At a time when large scale ‘distress’ migration goes on under the nose of district administrations in poverty-stricken KBK districts, Odisha government has no idea how many people have migrated to other States for work in lieu of loan advances. In the recently concluded winter session of the Odissa Assembly, Labour Minister Bijoyshree Routray said no correct information was available with labour department about labourers who take loan before migrating for work.
India is emerging as a key economic power in the world. There have been positive trends in term of GDP growth and social sectors reforms. But still there are many aspects which need improvement when it comes to the realization of rights of the children. There are children who are still remaining invisible to the eyes of the government. Because they are on the move with their parents in search of the livelihood. This assessment report of three cities of Odisha” provides an insight on the status of education, nutrition and protection of these invisible children. This is an attempt of its first kind to document these children and bring out a database of migrant children who migrate with their families to these destinations of Odisha.
The Prohibition of Employment as Manual Scavengers and their Rehabilitation Act 2013 does not give the same rights to those who manually clean drains and septic tanks in urban areas. This is also manual labour and involves the use of hands in cleaning excreta. Workers have to enter manholes to physically clean blockages. Government bodies have brazenly ignored court orders on mechanisation and bans on manual cleaning of sewage pipes. Unfortunately, the much-awaited new law also ignores the plight of sewage workers.
This policy approach paper has developed as an outcome of NCPCR-led intervention on the issue of trafficking of vulnerable migrant children. It is estimated that there are approximately 15 million (2011) child migrants in India, who constitute the children not enrolled in schools and who are dropouts. The process of migration, especially the distress migration, often leads to trafficking in person, as migration is distinguished from human trafficking by a very thin-line. The migrant workers were given the impression that they are migrating for decent job, but remain no choice when they are given in the custody of some other contractor.
This report is a review of the Learning and Migration Program (LaMP) of the American India foundation (AIF). This review is based on extensive fieldwork at project sites in three states (Maharashtra, Gujarat and Orissa) between March and May 2009, where AIF and its partners are implementing the LaMP. The American India foundation has, since its inception, been supporting India’s goal of universal elementary education (UEE) through innovative programs which focus on improving access and quality of education and which can be mainstreamed into large-scale government interventions. Its Learning and Migration Program (LaMP), in which AIF and its partners educate children of seasonal migrants, is an important component of AIF's activities in India.
The High-Level Dialogue (HLD) of the United Nations General Assembly (GM) on international migration represented a key opportunity to address in a comprehensive manner the human rights dimension of international migration which could then also be placed in the context of domestic/internal migration. This brief report attempts to explore why it is important to embed the human rights framework and human-rights approach within the global institutional architecture on migration. The report will map existing governance spaces of migration and human rights and explore possible future directions in this regard.
Early Childhood Matters is a journal about early childhood. It looks at specific issues regarding the development of young children, in particular from a psychological perspective. This issue focuses on the invisible population of migrants. The problems facing the migrant workers and the consequences for their young children transcend national boundaries. Children are often abandoned in the make-shift camps for long hours, under inadequate supervision. This issue gives strong clues about what kind of action is needed in terms of intervention, impact and response.
Internal migrants, by virtue of being a floating population, lose out on access to social security benefits which are a guarantee for the settled population which is linked to permanent address.There remains no concerted strategy to ensure portability of entitlements for migrants. Planning for migrant families who are not settled, but are on the move, warrants a fundamental rethinking of development approaches and models in order to protect and promote migrants’ access to social services and enable migrants to become socially and politically active citizens.
Children are the most unrecognized and vulnerable groups among internal migrants. Children migrate independently or as dependents when their families migrate. Migrant children often lose access to basic entitlements, miss out on schooling and are subject to health and security risks. Child migrants forgo critical inputs necessary for their physical, psychological and intellectual development during their formative years. This has an irreversible impact on their emotional and cognitive development.
Internal migration can expand people’s freedoms and capabilities and make substantial contributions to human development in terms of improved incomes, education and health. Although migration can potentially benefit migrants and their families, there are also heavy costs and risks that compromise the potentially positive outcomes of migration. Internal migrants play a major role in sustaining and building India’s economy, but their contribution remains unrecognized because of lack of data.
The current discourse on migration has failed to adequately address gender-specific migration experiences, even though women constitute an overwhelming majority of migrants. A gender perspective on migration is imperative, since women have significantly different migration motivations,patterns, options and obstacles from men. Women migrants remain invisible and discriminated against in the workforce:they are paid less than male migrants and their economic contribution is often subsumed in family labour units.
In India, internal migration has been accorded very low priority by the government, partly due to a serious knowledge gap on its extent, nature and magnitude. Migrants constitute a “floating” population, as they alternate between living at their home and host location, and in turn lose access to social security benefits linked to the residence, and other informal social networks. There is a pressing need to ensure that all migrants have access to services and entitlements as enshrined in policies and law; and to ensure that urban settlements become inclusive spaces as they expand in size and diversity. This report compiles interviews of migrants who flock to the city of Delhi from neighboring states. According to Human Development Report of Delhi (2013), there are indications that the rate of migration in Delhi has declined or at least stabilized. The paper presents a the voices of the migrant workers who remain unheard.
Migrant children are among the most educationally marginalized in India. The right to education (under the Right to Education Act, [RTE] 2009) of migrant children remains compromised, since seasonal and temporary migration results in disruption of regular and continued schooling of children, adversely affecting their human capital formation and contributing to the inter-generational transmission of poverty.
Internal migration is an integral part of development, contributing to the dynamics of urban growth and economic and cultural vibrancy of cities. The right to the city, which encompasses rights and access to food, housing, education, health, work, and local democracy, should also apply to migrants.
This working paper provides an overview of migration policy analysis in academic and policy (‘grey’) literature for Southeast Asia, as well as a brief outline of the current migration policy environment in each of the eleven states of the region. The first part of the paper examines the major categories and forms of migration policy in Southeast Asia, and considers the ways in which policy has been understood, theorised and analysed both within and outside academia. The second section focuses on the national level and provides a brief synopsis of the major migration issues, migration policies and migration policy agreements for each of the eleven countries in the Southeast Asia region.
Each year, millions move from the countryside into cities, making urban poverty more challenging, say Lauren Hendricks and Peter Lochery of CARE International. People are migrating to cities in search of economic opportunities. These migrants reside on the fringes (periphery) of the cities with no access services. They try to save money to send home to their families, so they look for the cheapest place to live. The respective governments do not consider it their mandate to provide them with the required services since those are illegal settlements.
The documentary focuses on the disparities between urban and rural Chinese. It highlights the migrations of millions of Chinese from the countryside to the major cities. As the urban economy develops and economic growth increases the rate of urbanization, more and more rural farmers migrate to cities in search of livelihood opportunities.
In this report, the Delhi-based Institute for Human Development (IHD) has found declining pattern of in-migration to Delhi. According to the report, 16 per cent of Delhi residents moved to the city within the past 20 years. With 4.6 per cent of respondents saying they moved to Delhi between six and 10 years ago, and 4.1 per cent saying they moved less than five years ago, the report concludes that the rate of migration appeared to be slowing slightly. The report cites several reasons for this slow decline, with 'education and training' emerging as the main factor for new migrants as compared to employment related reasons earlier.
For the first time in history, more people live now in urban than in rural areas. In 2010, urban areas are home to 3.5 billion people, or 50.5 per cent of the world’s population. In the next four decades,all of the world’s population growth is expected to take place in urban areas, which will also draw in some of the rural population through rural to urban migration. Migration from rural to urban areas has historically played a key role in the rapid growth of cities and, together with the reclassification of rural localities into urban centres, it continues to be an important component of city growth. This report discusses recent research on trends and challenges of urban growth, internal migration, and population distribution, the linkages and disparities between urban and rural development, the challenges of climate change for the spatial distribution of the population, social aspects of urbanization, including its impacts on health, and aspects of urban planning and urban governance.
Domestic workers in India have more than doubled in number since 2005. ILO's, Tine Staermose stressed the importance of policies aimed at protecting a very vulnerable section of the society. India's domestic workers are considered to ''uphold the economy'', with a rising population of over 10 million.
This study assesses Nepal’s policies and laws that address the trafficking of women and children in terms of effectiveness, human rights, international obligations, and the relationship between trafficking and HIV. Through both formal and informal methods utilizing primary and secondary data, the study reviewed policies and laws related to trafficking, HIV/AIDS, labor and foreign employment, foreign travel and migration, gender, and children’s issues. The study evaluates the strengths and weaknesses of the Nepal’s policies and laws and offers recommendations for improving them. [The Asia Foundation].
This Report provides details of existence and quantification of unorganised or informal workers, defined as those who do not have employment security, work security and social security. These workers are engaged not only in the unorganised sector but in the organised sector as well. This universe of informal workers now constitutes 92 percent of the total workforce. The report has also highlighted, based on an empirical measurement, the high congruence between this segment of the workforce and 77 percent of the population in terms of being referred to as 'poor and vulnerable' section of the society.
The report focuses on the problem of violence against women migrant workers, specifically with regard to their access to justice. It highlights the impact on women migrant workers of legislation, policies and programs implemented by Member States and concludes with recommendations for future action. The report summarizes the issue of violence against women migrant workers in member states and the measures taken by them. It also draws on conclusions and recommendations for prevention of such cases and assisting them in gaining justice.
According to the Human Development Report 2009, the number of those who moved across the major zonal demarcations within their countries was nearly four times larger (740 million) than those who moved internationally (214 million). In India, internal migration has been accorded very low priority by the government, which is partly due to a serious knowledge gap on its extent, nature and magnitude. Migration patterns in India intersects with two recent developments. Firstly, increasing urbanization is putting pressure on the accessibility of social infrastructure thereby creating conditions of competitive survival for the migrants in the city and secondly, the expansion of rights based approach to ensure basic services are accessible to all the citizens is a process in the making.
The report provides an assessment of migration and remittance pattern in six districts of Bihar covered under the World Bank funded Bihar Rural Livelihoods Project (BRLP)and the IFAD funded Womens' Empowerment and Livelihood Project in the mid-Gangetic Plain (WELPMGP). Although migration through Bihar is well studied, it is however weakly understood in terms of its complexity and diversity and the way it affects different groups of people. The report has offered practical intervention suggestions to maximize returns and minimize the costs associated with migration.
The government of Maharashtra released report based on data collected in state sample during the National Sample Survey round of 2007-2008 on migration. The state sample covered the entire rural and urban areas of the state of Maharashtra. The state survey reports an increasing number of male migrants for employment while female migration was mainly the result of marriage.
Migration is transforming our world: by the end of this decade, most developing countries will have more people living in cities than in rural areas. Adolescent girls in developing countries are an overlooked population, but one that is migrating to urban areas in ever greater numbers. More number of adolescent girls are on the move, particularly in the developing world in search of jobs, livelihood, to escape the shackles of poverty or early marriage. while migration is associated with its own costs and risks, for girls, it holds opportunities to a better life and livelihood and they see a chance to prosper through migration.
In this paper, an attempt has been made to discuss about labor rights and standards in respect of migrant labour in India. The study is descriptive in nature and mostly based on primary and secondary data published in different reports of the government and non government agencies. The paper studies the condition and nature of internal migration in India and addresses the loopholes in the regulations that secure the rights of migrants workers in India.
Social Inclusion of Internal Migrants in India aims to provide an overview of existing innovative practices that increase the inclusion of internal migrants in society and act as a living document that would inspire and assist professionals and governments officials in their attempts to facilitate the social inclusion of migrants. Through this publication, UNESCO wishes to increaseof Internal Migrants in India visibility and recognition of the internal migration phenomenon in India, disseminate evidence based experiences and practices, and provoke a paradigm shift in the perception and portrayal of migrants by addressing myths and misconceptions and creating awareness on the benefits of migrants' inclusion in society.
Principles for the responsible recruitment and employment of migrant workers.
Summary of the bill prohibition of employment as manual scavengers bill, 2012. [PRS].
The Central Industrial Relation Machinery (CIRM) under the Ministry of Labour, Government of India enforces the The Interstate Migrant Workman (Regulation of Employment and Conditions of Service) Act, 1979. As there has been a tremendous increase in the employment of interstate migrant workman in the State of Kerala (particularly in the cities) during the years 2004, 2005 and 2006 the total number of inspections conducted by the CIRM officers during the above period was also high.
The document is an outcome of deliberations within the Coalition members and puts forth certain recommendations for the drafting of XIIth plan. [NACSOM].
The report brings together macro statistics and field based case studies highlighting the problem of child labour in rural areas. The Report documents testimonies of children as well as brings together select case studies of innovative work done by NGOs for getting children out of work and into school. [NCPCR].
Agriculture is the main source of occupation in India and a major portion of rural population depends on agriculture. It may be seen that cultivators, small and marginal farmers, agricultural labor, and landless labor all have limited purchasing power due to seasonal jobs they hold. Frequent occurrence of natural calamities and working in unorganized sector further reduce their purchasing power. The three types of migration, namely, seasonal, internal and international migration are noticed in Thanjavur district of Tamilnadu State, India. The helpless unemployed workers leave their village homes and join the already over- populated areas, viz., urban towns and cities.
In 2011, as a result of a two-day’s workshop on Internal Migration and Human Development in India (6-7 December 2011), UNESCO and UNICEF launched the Internal Migration in India Initiative (IMII), in order to better respond to the many challenges raised by the internal migration phenomenon in India. Through the IMII, UNESCO and UNICEF wish to support the social inclusion of migrants in the economic, social, political and cultural life of the country using a three-legged approach, combining research, policy and advocacy. [UNESCO, UNICEF].
Out of the 1.02 billion people in the country, 307 million (or 30%) were reported as migrants by place of birth. This proportion in case of India (excluding J&K) is slightly more than what was reported in 1991 (27.4%). There has been a steady increase in the country in the number of migrants. Whereas in 1961 there were about 144 million migrants by place of birth, in 2001 Census, it was 307 million. [Census 2001].
The increasing incidence of seasonal migration of adivasi children from southern Rajasthan has been a cause of great concern. Most of these children are below the age of fourteen years. Child labour is used for cross-pollination work. If child labour were removed, they would have to stop doing cross-pollination, as child labour was critical for this work. Children were short and could easily cross-pollinate the flowers without having to bend too much. Their bodies were more flexible and they did not complain as much as adults. [NCPCR].
There is a huge number of population working in the construction industry. Proper policies and implementation of the policies are needed to improve their condition.
Preliminary findings of the 2011 Census show increased movements –urban to urban and rural to urban areas. There is growing in-formalization of labour markets in India.
This paper discusses the issue of injustice done to unskilled labourers by construction workers.
Based on the report of the working group, many recommendations were put forward for the welfare and security of child labourers and migrant workers. [Planning Commission].
Setting a unique example of Public Private Partnership, the Department of Community Medicine collaborated with a construction company in Vidyavihar (West), Mumbai, employing a large number of migrant workers, to provide comprehensive health services during the working hours of the hospital. A medical team provided comprehensive on-site health care services, and a Health Card was devised to maintain the record of socio-demographic, occupational details, and complete physical examination findings of the workers who participated in the study.
This report documents the array of strategies used to enable seasonal migrants to recognise their entitlement and to access available public sector health, education and other social services. At the same time, it underscores the mediating role that the project played in sensitising government and public sector service providers about recognising the rights and accommodating the special circumstances of seasonal migrants in accessing public services on the one hand, and apprising seasonal migrants of their rights and mobilising them to avail of public sector services on the other. [Population Council Working Paper No. 2].
This report narrates how the contract labour system ensures that hundreds of contract workers employed in different occupations in JNU – construction workers, safai karamcharis, library staff, mess workers, etc – are being denied even statutory minimum wage, which is in any case pegged too low and is nothing more than a ’subsistence’ wage. In addition, wherever one could examine their working conditions, they were found too absymal and devoid of the most basic requirements.