Labour woes

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Labour woes

Friday, 29 May 2020 | Pioneer

Labour woes

While States are redistributing returnee workers, in the long run we need a national database and a pan-India social security net

The reverse exodus of migrants, which according to the Government’s admission in the Supreme Court has seen 91 lakh daily wagers and service personnel move out of cities to their home States, may change the labour market forever. Shunted out overnight by contractors and factories following the lockdown and with no savings, quarters or interim relief coming from either their employers or the Government, they trudged back home, risking their lives in the process, exposing themselves to the disease and starvation. And though they may return to the subsistence economy that they once escaped, they are not coming back soon. Rejected by the big cities that they helped build and mistreated like intruders by the Governments they voted for, they would much rather find work in their home States under MGNREGA and infrastructure projects. The vacuum in big cities is already being felt as daily needs servicemen like drivers, cleaners, electricians, handymen, carpenters, plumbers, house helps, gardeners and bricklayers have all fled. And now with several States compiling a data base of returnees with their skill sets, these people are most likely to be rehabilitated in services vacated by migrants from elsewhere. In other words, local sourcing, something that political parties have promised in their manifestoes for a while, may soon become the new rule of engagement in the labour market. Except that the traditional labour-exporting States may be flooded with returnees seeking newer pastures and fall short of accommodating them. Sensing the new labour map, the first off the mark has been Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath. With the State having already received 23 lakh migrants by the end of last week, he has fast-tracked moves to absorb returnee workers according to their skill sets and allocate them work zones. Fifteen lakh are already on the database and industrial units have sought contracts for five lakh among them. He has further drawn up a migrant commission to list all workers in the State, provide jobs and issue them a card that would ensure their social security during a crisis. An insurance scheme to secure their lives, too, is on the cards. And though he is reconsidering it, his controversial suggestion that other States hiring labourers from UP would have to go via his Government points to a new trading tool that may just take off unofficially as everybody tries to leverage strengths in a pandemic-hit economy. Such a move is downright unconstitutional as every citizen has a right to migrate to any part of the country in the quest for better prospects. But new regional labour cartels could emerge, peddling a skilled pool of workers and quoting higher prices now in labour-starved zones. Rajasthan has started collecting data of both skilled and unskilled workers from all 33 districts and will release them to factory owners in 18 industrial clusters soon. It has already collected details of 1.2 million unemployed people and will soon launch a portal that will help devise programmes for the labourers, generate quick employment and also meet the demand-supply gap. It will also help design training programmes for workers as per their qualifications and requirements of industries. Meanwhile, Madhya Pradesh has restarted the Sambal Yojana, which will now cover returnee migrants and provide social security to their family members, including school fees of children and insurance. A workers’ database is almost ready. Bihar and Jharkhand are also working on an internal reorganisation map. Punjab and Haryana, States without too much of local labour, were among the first to set up migrant portals to rehire and redirect displaced labour to their various work sites. 

While the “vocal for local” mantra has taken a new meaning in the labour market, this could well be short-term. For wages and capacities are lower in States. For example, even if Uttar Pradesh manages to provide jobs to its returning migrants, its per capita income is a little over Rs 70,000. Comparatively, it is over Rs 2 lakh in Maharashtra and Rs 4 lakh in Delhi. So the osmosis will happen once the threat of the pandemic weakens. Besides what do you do with States like Uttarakhand, which do not have enough opportunities to absorb highly-skilled labour? So far over 1.54 lakh migrants have returned to the State and under the Mukhyamantri Swarojgar Yojana, they will get heavily subsidised loans to set up small businesses or shops. Many returnees are from the IT, hospitality and BPO sectors with a particular skill set and experience of working in big cities and are not keen on the entrepreneurial mode. They wouldn’t want to erode their revenue-earning ability for the safety of a home that they won’t have to pay for. Labour is needed across industries and communities and perhaps a national database and a pan-India social security net should be set up to streamline our demographic edge than pass this on to States as their responsibility. Besides, this protection based on geography will never substitute competence.

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