The Nagrik Podcast

Infrastructures for Welfare - How the BoCW System was Built: R. Geetha, Subhash Bhatnagar, Rina Agarwala, Shruti Herbert, Chirayu Jain

Following the announcement of nationwide pandemic control measures in India on March 24, 2020, tens of thousands of daily-wage migrant workers in India suddenly found themselves without jobs or a source of income. At inter-state bus terminals and railway stations in cities like  Delhi, Mumbai, and Bengaluru, thousands of such workers gathered, waiting to be evacuated back to their homes. According to the government's data, more than 1.14 crore inter-state migrant workers returned to their home-states. Many of them worked in the construction industry, the second largest source of work in India, after agriculture. Nearly all construction workers (almost all 56 million of them) are part of India's 411 million informal workers.   The significant majority of work in India, over 90% of it by most accounts, is informal. These workers do not benefit from social security schemes such as employee state insurance and the provident fund. They are also not protected by the laws that regulate employment, such as the Factories Act. For example, informal workers have no legal right to paid leave. The events that unfolded after the “lockdown” announcement left us in little doubt about the very real effects of these wide gaps in the law.     The visible ejection of informal workers during the pandemic lockdown from Indian cities, including nearly all its construction workers, shed light on their lack of any meaningful social security. As part of the relief package announced by the government, the labour ministry announced a scheme that would credit 24% of wages into the provident fund accounts of those eligible. But only 1.5% of India’s construction workers, part of the mere 5.7% that work on a regular basis, are contributing members of the Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation and thus eligible for such PF-related benefits. The remaining overwhelming majority of construction workers could hope to qualify for another relief measure announced by the government: direct benefit transfers to the accounts of workers registered under the Building and other Construction Workers (Regulation of Employment and Conditions of Service) Act, 1996 (“the BoCW Act”) using the Building and Other Construction Workers cess (“BoCW cess”) funds. In most cases, the BoCW system was the rusted and creaking infrastructure used to deliver social security benefits to construction work.   In this episode, we learn about the campaigns that contributed to building the BoCW system - the welfare infrastructure that became law in 1996 and in 2020, would be used to provide Rs. 2250 crores worth of emergency pandemic relief to 18 million construction workers.   You will learn from:   R Geetha, the southern regional coordinator of the national campaign committee for a comprehensive legislation on construction labour (NCCCL-CL)   Subhash Bhatnagar, national co-ordinator of the NCCCL-CL   Rina Agarwala [https://soc.jhu.edu/directory/rina-agarwala/], Professor of Sociology at Johns Hopkins University   Chirayu Jain, Delhi-based advocate   Shruti Herbert [https://www.law.ed.ac.uk/people/dr-sruthi-herbert], Postdoctoral Research Fellow at University of Edinburgh   References   "Dial W for Wage Theft - the India Labour Line Story: Sushovan Dhar, Sanotsh Poonia, Shreehari Paliath, Chandan Kumar", The Nagrik Podcast [https://nagriklearning.podbean.com/e/dial-w-for-wage-theft-the-india-labour-line-story-sushovan-dhar-sanotsh-poonia-shreehari-paliath-chandan-kumar/]    Unni, Jeemol. 2020. “Impact of Lockdown Relief Measures on Informal Enterprises and Workers”, EPW Engage [https://www.epw.in/engage/article/impact-lockdown-relief-measures-informal-enterprises-workers], Vol. 55, Issue 51.    Pandey, Vikas. 2020. “Coronavirus lockdown: The Indian migrants dying to get home”. BBC [https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-52672764], May 20, 2020.    Mathews, Rohan Dominic. 2019. “A Comprehensive Legislation for Construction Workers in India: Unpacking State, Capital and Labour” in Hawel, M., & VSA-Verlag für das Studium der Arbeiterbewegung, WORK IN PROGRESS. WORK ON PROGRESS: Beiträge kritischer Wissenschaft [https://www.rosalux.de/publikation/id/41499/work-in-progress-work-on-progress-8]: Doktorand_innen Jahrbuch 2019 der Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung. pp. 90-109.    Jha, Ajit. 2020. “Covid-19 Relief Package: Will central largesse help construction workers?”. Economic and Political Weekly [https://www.epw.in/journal/2020/17/commentary/covid-19-relief-package.html], Vol LV Issue 17, pp. 20-22.    Jain, Chirayu. 2018. “Are the Centre’s welfare measures for daily wagers effective or mere paper tigers?”. The News Minute [https://www.thenewsminute.com/article/are-centre-s-welfare-measures-daily-wagers-effective-or-mere-paper-tigers-84045], July 2, 2018.   Jain, Chirayu. 2022. “A New Labor Regime”. Phenomenal World [https://www.phenomenalworld.org/analysis/india-labor-regime/], July 9, 2022.    “How Many Migrant Workers Left Cities During the COVID-19 Lockdown?”. The Wire [https://thewire.in/labour/how-many-migrant-workers-left-cities-during-the-covid-19-lockdown], June 20, 2022.    Agarwala, Rina. 2006. “From Work to Welfare: A New Class Movement in India”. Critical Asian Studies [https://doi.org/10.1080/14672710601072996] 38:4, pp. 419-444.    Agarwala, Rina. 2008. “Reshaping the social contract: emerging relations between the state and informal labour in India”. Theor Soc [https://doi.org/10.1007/s11186-008-9061-5] (2008) 37. pp. 375-408.    Agarwala, Rina. 2018. “From Theory to Praxis and Back to Theory: Informal Workers' Struggles against Capitalism and Patriarchy in India” In Gendering Struggles Against Informal and Precarious Work [https://doi.org/10.1108/S0198-871920180000035002] edited by Agarwala, Rina and Jennifer Jihye Chun, Emerald Insight, 29-57.     Agarwala, Rina. 2019. “Using Legal Empowerment for Labour Rights in India”. The Journal of Development Studies [https://doi.org/10.1080/00220388.2018.1451631], Vol. 55, No. 3, 401-419.    Ahuja, Ravi. 2019. “A Beveridge Plan for India? Social Insurance and the Making of the “Formal Sector””. IRSH 64, pp. 207-248. doi:10.1017/S0020859019000324    "Labour Code Lecture Series: Lecture 3 - The Code on Social Security, 2020", Working People's Coalition [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LmeheBFm7DQ&t=4s]

Dial W for Wage Theft - the India Labour Line Story: Sushovan Dhar, Sanotsh Poonia, Shreehari Paliath, Chandan Kumar

Yellappa is among thousands of migrant workers who wait every morning at one of Bangalore's several labour stands to seek work from construction contractors. He is one of 56 million people employed in India's construction industry.    Nearly all of them are part of India's 411 million informal workers, who constitute over 90% of India’s workers. Not only do they not benefit from social security schemes such as employee state insurance and the provident fund, they are also not protected by the laws that regulate employment. Even after Independence, the large majority of Indian workers never benefited from the labour legislation of the twentieth century because they worked in small scale enterprises that were exempt from any obligations under those laws. Even for that narrow slice of India’s workforce to whom these laws apply, access to any mechanism that can provide redress for work-related grievances or hold employers accountable, is not guaranteed.   When Yellappa was not paid by his employer, he called 1-800-833-9020, the India Labour Line. It is a helpline that workers across India can call to receive counseling about any grievances in relation to their work, like unpaid wages or an uncompensated workplace accident. It was set up in the wake of the forced exodus of migrant informal workers from Indian cities following the sudden announcement of pandemic control measures in 2020. Aajeevika Bureau teamed up with the Working Peoples' Coalition to demonstrate that it is indeed possible to imagine a grievance redressal system that works for all workers.   On this episode of the Nagrik podcast, we learn about India Labour Line and Aajeevika Bureau’s Rajasthan-based labour helpline on which it is modeled, how the helplines operate to demonstrate a workable model of grievance redressal for workers, and about their objectives.    You will learn from:   Shreehari Paliath [https://www.indiaspend.com/author/shreehari], Senior Policy Analyst, India Spend. Read his journalism and other stories at www.indiaspend.com. IndiaSpend is a public interest data-driven journalism non-profit.    Sushovan Dhar, director, India Labour Line   Sanotsh Poonia [https://twitter.com/santoshpoonia?lang=en], programme manager leading Aajeevika Bureau’s legal aid work   Chandan Kumar [https://twitter.com/chandancampaign], organising secretary, Working People’s Coalition   References   BBC News, “Coronavirus India: Death and despair as migrant workers flee cities [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GIe8ZbQgTow]”  Indian Express, “Explained: Indian Migrants, Across India [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pd3k3Fob0rU]” Sumant Banerji, “A look inside one of the most unsafe workplaces [https://www.livemint.com/politics/news/when-the-workplace-is-injurious-to-health-11665421145855.html]”, Mint (Oct 11, 2022) Ravi Ahuja, “A Beveridge Plan for India? Social Insurance and the Making of the Formal Sector [https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/C70C8C0BAEB465550091AED604DE04EE/S0020859019000324a.pdf/beveridge_plan_for_india_social_insurance_and_the_making_of_the_formal_sector.pdf]”, IRSH 64 (2019), pp. 207-248 Aajeevika Bureau, “Unlocking the Urban: Reimagining Migrant Lives in Cities Post-Covid 19 [https://www.aajeevika.org/assets/pdfs/Unlocking%20the%20Urban.pdf]”, 2020 ICDD Interview Series, “The Informal Economy, Labour, and Collective Cooperation in India (with Pravin Sinha) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kWNfaWU7zhw]” Shreehari Paliath, “How A Labour Helpline Is Helping Informal Workers Recover Wages [https://www.indiaspend.com/governance/how-a-labour-helpline-is-helping-informal-workers-recover-wages-access-entitlements-828966]”, India Spend (Aug 3, 2022) Press Release for the launch of India Labour Line [https://www.theleaflet.in/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/ILL_PN_18.09.21.pdf]

Ambedkar, Labour Leader: Jesus Chairez, Sumeet Mhaskar, Prabodhan Pol

November 7, 1938, 21 years after the October Revolution and two years after he published his searing critique of Hinduism in The Annihilation of Caste, B.R. Ambedkar’s Independent Labour Party called for a one-day strike against the passage of the Bombay Industrial Dispute Bill. Among its other provisions, the law would make strikes a criminal offence. More than one lakh workers are said to have participated in the strike in Bombay alone. Earlier in the year, Ambedkar had marched at the head of 25000 small peasants, landless poor, and agricultural labourers as they demanded the abolition of the khoti system. Thus in 1938, in the space of a few months, Ambedkar led agitations that advocated for the interests of what we today call the informal poor and for the interests of industrial workers. Both of them were the results of years of political work, advocating against exploitative agrarian practices in the Konkan region, building effective bridges between social groups, and negotiating on behalf of Dalit workers with leftist trade unions. In this episode of the Nagrik podcast, we learn about Ambedkar’s advocacy around issues of labour in the 1920s and 30s, from our guests:   * Dr Jesus Chairez-Garza [https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/jesus.chairez-garza.html], Lecturer in Modern History, University of Manchester * Prabodhan Pol [https://manipal.edu/mcph/department-faculty/faculty-list/prabodhan-pol.html], Assistant Professor, Manipal Centre for Humanities * Dr. Sumeet Mhaskar [https://jgu.edu.in/jsgp/faculty/sumeet-mhaskar/], Professor, Jindal School of Government and Public Policy   References Sarvodaya Shivaputra, “Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar role in the Bombay Legislative Council (1927-1939) [https://shodhganga.inflibnet.ac.in/bitstream/10603/214969/1/01_title.pdf]”, Swami Ramanand Teerth Marathwada University Abha Trivendi, “Indian Labour Movement (1927-1929): A Critical Appraisal [https://www.jstor.org/stable/44147696]”, Proceedings of the Indian History Congress Vol. 70 (2009-2010)  Georges Kristoffel Lieten, “Strikers and Strike-Breakers: Bombay Textile Mills Strike, 1929 [https://www.jstor.org/stable/4370842]”, Economic and Political Weekly (1982),  Sumeet Mhaskar, “How a Strike 40 Years Ago Dismantled Workers’ Claim Over Mumbai, Hastened its Gentrification [https://thewire.in/labour/great-textile-strike-mumbai-mill-workers]”, The Wire (2022)  Shivangi Jaiswal, “Labour Ministers, State and the Prism of Law, 1942-52 [https://www.iaaw.hu-berlin.de/de/region/suedasien/publikationen/sachronik/10-forum-jaiswal-shivangi-labour-ministers-state.pdf]”  Santosh Suradkar, “The Anti-Khoti Movement in Konkan Region, c. 1920-1949 [https://www.academia.edu/8800758/The_Anti_Khoti_Movement_in_Konkan_Region_c_1920_1949]”  Unnamati Syamasundar, “Independent Labour Party & the Legacy of Ambedkar as Organizer [https://www.roundtableindia.co.in/independent-labour-party-the-legacy-of-ambedkar-as-organizer/]”, Round Table India (2018)  Antaripa Bharali and Ankit Kawade, “A Lesson From Ambedkar’s Unusual Choice of Symbol During 1937 Poll [https://www.thequint.com/voices/blogs/ambedkar-unusual-choice-of-symbol-1937-poll#read-more]”, The Quint (2019)  Prabodhan Pol, “100 Years of Mooknayak, Ambedkar's First Newspaper that Changed Dalit Politics Forever [https://thewire.in/media/mooknayak-ambedkar-newspaper]”, The Wire  Kari Kumar, “Ambedkar and the Bombay Textile Workers [https://dalithistorymonth.medium.com/ambedkar-and-the-bombay-textile-workers-daa21819da90]”, Dalit History Month

Waste Pickers Organising in Neoliberalism: Lakshmi Narayan, Poornima Chikarmane, Jane Barrett, Melanie Samson

The Kagad Kach Patra Kashtakari Panchayat (or KKPKP) is a membership-based trade union of waste pickers and itinerant waste buyers in Pune in Maharashtra. Formed in 1993, it wanted to assert waste pickers’ status as workers and their role in the city’s solid waste management. Today, it has over 9000 members, 80 percent of whom are women from socially backward and marginalised castes. Each member pays an annual fee to the organization and an equal amount towards their life insurance cover.   In 2005, KKPKP formed a wholly-owned workers’ cooperative called SWaCH in partnership with the Pune Municipal Corporation. 1500 waste pickers became providers of door-to-door waste collection services to the city’s households. In 2008, the PMC entered into a five-year agreement with SWaCH to decentralize door-to-door waste collection services. Cooperative members would collect segregated waste from over 2000 households. The non-recyclable garbage is further segregated for sale, while the wet or organic and non-recyclable waste is dropped off at the PMC’s ‘feeder points.’   A union of informal workers had formed a work co-operative.   Both historically and geographically, standard or formal work has been the exception. The vast majority of work in history has been performed without paid leave or work-related social security. Even when a significant portion of work in the rich nations came to be performed through formal arrangements, the large majority of work in the poorer nations remained informal.   In recent decades, the proportion of informal work has increased in the global north. This development has coincided with the emergence in the 1970s and 1980s, of a set of policies adopted by governments around the world to increase the role of the private sector in the economy and society, collectively known by the term neoliberalism. These policies have whittled away at the islands of formal work in the rich nations and impoverished informal workers in the poorer nations. One such policy is the privatisation of municipal services. Municipal contracts for waste collection services in the poorer nations have, instead of welcoming them into formal work, dispossessed waste pickers of their sources of livelihood.    In this episode of the Nagrik podcast, we learn about organising informal workers in neoliberalism through the example of Pune’s KKPKP. What are the different forms in which informal workers organise? What barriers do informal workers face in organising? How did the founders of KKPKP bridge the gap between them and the city’s waste pickers who lived very different lives? What kind of demands did KKPKP make? Did entering into a direct relationship with the PMC affect the union’s ability to advocate for its members? How do we understand the role of a work co-operative of waste pickers in resisting neoliberal trends? How can it safeguard against larger forces that can diminish the quality of waste picker lives? You can learn about all of this from the guests on this episode:   Lakshmi Narayan, co-founder, Kagad Kach Patra Kashtakari Panchayat Poornima Chikarmane, co-founder, Kagad Kach Patra Kashtakari Panchayat Melanie Samson, Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Johannesburg Jane Barrett, Director of the Organising and Representation Programme at WIEGO   References   ILO, “Integrating Informal Sector in Municipal Solid Waste Management - SWaCH Cooperative, Pune [http://www.theguardian.com/global-development-professionals-network/2013/jun/06/rummaging-through-rubbish]” Poornima Chikarmane, “Integrating Waste Pickers into Municipal Solid Waste Management in Pune, India [https://swachcoop.com/pdf/SWaCH%20policy%20brief.pdf]”, WIEGO Policy Brief (July 2012) Poornima Chikarmane and Laxmi Narayan, “Organising the Unorganised: A Case Study of the Kagad Kach Patra Kashtakari Panchayat (Trade Union of Waste-pickers) [https://swachcoop.com/pdf/casestudy-kagadkachpatrackashtakari.pdf]” Waste Matters, “Kagad Kach Patra Kashtakari Panchayat - Photo Blog [https://wastematters.theoutsider.in/]” Supriya Bhadakwad (KKPKP), “Waste Pickers: Paving the Solutions Path to Climate Change-1 [https://youtu.be/TbWuuBC9wmU?t=115]”, Speech at event organized by Zero Waste Europe GAIA and Zero Waste France at the COP21 in Paris WRI Ross Center for Sustainable Cities, “SWaCH Pune Seva Sahakari Sanstha | WRI Ross Center Prize for Cities 2018-2019 Finalist [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ybhX9e0K8KY] TERI, “Swach Across Bharat - The Future We Want Series [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cN9TDqhD6FI]” SWaCH, “We, SWaCH [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bMvU5bOHpTU]” WIEGO, “Recognizing Waste Pickers [https://youtu.be/n8pMRF7w6B4]” Melanie Samson (ed.), Refusing to be Cast Aside: Waste Pickers Organising Around the World [https://www.wiego.org/sites/default/files/publications/files/Samson-Refusing-to-be-Cast-Aside-Wastepickers-Wiego-publication-English.pdf], WIEGO (2009) Faranak Miraftab, “Neoliberalism and Casualization of Public Sector Services: The Case of Waste Collection Services in Cape Town, South Africa [https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.463.9649&rep=rep1&type=pdf]”, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, December 2004 Lilita Gcawbe, “Reclaimers yearn for formal recognition from government [https://health-e.org.za/2021/08/18/reclaimers-yearn-for-formal-recognition-from-government/]”, Health-e News (August 18, 2021)

Forests of the People: Purnima Upadhyay, Kesav Gurnule, Mittali Sethi, Sharad Lele, Vandana Dhoop

2021 marked 15 years of the Forest Rights Act and its most transformative provisions - those related to community forest rights and their governance through village gram sabhas. Along with the PESA in 1996, the FRA carved out spaces in the law for community participation in the management and governance of forests. These laws were the results of more than a century of social movements in various parts of India that cried out against the injustice of treating forest dwelling communities as encroachers on their lands, an injustice that persisted even after the constitution of independent India promised special protections for adivasis and scheduled tribes.   For over a century, the Indian state's legal control of forests had extinguished the traditional rights of forest-dwelling communities, who came to be perceived as illegal occupants or encroachers of government forests.   Things changed dramatically in 2006, when the Forest Rights Act recognized and vested a set of forest rights in the scheduled tribes and other traditional forest dwellers who have been residing in forests for generations but whose rights had not been recorded. Most radically perhaps, the law recognized their rights as communities of ownership of minor forest produce that has been traditionally collected within or outside village boundaries, and the rights of access to collect, use, and dispose of this produce.    Minor forest produce includes all non-timber forest produce of plant origin including bamboo, honey, wax, tendu or kendu leaves, medicinal plants and herbs, roots, and tubers.    Apart from recognising and vesting these rights, the Forest Rights Act also set up democratic procedures for decision-making at the level of settlements.   Like any paradigm shifting project of decolonisation or for the de-centralisation of power, fears are expressed about whether the newly empowered people are actually ready for the responsibilities of power.    This episode of the Nagrik podcast reflects not only on the economic and ecological impact of the community-led management of forest resources, but also on grassroot-level democratic practices in relation to the governance of forests.    The Nagrik Podcast is among the world's best civic engagement podcasts [https://blog.feedspot.com/civic_engagement_podcasts/].   You can listen to:   * Purnima Upadhyay, who runs Khoj, a civil society organisation that works in the region of Melghat in the Amaravati district of Maharashtra, on the promotion of the effective use of community forest rights under the Forest Rights Act; * Kesav Gurnule, who works with Shrishti, a civil society organisation that works in the Gadchiroli district of Maharashtra, on the promotion of the effective use of community forest rights under the Forest Rights Act; * Mittali Sethi, a former Project Officer with the Tribal Development Department of the government of Maharashtra, in Dharni and Melghat, an IAS officer of the 2017 batch, and currently the Chief Executive Officer of the Chandrapur Zilla Parishad; * Vandana Dhoop, an independent researcher, whose work has covered Nayagarh's women-led Forest Protection Committees; and * Sharad Lele, a Senior Fellow at the Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and Environment   Further reading:   Mittali Sethi, “How 2 Landmark Laws Can Come Together To Make India’s Forest Communities Secure”, Article 14 [https://article-14.com/post/how-2-landmark-laws-can-come-together-to-make-india-s-forest-communities-secure-614404395718c] Geetanjoy Sahu, “Experiences in the Vidarbha Region of Maharashtra Implementation of Community Forest Rights”, Economic and Political Weekly [https://www.epw.in/journal/2020/18/special-articles/implementation-community-forest-rights.html] Sharachchandra Lele, Shruti Mokashi , “Mapping the potential of Community Forest Resource Rights in central India”, Mongabay [https://india.mongabay.com/2021/10/commentary-community-forest-resource-rights-mapping-the-potential-in-central-india/] Shreya Dasgupta, "Does community-based forest management work in the tropics?", Mongabay [https://news.mongabay.com/2017/11/does-community-based-forest-management-work-in-the-tropics/] Lekshmi M, Anup Kumar Samal, Geetanjoy Sahu, “15 Years of FRA: What Trends in Forest Rights Claims and Recognition Tell Us”, The Wire [https://science.thewire.in/politics/rights/15-years-forest-rights-act-claims-recognition-trends/] Madhusudan Bandi, “Looking beyond the Forest Rights Act”, The Hindu [https://science.thewire.in/politics/rights/15-years-forest-rights-act-claims-recognition-trends/] Vandana Dhoop, “In Nayagarh, India, community women get long-due recognition for protecting their forests”, Rights+Resources [https://rightsandresources.org/blog/in-nayagarh-india-community-women-get-long-due-recognition-for-protecting-their-forests/]