‘I want to go home. I don’t like Bangalore’
Garden City no paradise for unregistered migrant laborers
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| Saroja clears out her belongings from the place she once called home. |
By Krithika B.K.
BANGALORE (Nov. 29)—The 12-year-old girl sat deep in thought in the ruins of the demolished slum beside the sprawling Mantri Mall in Malleshwaram.
Eeramma huddled with the other residents of the slum in northwest Bangalore, wondering where she would call home next.
Bangalore Metro Rail Corp. razed the “illegally occupied” slum Thursday. The residents were served a notice the night before, and the next morning half of the houses were knocked down.
Eeramma is a construction worker in Bangalore. At the age of 10 she left school and came to the city from Bagepalli, Andhra Pradesh, to help her parents repay a loan of Rs. 100,000.
Unregistered and uncared for
“I was all alone when those people asked me to vacate the house,” Eeramma said. “My grandmother had already left for work. I gathered our clothes and cleared out of the house.”
In the two weeks before the slum was demolished, slum residents told The SoftCopy that a group of men had been barging into the huts in Jakkarayana Kere slum past midnight demanding money from them and threatening to force them out of their homes. Due to this, slum dwellers had been sleeping in makeshift tents at the Glory Prayer Hall Church for the last one week.
“People come and create havoc in the night,” Eeramma said in halting Kannada. “I want to go back home. I don’t like Bangalore.”
Unregistered workers form the largest section of construction workers in Bangalore. Given the unreliable nature of their work, recurring strikes and fluctuating pay, such workers are the most disadvantaged section of the real estate business in terms of economic and social security.
Without ID cards, lodging a first information report with the police is out of the question. They have no choice but to endure incidents like the attempts to eject them from their slum.
“Out of 12 lakh [1.2 million] construction workers in Karnataka, 64,000 are registered,” said Palani Kumar, general secretary of Karnataka State Construction Workers’ Central Union. “In Bangalore, 25,000 construction workers are registered out of 600,000.”
“The contractors have taken on just a few people in the slum that they deemed necessary,” said Saroja, 28, another construction worker.
No benefits for unregistered workers
Eeramma turned pale when Pramila, her neighbor, mentioned the bloodstained forehead her father returned with a year ago. He was wounded at his work site. Pramila, 40, a resident of Jakkarayana Kere, told The SoftCopy that contractors refuse to pay compensation for such work-related accidents.
Eeramma’s mother, Venkatalakshmi, 30, started having recurrent stomachaches two months ago. With no medical insurance, the family’s savings bled dry.
After several visits to the government and private hospitals, and no diagnosis, she went back to her hometown, Belagali, in Andhra Pradesh. To support his wife, Venkatesh left for Belagali, leaving his 70-year-old mother in Eeramma’s care.
Like Venkatalakshmi, several women construction workers suffer from stomach pain and dust allergy.
If a construction worker is registered with the Karnataka State Construction Workers’ Union, they can receive several benefits: life insurance of Rs. 100,000, education subsidies, Rs. 10,000 compensation for the marriage of the workers’ children and a pension from the age of 55.
Unregistered workers receive none of these benefits.
Certain private organizations like LaborNet have 24,000 laborers under their ambit. For an annual fee of Rs. 150, they provide accident insurance coverage, an identity card and a bank account.
3-week strike played havoc in laborers’ lives
With the recent sand lorry workers’ strike that halted construction works across the city, thousands of construction workers, including some from the Jakkarayana Kere slum, have left Bangalore and gone home.
Eeramma is the youngest construction worker along with 10 other women on the Srirampura site. She earns Rs. 150 a day, a wage on par with all the women construction workers on the site.
During the 20 days that the sand lorry workers’ strike lasted, Eeramma, along with several construction workers in the city, was suddenly rendered jobless. More than 30 out of 50 families, including her relatives have moved out of the city.
LaborNet gave the registered workers alternate employment such as plumbing and cleaning during the strike, according to Naveen, IT manager of LaborNet. The Karnataka Construction Workers’ Association fed them a meal every day throughout the strike.
“We are trying to reach out to as many construction workers through NGOs and trade unions as possible, whether they are migrants or not,” said Neena Patil, labor officer of Karnataka Building and Other Construction Labor Union, the state board for construction workers. “We will soon have an online registration system in place for construction workers, so that they can register from anywhere and avail benefits.”
Headed back home
During the three-week strike, Eeramma contributed her share of income to the family doing household chores in and around the area. With no roof above her head, she decided to return to Andhra Pradesh.
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| Eeramma hopes for a bright future in Andra Pradesh |
“I will miss playing with them,” she says, pointing at Sneha and Santosh, her friends for the past two years.
Saying that, she joined them in playing hopscotch, a game traditionally played in India.
All along she was humming a Telugu song. When asked what the song means, Pramila said that it is about Jawaharlal Nehru (who strongly believed in children’s education), his love for children and the beautiful world we live in.
“O child, precious child, Chacha Nehru’s favorite child,
Know that ours is a golden nation, India is our nation…”
Eeramma is not sure what she will do when she goes back to
Andhra Pradesh.
“I will study,” she said with a smile, “if I get no work.”
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