False promises & hope anew

COVID-19 has laid bare for all to see, the plight of the informal sector and the migrant workers who sustain it. Vinay Kumar & Sunita Narain REFLECT ON HOW, AS A NATION, WE CAN FINALLY MAKE THE NECESSARY CHANGES IN BOTH URBAN AND RURAL SETTINGS TO FINALL

As the COVID-19 pandemic rages on with the number of cases going up with each passing day, images of migrant workers trudging long distances to return to their homes relay poignant tales of their suffering.

It is indeed a sad commentary about the state of governance in the country with thousands of workers and their families not been able to get back to their villages even after nearly 60 days and three editions of lockdowns. The country has entered Lockdown 4.0 which will last till May 31 but the miseries of workers are not going to end any time soon.

In sweltering heat, workers have taken steps too big for them, walking distances of 800 to 1,200 km to get back to the safety of their respective homes and to be with their families and loved ones. Their sad plight has also served to spotlight the deficiencies in the country’s planning and design of urban centres to act as engines of employment, shelter and workplaces.

The pandemic, in all likelihood, will force policymakers and the political leadership to have a relook at urban policies where cities can act as providers of permanent homes to the migrant labourers, construction workers and household helps.

According to figures available with the Union Labour Ministry, as many as 42 crore unorganised workers are engaged in doing different jobs in cities, mostly as ragpickers, domestic workers, rickshaw pullers, cobblers, washermen, agriculture and construction workers, handloom workers, beedi workers and also in the leather sector. This is nearly onethird of the country’s total estimated population of 130 crores and does not represent those engaged in the organised sector.

Looking at this figure of unorganised workers who barely earn just enough to make their ends meet, it is not difficult to gauge the conditions in which they

live in cities — highly congested localities which are urban slums. Here, half a dozen persons are crammed into a single room where health, hygiene and social distancing go for a toss. Consider Mumbai’s Dharavi, one of Asia’s largest slums, which is spread over a square mile and is home to nearly a million people. In the time of Coronavirus pandemic, dwellers in Dharavi are struggling to be able to

live and Mumbai has emerged as the most affected city in India.

This brings to question the kind of planning which has gone on in the past while designing urban centres where unorganised workers have not been assigned spaces to live. These workers have to travel considerable distances to get to their places of work in the absence of assigned spaces for them. If cities have seen the proliferation of illegal colonies and slums, it is precisely because the workers have not been given any space to live near the residential complexes and condominiums where they are engaged as domestic help, gardeners, cleaners, guards and drivers. A considerable number of those who flock to big cities in search of jobs in the unorganised sector also make an effort to somehow squeeze into any illegal sub-urban colony or slum and get a roof over their head. Such illegal colonies, unplanned as they are, often get regularised during the time of elections. However, the plight of inhabitants in such colonies rarely improves in terms of good infrastructure. It was in October last year that Union Cabinet had passed a bill to regularise 1,797 unauthorised slums in the national