Lockdown effect: India’s workers shun city jobs
MANY INDUSTRIES ARE GRAPPLING TO FIND WAYS TO LURE BACK WORKERS
When power loom operator Lokanath Swain boarded a bus home after a 40-day wait in the textile hub of Surat, he took a silent vow — to never return to his workplace of two decades.
Like millions of migrant workers left jobless by India’s strict coronavirus lockdown, Swain was left penniless and facing starvation and could only afford the 1,700km trip back to eastern Odisha state after his family wired him money.
Countless workers in India have walked thousands of miles home after losing their jobs, many dying in accidents along the way, and the ordeal has made them reluctant to return to work despite India easing restrictions to reboot industrial activity.
Swain is among the often invisible army of about 100 million migrant workers in India — or 20 per cent of the workforce — who leave their villages for jobs in cities, where their skills are needed in manufacturing, construction, or the hospitality industry.
Reports compiled by aid workers show that more than half of the stranded workers who contacted them in distress during the lockdown were out of food and money, with nearly four out of every five not paid by their employers.
About 13 per cent of 17,000 migrants in contact with the volunteers of Stranded Workers Action Network said they would seek work in their hometowns in the future.
“What is the point of returning now? My employer abandoned me. I would rather stay with my family even if I earn half of what I earned there,” Swain said.
Although informally employed, their skills oil supply chains feeding domestic and global markets and their earnings support rural communities, with economists warning their reluctance to return could mean labour shortages that hit the Indian economy.
Aware of their dependence on migrant workers, many industries and state governments are now grappling to find ways to lure back workers or to train local residents in the often skilled work conducted by this travelling army of employees.
Biggest challenge
“The bitter experience they have had has left them traumatised and we know that most of them will not even think of coming back to work in the near future,” said realtor Kishore Jain from Bengaluru.
“Bringing them back is going to be our biggest challenge,” said Jain, who is the Bengaluru chapter president of Confederation of Real Estate Developers’ Associations of India.
Migrant worker Rakesh Kumar said he always earned his living in Bengaluru as an electrician, but the lockdown and halting the trains turned him into a beggar.
Migrant workers typically return home for festivals or during the harvest season.
But this time around, many have returned home to stay. “Once I get home, I will look for a job nearby. Why would I want to repeat this experience?” construction worker Rakesh Kumar said. “I will never come back.”