Bharat Dogra
W
hen two path-breaking laws were passed in India in 1996 for construction workers, there was great hope among tens of millions of these workers for a range of benefits and welfare measures promised by these laws. Despite a delayed and hesitant start, these hopes got a boost more recently when the Supreme Court gave strong directions for the better implementation of these laws. However interviews with nearly 50 construction workers of Delhi recently revealed that they feel disappointed with the poor implementation of these laws resulting in denial of the promised welfare benefits to them.
These workers live in working class clusters of colonies like JJ colony Bawana, Haiderpur, Shahbad Dairy and Dwarka. They have carefully preserved documents relating to their applications submitted a long time back, only to get the response of an endless wait. ‘Apply, apply, no reply’ appears to be the situation here.
The situation was somewhat more hopeful a few years back when I had interviewed workers of these clusters earlier. Even though benefits had even then reached only a relatively small number of people, there was a sense of hope that now that these benefits have started coming in, the number of beneficiaries will soon increase. This hope is now receding rapidly, as the implementation has become poorer instead of improving.
These benefits include old-age pension, scholarships for children of workers, grant at the time of marriage and child-birth in family, compensation for accident, help to family following death of a worker etc.
A pension of Rs. 4000 a month available under this law can give significant support to construction workers, particularly if received by both husband and wife, and the few who receive this readily agree that this has made life much easier for them in their old age. The trouble is those not getting this and made to wait endlessly for the processing of their papers are much more numerous.
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When Jagdish Prasad neared the age of 60, he filed his pension papers, but three years later there has been no response yet. Then there are others like Ganpat and Rajkumar who were getting pension earlier but did not get during the last one or two months. Only about 6% of those eligible for this pension are said to be getting this, and even this may be an overestimate.
The condition of widows like Seeta Devi and Chanda Devi is particularly pathetic as they can’t find the minimum means for bringing up children while the claims filed by them keep getting delayed. In their case even the widow pension they received under a different scheme has stopped arbitrarily. “There is no one to care for the poor”, says Chanda Devi. Another distressing case is that of accident victims like Bhagwati, who was badly injured but did not get any compensation or relief, either under normal process or under the special construction workers’ law.
The documents relating to marriage-time help appear very colorful due to attaching the mandatory wedding card and photograph, but in the overwhelming majority of cases have not yet resulted in bringing in the promised help months or even years after the wedding and the claim being filed.
Scholarships for education of children are a much valued part of the various provisions under these laws and their importance has increased in recent times as education of children is threatened due to economic difficulties. But instead of increasing, the access to such scholarships too has been decreasing, workers say.
This is despite the fact that many of these claims are being pursued in a systemic way by sincere labor activists. As Bibiyani, one such activist involved in helping workers to file such claims says, “Workers have filed these with a lot of hope and we make the best possible effort in the middle of several constraints to take them forward, also obtaining legal help for this, but despite this the results have been very discouraging.”
Although the government presents its estimates to show at least some progress, the reality is different as a large number of non-workers have been registered and often corner the limited funds released. This may be one reason why even the modest progress shown by government records is not reflected in ground-level reality. One activist says about her visits to government offices for claim processing, “They make us wait for a long time, keep having tea or lunch, then use some pretext or the other to ask us to come some other time. I say stop this hypocrisy and delay tactics. Tell us clearly what your intention is.”
This is exactly what many deeply hurt and long waiting workers will like to say to the concerned government authorities. The gradual erosion of their hopes being seen now is not just deeply distressing but in addition this is also a glaring violation of the clear directives given by the Supreme Court for the improved implementation of the various welfare measures under construction workers’ laws.
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Can Workers Protect Legislation Enacted After Their Long Struggle
If workers struggle for a long time for protective legislation and also succeed in their aim, but the protective law is threatened by dilution and restrictive changes even before its benefits can reach most workers, then should they not re-assert to protect this law?
This is a question which construction workers face today in the context of the threat of the two protective laws enacted for their welfare and social security in 1996 as in the process of codification of labor laws important provisions of these laws are likely to be diluted and weakened. To give an example, safety provisions of the 1996 laws face considerable dilution.
The two laws passed, after a long phase of struggle, for building and construction workers (BOCWs) in 1996 were not exactly ideal laws, but still these went a long way in fulfilling their long pending demands. Briefly these provided for 1 to 2% cess to be imposed on all construction work beyond a limit and making available this fund to state BOCW boards ( to be set up in all states and union territories) for providing pensions, health and maternity benefits, educational support for children etc. to construction workers and their families.
However as initially the implementation was tardy, soon a second phase of struggle had to start, this time for the proper implementation of these laws. To their great credit, in these efforts the judiciary of several courts including some high courts and above all the Supreme Court were found to be quite helpful. Gradually 37 state BOCW boards were set up all over the country, and significant benefits started reaching workers. Although much remained to be done and the actual funds that became available and were used for worker welfare should have been several times higher if everything had gone strictly according to laws, still a good beginning had been made which had brought much hope.
However the recent codification of four labor laws by the union government and assimilating the various existing laws in these four codes has been a big blow for these efforts. The National Campaign Committee for Construction Labor (the NCC-CL), which had played an important role in the struggles for enacting legislation and later for its proper implementation, has argued in its more recent protests and memorandums that just when the two protective laws were in the process of being stabilized and strengthened, the future of some of their important provisions has become very uncertain in the process of the recent codification.
Their stand is very well-reasoned as already achieved gains of workers cannot be rolled back or threatened under the pretext of re-organizing laws, particularly when the re-organization or codifications of laws has taken place without proper consultation with affected workers and in fact all the time ignoring their protests and organizations. All the aspirations which millions of construction workers had from the hard-won existing welfare laws cannot just be brushed aside in a crual way just by uttering the mantra of codification.
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Another area of concern appears to be that the new system that is being created is a highly centralized one with reduced role for states and reduced mechanisms of checks and balances, consultation and transparency. Workers placed a lot of trust in the physical registration cards provided to them with various details but this system is being diluted. The tripartite board mechanism appears to be moving in the direction of much more bureaucratization.
This together with the actual benefits reaching workers already getting reduced and funds entrusted with some boards being misused without proper budgeting priorities ( for example board funds being pre-empted for pollution related or other work-closure doles which need separate provision), which would leave very little funds for real welfare priorities as mentioned in the laws.
Hence the overall impression created is that of the two protective laws getting diluted and weakened even before these benefits could reach most workers. On this basis the NCC-CL feels that instead of being included in the labor codes, the two protective laws should continue to remain as before and the path ahead would be to ensure their better implementation as per directives given by the Supreme Court. This is in line with the principle accepted by most trade unions that there should be no dilution or reduction of hard-won labor rights, whether in the name of codification, or in any other way.
These objections of workers have a wider significance as many other sections of workers are adversely affected by the dilution of protections relating to boards based systems. Construction work has been regarded as the second most important source of livelihood in the country and any dilution of welfare laws for workers will adversely affect tens of millions of workers, including a significant number of women and below poverty line households.
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The writer is Honorary Convener, Campaign to Save Earth Now. His recent books include Man over Machine—A Path to Peace, Planet i
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