After long hours of work, informal labourers employed to build metro networks in cities struggle with exhaustion and loneliness
Sonu Pandey
Metro workers rest whenever they can during their long 12-hour shifts at work.
Antara Banerjee/The Migration Story
New Delhi: Mukesh’s day begins at the crack of dawn, when he wakes up to cook himself breakfast, wash dishes and clean his room, before heading out to work. After 12 hours of working at a metro construction site in Delhi, bone-tired, he returns to the rented room he shares with four other migrant workers.
The 21 year-old has no energy left, but has to cook dinner, his final task of the day. That’s also when he misses his family the most.
“Living with your family at least gives you this advantage that when you come back from work, tired and exhausted…you can take some good rest,” he said, while carrying construction material and assisting the mistry (foreman) at the site. “You don’t have to worry about waking up early to prepare breakfast and lunch. You don’t have to worry about these additional things.”
Mukesh migrated from Rewa, Madhya Pradesh to New Delhi in 2015. Forced to drop out of school at 15 because his family–a wife, mother, father, brother and sister–needed financial support, he left his village with a friend’s help. Unlike in Delhi, there’s little work in Rewa that actually pays a living wage.
For a year, Mukesh worked at a metro construction site in Delhi. After that, he migrated to Mumbai through a village contractor and worked in construction in the city. But, the work conditions in Mumbai were even more exploitative, with 12 hour shifts, meagre pay, no weekly offs and no compensation or leave to recover from an accident.
Eight months later, Mukesh returned to Delhi and started working at the metro site in south-west Delhi.
"In the last 2 years, I have visited my village only once,” Mukesh said. “I stayed there for a month, and then returned to work and haven’t met my wife and family in quite a long time now. I want to return home but have a debt to pay and that is why I am working day and night here, away from my family.”
THE METRO NETWORK
The construction sector in India employs almost 71 million people, and contributes 8% to the country’s GDP. Transportation is a key component of urban infrastructure, and metro rail networks are flagship programs under India’s smart cities project. India’s 12th Five-Year Plan has recommended that all Indian cities with a population of more than 3 million people should start constructing metro rails.
Under construction metro rail work in xxxx city. Antara Banerjee/The Migration Story
At present, 21 cities in India have an operational metro network, running across 945 kilometres, according to the 2023-24 Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA) Annual Report. The report also predicts that by 2025, this network will grow to 1,700 kms across 27 cities.
Given the high operational cost and capital required to build these networks, the 2017 Metro Rail Policy encourages public-private partnerships for the implementation of these projects.
The construction sector, including the work on metro lines, is done through a complex network of sub-contracting. There are layers of ‘sub-contractors’ between workers and the principal employer at these construction sites, with major construction firms sub-contracting to smaller firms, who then further sub-contract it to even smaller firms with specific specializations.
As a result, employees like Mukesh don’t work directly for the big companies that win contracts to do the work and the primary employers do not directly monitor the working and living conditions of wokers.
Before 1996, India had separate laws that addressed workers’ wages, social security, grievance redressal and industrial health and safety. But, in 1996, the country passed the Building and Other Construction Workers (BOCW) Act and the Building and Other Construction Workers Welfare Cess Act, specifically for the welfare of workers employed in the sector.
Ongoing work at an underground section (to check) of the metro network in xxxxx.
Antara Banerjee/The Migration Story
The Acts were meant to ensure that workers are not left to the mercy of their contractors to meet their needs for healthcare, safety requirements and social security benefits. Instead, the state would provide these entitlements. But, two decades since the law was passed, most construction workers remain outside the ambit of the law, say labour rights campaigners.
Generally, neither the principal employers nor contractors take responsibility for registering workers under the law, which mandates proper working hours, break time, as well as safety provision and health measures for construction workers, both formal and informal.
“But, the act is silent on the quality and standards of housing,” Rajesh Joseph, faculty at Azim Premji University who works on informal labor and migration, told The Migration Story.
“The whole idea is to move away from this notion that the lower rung of labour is informal in nature. Why should it be informal in nature when these are prestigious projects of the state. When everyone has to be registered then why are so many of the workers not registered?” Joseph added.
NO PLACE FOR FAMILY
Mukesh lives with his brother and three others in a rented half-kaccha, half-pucca room provided by their contractor. The accommodation is about a kilometre away from their workplace.
Work continues into the late evenings at many metro construction sites across the country. Antara Banerjee/The Migration Story
“The contractor doesn’t allow us to live with our families. If we wanted to, we’d have to pay the accommodation expenses ourselves,” said Mukesh, who got married in 2019 and said he wanted to live with his wife.
“If you want to bring your family, then you will have to manage everything on your own. And with the extremely low wages, how can you manage the expenses in this expensive city,” said Vinod, a migrant from Uttar Pradesh, and Mukesh’s co-worker.
Shambhu, 21, a migrant worker from the Sehersa district in Bihar, said he felt the same way. “If we bring our wife and kids, we wouldn’t be able to eat or educate them,” he said.
All the 60 workers interviewed said they wanted to live with their families but were forced to live with their co-workers.
In the absence of their families, workers, who are mostly in their 20s, struggle to balance their work along with domestic chores, leaving them exhausted and impacting their health and well being.
After working a 12-hour shift and later doing domestic chores, Mukesh said he rarely gets enough sleep at night or even rest during lunch hours, with no designated spot for eating lunch and workers are expected to eat out of plastic bags.
“We are not provided any lunch by the company, which is why we wake up early to cook and pack our lunch. This also means we don’t have to walk back to our rooms during the lunch break, can quickly eat and get some rest before we start work again,” he added.
Bhola, a 19-year old migrant worker from Darbhanga in Bihar recounted an incident when he fell down several storeys and was severely injured. When he told his supervisor that he needed to take the day off to rest and recover, the supervisor said he would deduct half a day’s pay from his wages.
“It’s so insensitive that they did not even allow me to take rest for even half the day,” he said, dressed in a torn t-shirt and dirty pants, with dark circles under his eyes alluding to lack of sleep.
After working 12 hours at the site, he goes home and does house-work–cooking, cleaning utensils, washing clothes–all of which add to his constant exhaustion.
Bhola said that he constantly feels “weak” and never gets proper sleep and rest. “Even if you are not feeling well, you will have to complete the assigned task. You cannot leave because then they will deduct your wage. No work means no pay, that is the rule here," he said.adding that after
LONG SHIFTS, DELAYED WAGES
In August 2021, Mukesh had spent six months working as a casual labourer with no contract at the metro construction site in Delhi. Mukesh’s tasks included climbing stairs, carrying construction material from the basement to the ground floor and vice versa, as well as completing any other tasks his contractor asked of him.
Most workers at metro construction sites are in their 20s and unable to bring their families to the city.
Antara Banerjee/The Migration Story
Beginning his day at 8 am, Mukesh worked for 12 hours each day, and sometimes did overtime that was usually uncompensated. His contractor claimed that those extra hours are included in Mukesh’s overall salary.
According to the workers, contractors told them that there was no additional income for 3-4 hours of extra work at night, with attendance being counted for wages only if they worked the entire night.
Wage theft for overtime work is illegal and as per section VII (payment of wages) of the BOCW Act, workers are entitled to double wages for overtime work or work done on a rest day. But, most migrant workers are unaware of their rights and possess little power to demand what they are owed.
Sahabuddin, 21, Mukesh’s co-worker, also said that their contractor regularly denies the workers’ requests for pay for overtime work. The contractor tells migrant workers that since they don’t live with their families, they don’t really need to return to their rooms early, he said.
There’s almost always a month’s delay in receiving his salary, said Sahabuddin, adding that he survived on just Rs 1,000 per week and would often not be able to send money to his family back home.
“I’ve bought groceries on credit because I haven’t gotten my salary for the past two months. There is no hisab (calculation of dues) and no timely payment ever by the contractor,” he said.
The long work hours and fear of wage cuts also that it is difficult to remain in touch with their families back home too, many workers said.
“If the contractor sees you talking on the phone even with your family members or fellow employees, he will deduct money from your wages,” said Mukesh.
“There’s no festival or celebration or leisure activity for poor workers like us, not even a cup of tea.”
(The names of the workers have been changed to protect their identities and names of metro construction sites have been withheld for the same reason.)
Edited by Kudrat Wadhwa
Sonu Pandey is a Research Fellow at the School of Development at Azim Premji University in Bengaluru. He has researched on social determinants of health and well-being of informal workers in the construction sector in Delhi.
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