Not so clean: Why workers are leaving India’s green energy projects

Many young migrant workers are signing up to construct renewable energy parks in India, but wage delays and lack of amenities is forcing them to quit their jobs within months

Anuradha Nagaraj

An under construction solar park in Kachchh district of Gujarat. Anuradha Nagaraj/The Migration Story

KHAVADA, Gujarat:  A month into his new job at the world’s largest renewable energy park in Khavada in Gujarat’s Rann of Kutch, Anawar Alam was planning his escape.

Hired along with 17 others who had travelled with him to work on the construction of a solar project at the renewable energy park, Alam had hoped that the promised pay and perks would support his agrarian family back home in Bihar. Working in an unfamiliar and remote location, 25 km from the Indian Border Security Force’s outpost in Kotada, Alam started having second thoughts about the job in just two weeks of being there.

“Nothing really prepared us for where we would be working or the fact that it was so far from the nearest village. The work was strenuous, the shift was for 12 hours, and we were living in makeshift tents near the site where we were working, about 2 km from the office,” Alam said.

“It was incredibly hot, and the contractor kept yelling at us for not working longer or harder, threatening us by saying that he would kill us and no one would even know where we had disappeared. But the bigger problem was that he was not paying us on time or in full.” 

Alam is one among thousands of young migrant workers who are signing up to work in the remote, salty marsh land of Kachchh. Drawn largely from the hinterlands of Jharkhand, Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, they arrive in their hundreds to work on the under construction solar projects, encouraged by contractors who promise good wages, facilities and steady employment.

However, for many of the migrating men, largely in their 20s, the possible opportunity of a ‘green job’ is short-lived as a complex chain of sub-contracting results in long delays in payment, harsh living conditions. The Migration Story interviewed over 50  contractors and workers who spoke of poor access to power, clean drinking water and to everyday requirements.

As a result, most leave their jobs and return home in a few months, losing wages and opportunities in a sector that is seen as a key player in creating green jobs.

Migrant workers from Jharkhand waiting to be picked up by their contractor at Khavada village in Gujarat. Anuradha Nagaraj/The Migration Story

“There have been a few complaints, and we have immediately taken action,” said a senior official in the labour department of the Bhuj administration, requesting anonymity as he was not authorized to speak to the media. “We encourage workers to report wage theft and other issues. But not too many come forward given the fact that most are migrant workers.”

Alam, 22, and his co-workers did raise complaints with the engineers at the company’s office on site. When there was no response, he dialed home and asked his father to send him 30,000 rupees. He then made multiple trips out of the heavily guarded facility with the co-workers who had travelled with him, temporarily housing them in Khavada village. Once all the men were out, he hid in a transport vehicle leaving the gates of the energy park, regrouped with the other workers and returned home.

“Not only did I not earn anything, but I also ended up borrowing money from my father to escape from there and later we sold some of our land to raise 200,000 Indian rupees to pay pending wages to the other 10 workers,” Alam said.

“We lost on all fronts.”

THE JOB MARKET

In 2023, India had an estimated 1.02 million renewable energy jobs, with hydropower being the largest employer with some 453,000 jobs, as per the International Renewable Energy Agency’s (IRENA) annual review 2024.

By 2030, India aims to skill and up-skill over 300,000 workers to support the installation, maintenance, and operation of solar infrastructure across the country, including upcoming large solar parks and roof top installations.

While the solar projects are being built by some of India’s largest companies, they escape accountability as hiring of workers is outsourced to manpower companies who in turn engage labour contractors, labour rights campaigners said.

Besides the energy park at Khavada, numerous other under-construction solar projects are also employing a largely migrant workforce as they race to meet India’s renewable energy goal of 500 GW from non-fossil sources by 2030.

“This vast labour force coming to construct renewable energy projects is not recognised as ‘solar labour’ but as general construction workers,” said Anuj, who prefers to use one name, a resource fellow at the Centre for Energy, Environment and People (CEEP), a non-profit that works on energy justice for communities.

“It is a completely unregulated sector from a labour point of view. There is a new and complex network of solar contractors, engineers and workers developing. The sector is new but those running it are coming from old systems, bringing with them exploitative labour practices.”

Migrant workers pose for a picture near an under-construction solar park they are working at in Kachchh district of Gujarat. Anuradha Nagaraj/The Migration Story

Anuj added that the total number of jobs created in the sector were broad estimates and it was unclear if they took into account informal migrant workers, who were hired during the construction phase. The lack of transparency also led to lack of accountability, he said.

“Solar utility scale projects are outsourced to construction firms and contractors to build, and these are not necessarily seen as green jobs,” said Arpit Sharma, CEO of the Skill Council for Green Jobs under India's Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship.

“At present, these jobs attract a lot of migrant workers, but the space is not regulated. We are recommending that it be done soon so that these jobs become more sustainable for workers.”

Many contractors said that the challenges in retaining labour had led to delays in them being able to complete their work on time. Officials declined to comment on whether labour issues had impacted the completion schedules for these projects, with most stating that “delays could be attributed to many factors and labour was just one of them”.

REMOTE LOCATION

Khavada is the last village on the road from the town of Bhuj to the vast Rann of Kutch. Enroute, one road leads to the ancient city of Dholavira, a UNESCO world heritage site and home to one of the two largest Harappan civilization sites in India. It connects to the ‘road to heaven’ – a scenic highway that draws thousands of tourists.

The other road heading out of Khavada heads to the Border Security Force check post in Kotada, the last outpost beyond which lies the salty marsh of the Rann of Kutch and the renewable energy park. This road largely sees movement of trucks carrying material, cars carrying officials, tempos and jeeps carrying workers to the energy park. 

Security and permit checks are mandatory for all workers heading to work at the renewable energy park beyond the Border Security Force check post at Kotada, Gujarat. Anuradha Nagaraj/The Migration Story

The renewable energy park is a hybrid park, combining solar and wind power generation with a planned capacity of 30 GW. Upon its scheduled completion in 2028, it is expected to power approximately 18 million homes and offset 58 million tonnes of CO2 emissions annually. There are six developers who have been allotted land to develop renewable energy here, including the National Thermal Power Corporation (NTPC), Gujarat Industrial Power Company Limited and Adani Green Energy Limited.

Spread across 72,400 hectares of land, the project is under various stages of construction, with each developer having their own set of engineers, contractors and workers on site.

Entry into the park is restricted and requires documentation and an entry permit, given its proximity to the international border. The process begins when workers disembark at the Bhuj railway station nearly 80 km away, where some contractors collect personal identification documents of the workers for police and district administration verification.

The workers then travel a couple of hours to Khavada village, where they wait for their documentation to be processed and required permits to be issued.

A young migrant worker from Jharkhand waits for his ride to the Renewable Energy Park in Khavada village, Gujarat. Anuradha Nagaraj/The Migration Story

Eighteen-year-old Gautam Kumar’s journey was similar. He travelled from Jharkhand and arrived at the Bhuj station at 6 pm on a nippy 2024 December morning. He was the youngest in a group of 10 who spent the night outside a shuttered shop at the Khavada village junction, after they declined to travel with their contractor at 1 am to the worksite.

“It was an open jeep and the group said no because it was already so cold and we were tired,” Kumar said, sitting on the roadside with the others as dawn broke, waiting to be picked up by the contractor.

His first migration for work, Kumar was following his three older brothers into the renewable energy construction work sites. The class three dropout constantly spoke to his mother on the phone, assuring her that he was safe, would soon eat breakfast and head to the worksite.

“It didn’t make sense to work in the same place as my brothers because what will we do if our money gets stuck,” he said softly, alluding to the fact that many workers had not been paid wages on time or in full. “We have solar back home, and it has given us access to power supply. It is good and these big solar constructions are also giving jobs. But there are many stories about workers getting duped and that makes us nervous.”

LOST IN A MYRIAD OF SUB-CONTRACTING

Abhay Ramani arrived around 9 am to pick up Kumar and his group from Khavada. Besides a jeep to ferry them, he had a second vehicle loaded with mattresses, rations, water and other essentials.

He was the point of contact for this group of workers and responsible for ensuring they clock in the hours of work and finish the allocated construction work on time.

“Besides the work, I am also responsible for the daily needs of the workers. The onus to keep them happy at the workplace falls on me but it is extremely challenging,” Ramani said.

“Very often workers are unable to cope with working in remote locations where solar parks are being set-up. At Khavada park, mobile connectivity came only recently, so in the early days they had no connection with their families. It gets lonely for many.”

To mitigate this, companies organize movie screenings, have a health facility and small store to provide essentials to those living and working inside the park. But workers, who shared multiple videos with The Migration Story, said that there was a stark difference between amenities engineers had and what they were getting.

Jeeps, tempos and trucks wait at Khavada village to carry essentials and pick up workers heading to the Renewable Energy Park in Kachchh, Gujarat. Anuradha Nagaraj/The Migration Story

Most also blamed their job contractors for cheating them, adding that they had no way to reach out to the bigger companies whose projects they were working on.

Sumer Singh, 30, who runs a small manpower company supplying workers to upcoming solar parks, is only too familiar with this worker sentiment. 

He is in the middle rung of a three-tier set-up that is constructing these renewable energy structures. Above him are the bigger companies that take the entire contract for engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) of the site. These companies then carve out parts of the project and give it to smaller companies like Singh’s, who then outsource the work to labour contractors who reach out to their contacts in villages and collect groups of migrant workers.

“The system largely runs through a network of known people, and it requires an initial investment by us and the labour contractors,” Singh explained.

“There is a certain corporate set-up that exists at the top which is based on invoices, inspection of work completed and multiple checks before the full payment is made. But at the bottom, there are wages to be paid within a 45-day cycle which are often delayed as invoices get stuck and phone calls to these company headquarters in cities like Mumbai go unanswered. Problems start here.”

All contractors who spoke to The Migration Story said that delay in clearing bills impacts wages being paid on time. They added that their contracts give little leeway, with 10% of the payment being held for a year after completion of work as surety and money being released in phases that don’t coincide with worker payment cycles.

Many like Singh have refused to supply labour to the Khavada project citing lack of amenities for workers, too much financial burden on contractors and the harsh working conditions.

“Earlier, companies built labour colonies for the workers to stay on site but it proved to be too expensive for them. So now the labour contractor must help them rent homes in nearby villages or provide makeshift accommodation on site,” Singh said.

“For small contractors, these are prohibitive costs.”

Many contractors said they were the only ones held accountable by workers in case of any delays or other hardships not being addressed in a timely manner.

“Even if one worker has a problem and picks up his bags to return home, everyone from that group goes back,” said a contractor at Kotada.

“We spend up to 2,500 rupees to bring one person from a village to the site. Even small things make or break their intention to stay at sites. We try but many times things are not only in our hands and companies have to step up to take some responsibility for what is happening on the ground.”

The Gujarat Power Corporation Limited and Solar Energy Corporation of India did not respond to repeated requests for comment. The Migration Story also reached out to other companies operating out of the park but did not get any response.

Workers queue up at the Border Security Post at Kotada to get their documents verified before travelling further to the Renewable Energy Park in Kachchh in Gujarat. Anuradha Nagaraj/The Migration Story

LIFE BEYOND THE CHECKPOST

At the Kotada border security check post long queues snake alongside the road leading to document verification windows for all men and material entering the renewable energy park, a 30-minute drive further into the Rann.

Open jeeps from Khavada start arriving early, ferrying workers like Kumar and carrying rations for their stay.

At the check post, Kumar and his group were directed by their contractor to join one of the queues as Border Security Force personnel steered the vehicles and workers to prevent a traffic snarl.

A little away from the new arrivals, workers board jeeps with their luggage, heading back home. Most workers said they had done a few months on site and did not want to return.

“For the 100s that arrive here every day, there are 100s who leave also,” said Jesanguhai Ranabhai, the sarpanch of Khavada, whose office is a stone’s throw from the main pick-up and drop-off point for workers.

Sikander Kumar is one such worker. From Godda district of Jharkhand, he came with 25 others to work at a wage of 900 Indian rupees per day, a higher income than what his small patch of land was yielding back home.

Security checks being carried out at the Border Security Post at Kotada before vehicles carrying workers and goods are allowed to enter the Renewable Energy Park in Kachchh in Gujarat.

Anuradha Nagaraj/The Migration Story

“The work was not bad, the food was okay, though we would have frequent issues getting clean drinking water,” he said. “There was no power supply to where we were staying, and we were not being paid full salaries. We migrated so far from home for money and if we don’t get it, what is the point?”

Sikandar Kumar and his group left the renewable energy park after two months, walking more than 20 kms before they could find some transport to get them to the station and then back home. Their return trip was funded by their families.

Kumar now must pay some of the workers who left their villagers on his assurance money for their losses. “I have to pay back 40,000 and more importantly rebuild trust with them.”

Similarly, Alam was summoned by his village council and asked him to pay workers he had convinced to go along with him. Alam sold a part of his family land to raise 200,000 rupees and does some tailoring work.

“We thought we would earn more in solar, save and improve our lives. The opposite happened,” Alam said.

“Now we are back home and there is no way to complain or follow-up on the wages we lost and the additional money we spent for our return. All our calls are going unanswered.”

Anuradha Nagaraj is an independent journalist and founder of The Migration Story newsroom.