Contents – Inland Labor Migration in India (Issue 9)
Contents: Inland Labor Migration in India (Issue 9)
Posts from the ‘Issue 9/Inland Labor Migration in India’ Category
Aug 1
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Guest Editorial: Inland labour migration in India: Patterns of the phenomenon and critical possibilities
By Soma Chatterjee
Collectively, the contributions point towards a few broad themes. Indian cities, magnets for migrant workers, are, at the same time, apathetic, if not hostile towards them. Migrant workers are shorn of basic rights to education and health, only to increase their exploitability. It seems that it is their bottomless marginality that fuels India’s growth story. Further, it seems lack of recognition at both source and destination is an issue for migrant workers.
The Invisible City Makers: Of migration and migrant workers in India
By Amrita Sharma & Rajiv Khandewal
The story of economic growth in India is essentially the story of labor migration and of migrants, who leave the increasingly poor villages with a decadent farm economy in search of better lives. They build resplendent city economies but fail to get a share of the riches; much worse, many struggle for a dignified human existence – for shelter, subsidized food, healthcare, and education – in the same cities they build.
Book Review: Aman Sethi’s A Free Man: A True Story of Life and Death in Delhi
By Mosarrap H. Khan
While narrativizing the social biography of his respondent, Sethi does not subscribe to the standard triumph-of-the-underdog narrative. Rather, Sethi’s realist depiction is suffused with pessimism, resulting from an understanding that Ashraf’s waywardness will never allow him to live a life of bourgeois respectability.
A tête-à-tête with Manoj, an enterprising tea vendor!
By Prerit Rana
Manoj, 34, is now running the teashop in Gurgaon for last two years. The building is still under construction and just half-completed. Unlike his counterparts on the main road, he doesn’t get harassed by the police and the municipality, as his shop lies in the private premises with doors opening to the outer public. He has got a room as well to stay.
Blog Post: Chaiwala!
By Prerit Rana
I thought of having tea at Gaurav’s stall again, but, unfortunately, Gaurav’s tempo-shop was found in shambles. I could only click a picture of the broken shop, with the hope that he will come back or have left for something better.
Blog Post: I am a sex worker and I am a migrant…
By Amrita Sharma
Last week, I went to the doctor again
She says, it’s the final stage
And that I would not live for long
Blog Post: Zinda Kaumein Waqt ka Intezaar nahin karti!
By Amrita Sharma
If a hawker got caught then he had to pay Rs. 1200 to the Policewallah. Usually, half of the goods were also seized by the police. If it is a municipality raid, then the fine amount is higher, somewhere in the range of Rs. 5000 to 6000. The only way for the hawkers to deal with the problem was a bribe. I was told that on an average a hawker pays Rs. 3 to 4k as bribe, called hafta locally.
Blog Post: Ho Gayi Duniya Muthhi Mein – Migrants and their Mobile Phones
By Rahul Jain
Close to 2/3rd of the migrants reported a drop in frequency of going home after owning a mobile. With help of the gadget they were able to stay in touch with family and the anxiety related to family’s well-being was reduced. Close to 1/3rd spoke with family on a daily basis. For the short distance migrants, this had a positive impact on their stability at work, making them more employable.
Cultivating Hope in the Anything-but-Green: Mobile Creches’ Work with Children in India’s Migrant Labor Camps
By Katie Meave Murphy
During interviews and field visits to construction sites in the NCR in June and July 2011, mothers explained the reasons for bringing children to the construction site. As one mother recounted: “I used to bring my child to the site because she was only 7 months and I was breastfeeding. I had to work. I had no choice.”
Noticing the Unnoticed: Children of migrant construction workers in Jawaharlal Nehru University
By Maria Rosaria Centrone
When I first arrived to JNU, in 2009, I found this reality almost shocking – a small world of deprivation within a larger world of research, knowledge, and, ironically, political activism. How can the supposedly most educated people of India happily pursue their studies while next to their doors these children hardly understood the meaning of school or education?
Docu: Pension scheme of migrant adivasi workers in Thane district
By Sushmita & Vijay Ravikumar
The testimonies in this video are by people in the Dahanu taluka who still haven't gotten their pensions. Our readers can imagine the near impossibility of getting pension for those destitute elderly, who aren't backed by an activist organization.
Political Inclusion of Seasonal Migrant Workers in India: Perceptions, Realities and Challenges
By Amrita Sharma, Santosh Poonia, Milind Babar, Vikas Singh, Preeti Singh & Lalit Kr. Jha
Political inclusion of migrants is a well studied subject in the context of international migration. Discussion on the topic for migrants within the boundaries of the nation-state is, however, rare. What shape does the question of political inclusion take in a country such as India – where people are not able to vote because of their mobility?
‘Do Bigha Zamin’/‘Two Acres of Land’ and Migration in Indian Cinematography
By Amrit Gangar
Empathy with the plight of workers/peasants, and overt disruption of the rural as a site of purity and refuge while also faithfully narrating the desire for return makes Do Bigha Zamin a pivotal work in the cinema of migration, anticipating what would become a motif in popular Indian cinema: the villager eking out a livelihood in the city. The city, thus, continues to be the predicament of the rural poor.
Productive Body, Unseen Figure: The Migrant Laborer in Bombay Cinema
By Suvadip Sinha
While India has experienced rapid and, often, unsustainable urban growth during these decades, such urbanization has created a shadow group that remained perennially dispossessed and disenfranchised. Yet, Indian cinema, popular Bollywood cinema in particular, in recent times has largely remained oblivious about them.
Café Dissensus 