Migration has been a known phenomenon since time immemorial. India having witnessed the world’s largest voluntary migration, currently houses 400 million migrants, with over 100 million of them being circular migrants that repeatedly move between home and host areas. Thus, at least 19.6 percent of the Indian workforce consists of migrants today. Therefore, it comes as no surprise that the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic that has brought the world’s strongest economies to their knees, has left the ‘inter-state migrant workmen’ afoot. The term refers to any person who is recruited by a contractor in one State under an agreement for employment in another State. To these workers, every Contractor supposedly has two obligations, i.e. to ensure regular payment of wages, suitable work conditions, fitting residential accommodation and the like; and to pay the journey allowance and the wages for the duration of such journeys from their workplace to their areas of residence. Considering the perpetual politics and ceaseless corruption ongoing in India, it comes as no shock that such obligations are not being fulfilled. Omissions to register the workmen take away all the legally available benefits from them and even if registered, Contractors and Employers often ignore their statutory duties. Neither the Inspectors nor the Principal Employers pay attention to the pathetic conditions of these workers and continue to defy statutory provisions. The 2016-17 Economic survey says that around 55 million people move for economic reasons. Interstate migration in India has increased in the past two decades from 11.08 percent as per Census 1991 to 12.06 percent per Census 2011. It is shocking how much of our population suffers due to the exiguity of law implementation. This is not a suddenly originating problem, rather it is a result of the government’s continued overlooking of the concerns of these migrant workmen. The fact that there exists no effective system for ensuring surveillance leads to an immediate need for stricter actions and implemented policies.
Indeed, the Interstate Migrant Workmen Act (“ISMWA”) was enacted in the year 1979 but while the ISMWA seeks to provide adequate protection to migrant workmen, it recognises only those workers who are engaged by a contractor as inter-state migrant workers. Workers migrating on their own and employed outside their home state are not covered under the said Act. Next, there does not exist any provision in the Act to provide security for tenure of employment. Further, a migrant workman is required to be registered in his home as well as host state, which has often proved to be a stumbling block. Therefore, the definition of ‘migrant workmen’ in the ISMW Act is discriminatory in terms of extending the benefits and excludes many, thereby in no way dwindling their plight. The Act was supposed to be a solution but colossal changes are to be made for it to actually solve the problem.
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