Wednesday, March 18, 2009

Elections-Who cares for the migrant?

Umi Daniel

The elections are round the corner and another opportunity for the people of India to show their might through their votes. This is the time when poor and marginalized people of this country feel the real and equal sense of citizenship to choose their representative and parties who are going rule them for another five years.

The migrant from western Orissa or seasonal migrant from any of the poorest regions includes dalits, tribal and other marginalized communities of India will be again denied of their citizenship rights to cast their valuable votes for the new government who will be carrying out programme and policies for their development. In a country where distress migration is driving people out to alien destinations, will they be ever participating in any form of the democratic governance process? For instance, the two lakh migrant from western Orissa and more than four lakh Ganjam migrant will be completely away from the election in their state and ignored about the political situations unfolding in their native land. When the migrants come home during June, the election results will be out and they will be imposed a leader to whom they have never elected or preferred. Who is responsible for this, the poverty which drives them out or the policy which never empowered them to vote? Successive governments have never bothered about these people during important events such as Panchayat, assembly, union elections, census, BPL surveys or simply participating in gram Sabha. Moreover, the government have never even tried to make legislation as to how these lesser know citizens will participate in the democratic processes.

I fee, this is high time that the election commission, political parties, civil society and the policy makers think about this and facilitate a meaningful process for participation of migrants in the democratic governance process like elections and other important events.

Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Social Security Bill 2008 and Migrant workers

Umi Daniel
After almost a decade, Unorganised Workers Social Security Bill seeking to provide social security to workers in the vast unorganized sector was finally passed by Parliament. The Bill seeks to make a beginning in providing social security to some sections of the vast 94% of the total 45.9 crore working population of the country who have remained outside the purview of the facilities.

The scheme relates to provide life and disability cover, health and maternity benefits; old age protection; and any other benefits as may be determined by the Central Government. it provides setting up of a National Social Security Advisory Board which has been re-named as National Social Security Board with the Union labour minister as its chairperson.

The bill has a provision for registering all the 400 million unorganized workers engaged in various informal sectors and will be provided with a unique national identification number. As per the provision, along with the worker(except BPL families) the employer, Union government and respective state government will contribute 1 rupee a day to be used for the social security benefit for the workers. This means, every day around 1600 million rupees will be collected and will be deposited with some designated banks or insurance agency. Annually the scheme aspires to collect 584,000 million rupees which may be used for the social security coverage of 400 odd million workers.

In relation to the coverage of migrant workers; administering the Act will be a massive and complex task for the government to first register and keep track of each of the migrant workers who will be earning their wages from different location and different employees. By now, it is evident that, the building and construction workers Act is struggling hard to register the migrant workers to avail the existing social security benefit under its purview, the proposed Un-organized workers bill will face daunting task to bring the migrant workers under its coverage and provide meaningful social security benefits.

Already there are concerns and worry has been expressed by large number of labour unions working with agriculture workers, forest workers, domestic and other marginalized workers about its coverage and benefit. Similarly, the large chunk of migrant workers who are into undefined sectors and field may face difficulty in accessing the benefit of the scheme.

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