Govt should put in place systems to use their potential effectively for benefit of all
The Centre has given clearance to states to bring their migrant labourers back in coordination with host states. Till lockdown most of the states used to think that the migrant labourers were a liability, thanks to increasing involvement of migrant labourers in acts of thefts and crime. But when the home states decided to bring back those labourers, the host states started feeling the pinch. Kerala is one of the first states to realise this and started addressing them as “guest labourers” instead of migrants. But such superfluous overtures did not cut much ice with them.
The movement of migrant labourers is a very gruelling task for the government and it creates a huge impact on national economy and GDP. It will be a problem for home states like UP where more than 30 Lakh labourers are going to return from different states such as Delhi, Maharashtra, Punjab and Haryana. Other main donor states are Bihar, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, West Bengal and Odisha. Due to various political reasons most of the states took action to bring back their people, but there is no proper planning on what happens next. There is no proper plan to manage this huge manpower, as the home states lack resources and opportunities to provide employment to the returnees. The government cannot feed through their welfare schemes for too long. The only solution is to provide them an income source and make them financially independent.
Similarly, the host states are also going to face huge economic crisis. In Kerala, almost 2.5 million migrant labourers are engaged in different fields such as construction, hotel industry, MSME segment, etc. Metro cities like Mumbai and Hyderabad also depend highly on the migrant labour force in sectors such as transport, construction and manual labour. The flight of the migrants disturbs the balance of all these activities on these states and cities. Moreover, it will have a huge economic cost for host states.
The Central government has appointed a retired IAS officer to study the impact of migrations on the economy. State governments have to make a data bank of migrant labourers. An effective skill development system needs to be adopted under strict supervision. Rather than just a project of the government, it should be focused on the basis of quality and output. Following are a few areas, the states need to focus:
- Create a database of those labourers, which should include, the educational qualification, area they worked, aptitude, attitude and skill levels.
- Provide this database to construction companies, MSME, and other industries where labourers are required.
- Encourage private companies to engage the labourers from same state or locally.
Another important point to think about is the reason for depending on the migrant labourers since there are huge unemployment in host states. Employers prefer migrant workers because of their cost-effectiveness and reliability. In some cases migrant workers stay at their workplace and are available 24 X 7 and are absent from work only on rare occasions like festivals.
Cost-effectiveness could be handled by the support of the government. The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) funds should be effectively utilised for this purpose. Today this scheme is widely used for non-productive works in states, and even for working in private works, and there is no auditing of the output of the result on the usage of this fund. Making use of this fund on a cost sharing basis in infrastructure projects, which will be a win-win equation for the Government, employer/contractor and labourers will be a major game-changer. Only proper administration of this fund could make a big impact. The companies should register with this scheme and select labourers from the databank available with the government. This will be a sensible solution to this crisis.
(Author is a techno-legal expert and management strategist)
Discussion about this post