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Household Incomes in India are Yet to Recover from the Covid-19 Lockdown Shock

Manavi Kapur

Indian incomes were on a downward slope – and then came the pandemic.

Household incomes in rural and urban India had begun to shrink from September 2019 owing to an ongoing economic slowdown. But the steepest decline came in April 2020, according to data from the business information company Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy, which was analysed by Ashoka University’s Centre for Economic Data and Analysis.

April was the first full month after the Indian government announced one of the world’s strictest Covid-19 lockdowns on March 24 last year.

All economic activity came to a grinding halt, with everything from school and cinema halls to offices and factories completely shut. During April and May, several companies also announced steep pay cuts and layoffs, which corresponds with the Centre for Economic Data and Analysis-Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy findings of household incomes.

The first quarter of India’s financial year (April to June) also saw economic degrowth of 23.9%, the first and largest gross domestic product decline in at least four decades.

“Starting November 2019, total household incomes in rural and urban India were on a declining trend even before the pandemic and lockdown hit but the steepest decline came in the month of April 2020 (the first full month of lockdown) with a decline of 19% and 41% in rural and urban India respectively,” the Centre for Economic Data and Analysis-Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy bulletin noted.

Total household incomes in rural and urban India saw a steep decline during India’s Covid-19 lockdown. Source: CEDA-CMIE bulletin

In terms of rural and urban total wages, the shrinkage showed similar trends to total household incomes. But in terms of absolute wages, the decline in rural India (41%) was nearly as steep as that in urban centres (44%).

Total wages in rural and urban India continue to be below pre-pandemic levels. Source: CEDA-CMIE bulletin

Unemployment numbers rose

In subsequent months, after India slowly began “unlocking” in June, the incomes witnessed some recovery. In the case of urban household incomes, there was a sharp V-shaped recovery in the months of May and June. But this growth slowed down and incomes settled at lower than pre-pandemic levels in September 2020.

It could be argued that this scenario improved after September 2020 when there was some extent of economic recovery in the months of October and November. But Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy data shows that unemployment numbers rose to over 9% in December, which would have a direct impact on household incomes.

“We saw that while employment recovery had been steady till September 2020, it started to falter October 2020 onwards,” the bulletin observed. “It can be assumed that income recovery may have faltered between October-December 2020 as well.”

(Courtesy: Quartz)

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How Daily Wage Workers in India Suffered in the Lockdown – and Continue to Struggle Months Later

Deepanshu Mohan, Jignesh Mistry, Advaita Singh & Snehal Sreedhar

Asked how the lockdown-induced economic crisis affected the lives-livelihoods of daily wage workers, Rajesh Singh, in his early 20s in Lucknow said, “Since the time of Covid and the lockdown, there has been a severe crisis of employment opportunities in local labor markets. Getting work for even two days in a week is excruciatingly difficult for us. Daily wages too, for any work possible, have dipped by half.”

The tale of Rajesh Singh, struggling to make ends meet for his own family, amidst dwindling prospects for work, reflects the nature and form of the catastrophe that has surfaced since the imposition a year ago of the curfew-style lockdown that sucked out employment opportunities for India’s daily workers in both the unorganised and organised segments.

In a three-month extensive field study undertaken by our research team at the Centre for New Economics Studies, OP Jindal Global University, we documented the stories of over 200 daily wage workers through a randomised survey in mazdoor mandis in Lucknow and Pune. We were aiming to understand the extent to which the economic crisis is affecting the workers’ daily work prospects, how it hurts their incomes, and how little or no state support has forced many to borrow extensively through informal channels to make their ends meet, leaving many highly indebted.

The reason for selecting cities of Lucknow and Pune for this field study was based on logistical ease, given how each of these cities – in their respective regions – attract the maximum amount of intra-state and inter-state migrant workers, and rely on them for most industrial, manufacturing (and construction) work.

Field observations

After traveling for long hours in search for work, most daily wage workers interviewed for the study begin their search for employment in unregulated mazdoor mandis. Most workers experienced an acute fall in employment – even after November 2020 – with limited repair work and construction projects being undertaken by the private builders.

To understand the intra-household allocation of incomes of these workers, their spending, saving and borrowing patterns, our team conducted around 100 interviews each in Lucknow and Pune. The average age of our respondents was around 36 in Lucknow and 35 years in Pune with their households comprising five or six members. Most were the sole breadwinner in their families.

A closer look at the household composition of most workers reveals that the number of dependents, including children and elderly in the family, exceeded the number of earning members.

Our data from Lucknow indicated that the mean monthly income from labour work has fallen by 62%, that is, from Rs 9,500 per month in pre-pandemic times to Rs 3,500 now per month. In Pune, the mean monthly income of an average worker fell from Rs 10,000 to Rs 4,500, a 54.5% decline per month.

Laxmi Rathod, a woman worker in her 20s from Pune’s mazdoor mandi, gave an idea of what the lockdown was like:

“We did not even get a single rupee paid during the lockdown, not even a paisa for support. Whenever we went and begged for some money or support, we received police sticks and body-blows. Despite that, we desperately we had to beg to manage some food.”

Data from Lucknow shows how the average working days pre-Covid for most workers were around 21 days a month, which fell to nine days a month post the lockdown. In the city of Pune, average working days in a month came down from 12 to two days.

Most respondents stated that construction projects had been halted and repair work was indefinitely postponed during the lockdown. Once the lockdown was lifted, there was not enough demand or funds for the small- and medium-scale owners to resume work at the same scale.

Furthermore, difficulties in commuting for most workers have translated into a rise in travelling expenses from Rs 56 to Rs.125 on an average per month, as per data on transport expenses for each worker from Lucknow. Hesitent on spending extra money on conveyance during times of financial distress, workers were forced to accept intermittent periods of unemployment.

A few respondents indicated that there were also instances where daily-wagers with larger families in cities who had decided staying back had been forced to beg because they couldn’t pay for an expensive train fare to go back home.

“I have six children, how could I have traveled with all of them?” Rathod said. “I have no money to pay for train tickets and buses weren’t functional.”

Decline in wages

Usually, wage determination in a given labour market depends on several factors: the nature of work, identity, the average experience of the worker in a vocation, home state of the worker and more. Our researchers in Pune observed that workers who have worked in the city for a longer duration – for example, 10 years – began their wage negotiations at a higher level.

The plunge taken by wages of daily workers since the Covid-19 lockdown has been severe. In Lucknow, mean daily wages fell from Rs 430 per day to Rs 360 per day. In Pune, wage rates fell from Rs 450 per day to Rs 390 per day.

Despite so many factors influencing a worker’s wage rate, there is limited variation in the daily wage within the same category of work; construction workers were on average paid between Rs 400-Rs 500 daily before the pandemic, and painters were paid around Rs 700-Rs 800 daily.

This was consistently seen in most mandis across Lucknow. For construction work, most were found to have relatively fixed wage rates — workers here would prefer not taking up a job than working at a lower wage rate. In an environment of such strong wage inelasticity, a 15% fall in overall wage rate now can be considered alarming, reflecting a sharp decrease in demand for construction worker services.

Mohammed Haroon, a mason, explained: “Earlier wages were Rs 400-Rs 500, but now it is difficult to get work to begin with. Even if we are able to find work, wages are quite low of Rs 200-Rs 300 per day.”

With fewer privately funded infrastructure projects, and an increasing desperation for employment, the employer-employee power dynamic has changed since the pandemic. Employers – mostly private labour contractors – enjoy greater bargaining and market power against workers and offer lower wages, that many forlorn workers have no choice but to accept.

In absence of any formal labour union support, or a formal mandi in place, many workers who even before the pandemic had little agency or bargaining power as a collective, now feel more cheated and exploited. The state has done nothing in this regard.

Respondents like Haroon cited many incidents that took place pre-pandemic when they were cheated out of their rightful wages too, when thekedars, contractors, would often impose heavy wage cuts for being late to work, even if the worker was late by 5 minutes.

When workers started negotiating in groups and clusters, which happened near the Engineering College mazdoor mandi in Lucknow, they noticed that such incidents of exploitation took place less often.

Most workers, left in a more vulnerable state than before now, favor state-supported unionized mechanisms, that can help workers seek employment in smaller clusters (than on individual basis) and get collective bargaining power on issues such as wage-determination and on working condition standards (especially those working with their family with them on site).

Expenses and borrowings

From the survey data collected, the overall spending by workers from Lucknow and Pune rose post-lockdown by Rs 5,000 on a monthly basis. A lot of this increase, as seen from the aggregate expenditure allocation from each worker’s household expenses, was attributed to debt-interest related payments, rental costs, healthcare costs, on children’s education, and on conveyance costs, which have substantially increased.

The average number of in school-children for each daily wage worker household in Lucknow was approximately three, implying a significantly high level of educational spending. Our team found that for workers who agreed on spending in their children’s education pre-Covid, the mean educational expenditure fell from Rs 560 to Rs 430 per month. This reflected how more and more parents working as daily-wage workers,with low incomes, took their kids out of school as schools shut and classes went online or couldn’t educate them (in absence of a smart phone).

Despite restrictions on mobility and travel, the mean expenditure on conveyance for workers increased from Rs 890 to Rs 1,030 per month. This increase was not due to an increase in the frequency of travel, but rather due to a rise in the daily travel fare from Rs 60 to Rs 100 as reported. Respondents explained that due to public transport facilities being shut, and then to social distancing restrictions to keep seating capacity low, they had to explore more expensive, private transport networks to get to the mandis.

Medical expenses too in worker households were observed to go up during the pandemic. The amount that a daily wage worker household would spend on healthcare increased due to a rise in the average spending on medicines from Rs 1900 before the pandemic to Rs 4700 per month since the pandemic and this increased spending was evident for those availing private healthcare services for maternal patients, pregnant women, or in treating non-covid related ailments for the elderly in the household.

In a previous study, also conducted in cities of Lucknow and Pune as well, we discussed how reproductive healthcare services and private healthcare costs had gone up, negatively impacting lower income households since the pandemic.

On overall consumption patterns, we observed how average consumption increased for most workers living in and around Lucknow, as against Pune. Explaining this, and beyond the other overheads mentioned, a major overhead for expense for most workers was on debt-related payments, or simply on interest of borrowings.

Almost every borrower, as studied, availed larger sums of money through intra-community borrowings at informalised interest rates, as borrowing institutionally through banks wasn’t possible due to no proper paperwork and security ownership.

This pattern of informal lending, as reported by workers in our interactions, informed us in how in most cases a lender charged 5% for every Rs 100 taken as a loan. On asking why was it necessary to borrow at such high (and exploitative interest rates), most workers especially from Lucknow cited two reasons: for increased medical expenses, and for household weddings, mostly for dowry related expenses, where marriages had been already fixed prior to the pandemic.

Where is government aid?

The ordinary worker during a pandemic struck catastrophe was forced to become more and more dependent on debt-entrapping, ultra-exploitative, asset-owning class of workers and informal money lenders, which has only made their living condition worse over time.

Despite the government’s efforts to ensure food-security during the months of the lockdown and thereafter, most workers were unable to avail the benefits of receiving ration packages. Poonam Sahu, a daily-wage worker from Lucknow, said the state was absent:

“As far as I am concerned, the government can say whatever on paper, or in person about providing (food) aid and support. Daily-wage workers have been living through a horrid period and none of the government measures announced are anywhere to be seen. It didn’t affect the workers in any way.”

Interference of bureaucratic intermediaries, need for an ID and paperwork and complex processes of handing out food packages to local communities forced many workers to fend for themselves.

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Aklima, a worker staying with her two children, is one of those who did not receive the much-touted government food support.

“We didn’t get rations here,” she said. “Where and when do we get ration? Whatever we get, we need to buy it. If we work hard, we eat, otherwise we remain hungry.”

Echoing the plight of workers, those ignored by the sheer indifference from the government, Ansuiya’s statement quite tragically sums the countless stories of this essential working group: “If we ask for help, who will extend it? People send us away by saying ‘Go away! What can we do to help you if you have come to earn money’ This is what they tell us… So, help is never on offer. What we can get is ‘work’. At least that will help us manage our livelihood. Else, it is we who suffer – and die.”

(Deepanshu Mohan is Associate Professor of Economics and Director, Centre for New Economics Studies, OP Jindal Global University. Jignesh Mistry, Advaita Singh and Snehal Sreedhar are Senior Research Analysts with CNES. Article courtesy: Scroll.in.)

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COVID-19 Laid Bare the Struggles and Exploitation that Domestic Workers Face

Satarupa Chakraborty

In India, the labor of millions of women domestic workers is not recognized, depriving them of labor rights, formal terms of employment, and respect.

Official government records estimate a conservative figure of 3.9 million domestic workers in the country (2.6 million of whom are women). A report in the Economic and Political Weekly, however, puts the number of domestic workers much higher, at more than 50 million domestic workers, with women making up more than 75 percent of the workforce in this sector.

Bengaluru, which is the capital of India’s southern state of Karnataka, has an estimated 400,000 domestic workers. They constitute a large proportion of the city’s workforce, and yet they still lack fundamental rights, a fact that has become even more apparent since the start of the pandemic.

In this sense, it is not surprising that the life of a domestic worker is not an easy one, with or without a hovering pandemic.

Kajita (28) and Noor (45) are migrant workers from West Bengal. Living 2,000 kilometers away from home, they dwell in a slum in east Bengaluru’s Thubarahalli area—hidden by the rising apartments in an upscale locality that connects the two major IT centers, Marathahalli and Whitefield.

India’s migrant workers, who move from rural to urban areas in search of gainful employment, take a big share of the burden of household income onto their shoulders—most of them send a major part of their income to their families in the villages for their sustenance. They live in cramped shanties of tarpaulins and tins in a sprawling city of soaring expenses and expanse.

Before the countrywide lockdown was announced in March 2020, Kajita would start her day at 4:45 a.m. and return home after 9 p.m. She would work for more than 15 hours a day in 10 households. Noor would go to work at 5:45 a.m. and return around 6:30 p.m. She used to work in four households—eight hours in one household and then dividing the rest of her time working in other houses. Their work includes but is not limited to sweeping, cleaning, cooking, washing dishes and clothes, and child and elderly care.

While they take the heavy burden of physical work, their work is far from being recognized. The household chores have been historically seen as tasks that women are supposed to perform without asking for any remuneration. The United Nations highlighted the lack of public acceptance to consider a household as a place of work—resulting in non-recognition of women’s labor at a household as work. The UN also points out that India lacks comprehensive national legislation that would guarantee formal terms of employment, including minimum wage and decent working conditions, to the domestic workers. They are often left at the mercy of their employers without having access to any social and economic benefits from the state. Speaking up about their day-to-day exploitations often could mean threats, intimidation and violence. Weekly days off, time off for holidays, or annual paid leave is a privilege most domestic workers are deprived of. Instead, in many cases, during the festival days, their work increases exponentially.

Kajita and Noor’s income comes from their devalued, hard physical labor. Their income was just about enough to support themselves and their families before the announcement of a lockdown in India. While a younger worker like Kajita might take up work in about a dozen houses to supplement her income, older workers like Noor typically take up an 8-hour or 12-hour job with one household and try to earn a major part of their income from there.

The income they earned throughout a decade of work as domestic workers was neither sufficient to uplift their standard of living nor could it ensure them a “healthy and safe stay at home” during the pandemic.

Once the lockdown began in India, Kajita and Noor and the other domestic workers found themselves without work for more than four months. One of Kajita’s employers paid her the first two months of the salary during the initial phase of the lockdown, while the others refused to pay her during the lockdown. She lost around 90 percent of her monthly income for several months. Noor was paid half the amount of her salary for the first two months of the lockdown. Kajita now earns Rs 7,000 ($96) per month—a sharp decline in her income by more than 70 percent from Rs 30,000 ($413) a month that she earned before the lockdown; and Noor earns Rs 11,500 ($158)—her salary declined by almost 50 percent from Rs 20,000 ($275) a month.

The household expenditure, however, did not fall with the falling income. It, in fact, increased compared to the proportion of income. Kajita and Noor each had to pay Rs 2,500 ($34) as the rent for their shanties and electricity bills even during the lockdown. They still had to buy a 20-liter can of drinking water for Rs 25 ($0.34)—in the absence of access to clean drinking water in the slum area where they live—along with other essential items.

Noor told me in October 2020, “What we received [as a food kit from some organizations such as the Centre of Indian Trade Unions and Bharat Gyan Vigyan Samiti] for one month, we survived on [it] for more than two months. Since the lockdown, our life has changed. We have no income, but we continued to spend.” Kajita said, “We [Kajita’s younger brother and sister] shared one meal three times a day. We have never seen [this kind of misery] earlier.”

Challenges in their lives escalated by the pandemic only revealed the grim picture about the conditions of India’s vast section of domestic workers. With a pandemic and lockdown, they lost their jobs. A battle for economic rights is a far-fetched dream if social rights are not ensured simultaneously. The stories of domestic workers like Meena (name changed) and Nilam (name changed) speak of the cruelty involved in the lives of these workers; they have little dignity and respect—and are often subjected to violence.

S. Selvi, the general secretary of a domestic workers’ union in Bengaluru—affiliated with the Centre of Indian Trade Unions (CITU)—began her journey of working with domestic workers in 2012. In her experience, the most common threats of violence surface when a domestic worker asks for a hike in wage—or refuses to perform tasks other than the ones agreed in verbal negotiations at the time of joining—or when a worker resists sexual abuse by the male employer.

Intimidated by the threat that an employer could file a theft report with the police against them (even if they are innocent), most domestic workers tend to suppress their voice. They fear job loss; they fear actions on them or their families by employers. Therefore, in most cases, they avoid registering any complaint.

Selvi told me about the case of Meena who was employed by a man in north Bengaluru. She said, “The employer used to torture and sexually assault her. When she opposed, the employer beat her. Her body was marked with burnt wounds of cigarette butt stubbing. He used to torture her so much so that she had to be finally hospitalized.”

“In another case, in north Bengaluru,” she told me, “the employers filed a police complaint against a worker, Nilam, alleging theft. She was innocent. The complaint was an insult for her; she could not take the blame, and she attempted suicide,” said Selvi.

With the intervention of the union, both Meena and Nilam were rescued. Selvi emphasized, “In [these] situations, organizations [like] All India Democratic Women’s Association (AIDWA) play an important role in giving confidence to the victim and motivating her to register a complaint.”

The continual battle by unions and organizations to safeguard the rights and lives of domestic workers has pushed the central government to at least introduce the Domestic Workers (Regulation of Work and Social Security) Bill, 2017. The formation of a “national policy” for safeguarding the interest of domestic workers has been pending for several years. However, the challenges in their lives are not pending—they do not vanish, with or without a pandemic. Not only is their labor unseen, but they are also seen as less human. This mindset and the inhuman practices need an upfront battle with an organized struggle of domestic workers—set to resolve their everyday distress and to advance their social lives.

(Satarupa Chakraborty is researcher at Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. She is also pursuing a PhD in philosophy at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) in India. Article courtesy: Globetrotter.)

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Lockdown Fallout: Distress Stalks Garment Workers in Ludhiana

Vivek Gupta

Born and raised in village Katghar of Uttar Pradesh’s Jaunpur district, Ved Prakash landed in Ludhiana about ten years ago, seeking a better future.

His first job was as a helper in a garment factory at less than Rs 100 per day. Later he learned to sew clothes and in a few years, he began earning Rs. 20,000-25,000 a month.

The city, a textile and hosiery hub of North India, employs over ten lakh migrants from Bihar and Uttar Pradesh in normal times. It gave a lot to Ved until the COVID-19 exposed its dark underbelly.

Ved was among the thousands of desperate and dejected migrant workers who left Ludhiana on foot in the middle of last year’s lockdown after local industry and the government turned their backs on them.

The central government created uncertainty in the job market by extending the lockdown repeatedly. This made workers restless and frustrated, forcing them to march home on foot as train and bus services had also been shut in a bid to control the spread of the Novel Coronavirus, which causes the COVID-19 disease.

The lockdown completes a year on 23 March. A year on, Ved says, leaving Ludhiana was his only option last summer when he was left with neither enough food nor money to survive. “But the 1,000-kilometre walk home was equally hellish. The police beat us on the way, there were days of sheer hunger. I even saw people collapse,” says Ved.

Ved returned to the city last July after the Centre eased some restrictions and factories started hiring workers again. That does not mean the challenges before Ved and millions like him are over.

Since July, his income is less than half his pre-lockdown earnings. “I live on rent and my wife and child are also with me now,” he says. “Forget saving, managing expenses is really hard,” he says.

Rakesh Kumar from Ambedkar Nagar near Azamgarh in Uttar Pradesh says that barring a few factory-owners, most local industrialists refused to help their employees during the lockdown.

“There were days we had no food. There were days we ate once a day. The situation forced many of us to leave the city in great pain,” he says.

He says the situation is still not normal. “Our wages are at an all-time low. We don’t know for long it will continue,” he adds.

Industry in a bubble, the poor end up losing

Ludhiana’s textile industry mostly employs skilled and semi-skilled workers who work in various garment-manufacturing processes, from dyeing to creating finished products.

Many workers are unskilled, mostly in jobs involving hard labour: packing, loading-and-unloading, cleaning up, and other general factory works.

But if you ask industry representatives, the post-lockdown depression still hangs over businesses.

“Once garment factories in Ludhiana employed over ten lakh people. Now there are not even half as many,” says Ajit Lakra, president of the Ludhiana Knitters Association.

He says the ongoing economic slowdown and lack of demand and consumption are prime reasons for the consistent downfall in factory production and fall in employment ever since the lockdown.

“We thought the situation was becoming normal since there was a slight uptick in the winter season but the textile industry was recently severely hit by a hike in the cost of raw material. This prevented us from taking bulk manufacturing orders and we could not run factories at full capacity,” says Lakra.

He says the prices of cotton yarn have increased from Rs. 190 per kg (pre-lockdown) to over Rs. 300 per kg and so has the cost of petrochemical-based [synthetic] fabrics such as polyester that are massively used in local factories that manufacture sporting attire.

Garment factories in Ludhiana are not accepting fresh manufacturing orders since the offer price is unviable considering their cost of manufacture. “The big garment retail brands are also in a fix because they are not in a position to increase retail prices due to the depressed state of the market,” he says.

Lakra blames the “cartelisation” of yarn-making mills and the monopoly of polyester manufacturers in India for the hike in raw-material prices. He says the textile industry will soon hold a protest in Ludhiana asking the government to intervene in the matter, which is hurting everyone from labourers to consumers.

Ram Pratap, the president of the Hosiery Workers’ Association which has over 2,000 members, says that since the lockdown, 30% of manpower has not returned to Ludhiana—yet wages have nosedived.

This is primarily for two reasons. The manpower of textile factories earns its wages on a per-piece basis. For instance, if they prepare five t-shirts in a day, they earn Rs. 500, or Rs. 100 per piece.

He says that before the lockdown, those who cut, stitched, or sewed would earn between Rs. 20,000 and Rs. 25,000 a month. During the peak seasons, they could even earn Rs. 30,000 in a month.

“Now, the monthly income is down to Rs. 10,000 or Rs. 12,000 or at most Rs. 15,000 if production increases. Since the production at factories is down to less than half, and every factory is short of raw material to produce enough garments, [so workers are earning less too],” explains Ram.

Even if factories go for full-scale production, there are not many buyers in the market. The rich might have started purchasing again, but the problem is that purchases are still not hitting mass scale as most people are sticking to purchasing just necessities.

“Factories will go full scale only when people like us start buying clothes from rehris [street vendors] or small shops in villages, towns and cities. That is when demand will [re]generate and factory workers will get more work,” said Ram.

Fluctuating prices of raw materials have also confused factory-owners, dissuading them from stocking up on larger quantities. The synthetic fabric market has become more unpredictable and cautious due to the rise in prices of petrol and diesel, which serve as the basis for manufacturing this kind of yarn.

Every segment has unique roadblocks

It is particularly worrying that the lockdown and its aftershocks have not hurt the entire workforce to the same extent. For instance, there has been an influx of labour into the unskilled market in Ludhiana, says Guddu Kumar, the president of a union representing daily-wage earners in Ludhiana. As a result, before the lockdown, a helper would typically earn a monthly salary of Rs. 10,000 to Rs. 11,000, but now some are getting Rs. 8,000 or Rs. 8,500 at most.

“This is because a lot of workers from Delhi and Mumbai have come here in search of work. This has created an excess supply while demand has not increased accordingly due to the economic slowdown,” he says.

Vishal Kumar works on a daily wage in a garment factory at Bhadur Ke Road, a hub of textile and hosiery units in the city. Before the lockdown, he would find work all through the month. After it, he has got work for no more than 15 or 20 days a month, which means he can barely earn enough for his family to eat.

A group of labourers at Ludhiana’s Vishkarma Chowk, where casual labourers often gather to look for work, had different grievances. Says Surjit, the domestic workers of Ludhiana have fixed daily-wage rates between Rs. 500-800 a day, depending on where they work, in construction for example, or doing tough manual tasks. “However migrant workers often accept lower than these wages, which disturbs the entire set-up,” he says.

Sachin Kumar, a garment worker from village Meer Khera near Lucknow in Uttar Pradesh, says factories in Ludhiana have not returned to normal. He, too, left Ludhiana on foot during the lockdown due to a tremendous sense of uncertainty about when factories would reopen as the Centre continuously extended the lockdowns. “After I returned to Ludhiana, I did not get the same job I had earlier, I found work elsewhere,” Sachin says.

Ludhiana’s labour officer, Baljeet Singh, says overall employability has improved since the lockdown but the labour department often receives complaints of retrenchment and non-payment of pending wages. “In several cases, the matter was reconciled after summoning the factory owners,” he says.

Ludhiana is also famous for manufacturing bicycles. However, there is one glimmer of hope here: There was an increase in sales of bicycles in the post-Covid phase.

This was a source of some relief for those who work in bicycle factories, says Jagdish Chand, the local president of a central trade union. The problem for cycle-makers is that their wages have stagnated.

“The government of Punjab has not revised the minimum wage for over a year. The rolled back a Rs. 400 Dearness Allowance announce on 9 May 2020, which would otherwise have been added to the minimum wages fixed by the state government,” says Chand.

DP Maur, a local leader of the Communist Party of India who actively engages in trade and labour-related issues, says the Centre issued several directions to factory owners to give their employees wages for the lockdown period but no one followed them. “The workers trudged to their native villages in great distress. Now, most of them have returned, thinking they will bring their lives back on track, but there is huge joblessness in Ludhiana,” says Maur.

He blames slow economic growth for the current perilous situation. The industry was yet to recover from the Centre’s decision to put high-value currency notes out of circulation in November 2016 and its haphazard implementation of Goods and Services Tax. Then came the lockdowns, and that too has had a cascading effect on millions of people country-wide, he says.

“In the last five or six years, a situation has emerged in which neither industry nor workers ever could feel settled, and it is all thanks to the faulty economic policies of the central government,” says Maur.

(Vivek Gupta is a senior journalist based in Chandigarh. Article courtesy: The Leaflet.)