How Bengaluru’s migrant workers pay with their lives for climate change and corruption

Marginalised groups suffer disproportionately as a result of extreme weather disasters because they toil outdoors or in poorly ventilated workshops and live in informal slums or labour camps without adequate shade, drainage or infrastructure.
Rescue workers survey the collapsed building in Bengaluru’s Babusapalya, October 22, 2024
Rescue workers survey the collapsed building in Bengaluru’s Babusapalya, October 22, 2024Sachinkumar Rathod
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In Bengaluru, a mix of intense rainfall and real estate corruption had a deadly result last month. On October 22, eight construction workers and a sub-contractor were crushed to death when a seven-story building – still under construction – collapsed in Babusapalya, Hennur, in northeast Bengaluru. The eight deceased workers have been identified as Mahmed Arman, Mahmed Arshad, Tirupali, Solo Pashwan, Phulchand Yadav, Tulasi Reddy, Gajendra, and Manikanthan Satya Raju. The sub-contractor Elumalai was from Tamil Nadu. Of the 20 or so workers rescued from the building, six were badly injured.

Socially marginalised groups and the working classes suffer disproportionately as a result of extreme weather disasters. Because workers toil outdoors or in poorly ventilated workshops and live in informal slums or labour camps without adequate shade, drainage or infrastructure, they are vulnerable to extreme heat and rainfall. In the Babusapalya case, there was the added culprit of corruption and substandard materials deployed in the construction of the building.

Who are Bengaluru’s migrant workers and where are they from?

“We have come here to work because there is no work in Bihar,” said Arman, one of the rescued workers who hails from Bihar’s Khagaria district. Another worker, Arshad, echoed this, “We came here from Bihar because we get higher wages. We were doing tile work on the first floor. We stay in the same building – cooking, toilet, sleeping – everything is done inside the building.

“Iss kaam ke alawa hamare paas kuch nahi hai Bengaluru me” (We don’t have anything other than this in Bengaluru). I jumped from the fifth floor when the building collapsed. My three men died here. My nephew died in front of me. We won’t work anymore in this kind of building. What will the family of these people tell me? How will I explain it to them? It all happened suddenly.”

Laxman from Bihar said, “My parents live in the village, I left everything to come here to earn a living. In the village sometimes the farm gets flooded; here they made the building itself collapse!” And then he echoed Arshad, “Me unke ghar walo ko kya bolu?” (What will I tell their families?)

In recent years, migrant workers from northern and eastern India, in addition to those from the neighbouring states of Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh, have been coming to Bengaluru to work in gruelling, unorganised sector jobs. Workers from four different states were identified on the Babusapalya site: Bihar, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, and other parts of Karnataka, of which Bengaluru is the capital.

One woman from Karnataka’s Yadgir district was badly injured. Migrants from the impoverished regions of north Karnataka and Hyderabad Karnataka, similar to migrants from Bihar, leave their villages on account of drought and debt, only to find themselves in daily-wage and other precarious work in Bengaluru. The main difference between non-Kannadiga and Kannadiga migrant workers is that the latter can navigate the city, forge social networks, and join labour unions due to their language ability, whereas the former are often excluded from such networks due to language and cultural barriers and find themselves dependent on the thekedar (contractor) or mestri (labour overseer).

Our interviews with the workers and other migrants in brickmaking, ragpicking, and construction sectors in eastern and northeast Bengaluru reveal that those who are among the most economically and socially marginalised – who are caste, class, linguistically, and/or religiously marginalised – leave their villages amidst debt, landlessness, unpredictable rains (both droughts and floods), and widespread unemployment. Rural unemployment has been worsened by the Modi government’s budgetary cuts to (and added bureaucratic hurdles and delays surrounding) the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MNREGA) and its Aadhaar-linked payment system.

Once in the city, migrant workers are housed in inhumane conditions, without proper accommodations, toilets, or other facilities, making them all the more susceptible to extreme weather. On Babusapalya and other sites that employ migrants from Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, workers sleep on the site itself, either in makeshift tents or in the partly-finished building.

Exploited and paying with their lives

Climate change has serious effects on unorganised or casualised workers in the construction, brickmaking, sanitation, and app delivery sectors, among others. Erratic, unpredictable monsoons in South Asia are one sign of climate change. So is extreme heat; in fact, the two severe weather patterns are linked. This year alone, some 1,500 people have died in India due to catastrophic flooding, which comes on the heels of summer heatwaves.

Add to this the fact that the collapsed building in Babusapalya was ‘unauthorised’: three extra floors were under construction without permission. It was built from sub-standard materials that made it vulnerable in the face of torrential rainfall. The rainfall on October 22 in Bengaluru was the heaviest recorded over a 24-hour period in 27 years. To make matters worse, the building was constructed illegally on Kharab-B land, a category of ‘non-cultivable’ or waste land in the Karnataka Land Revenue Act 1964, which consists of, among other types of land, raja kaluves, or storm drains and rivulets. Despite three notices by the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) to stop work, the builder continued.

Even without severe rain, Bengaluru has witnessed such under-construction building collapses because of corruption involved during the plan approval stage. Typically, the owner and promoter of the project gets the plan approved for a three-story building and then constructs a six- to seven-floor building. When the construction is completed, he quickly sells it for profit and moves to the next project. Residents of the area blame developers from Andhra Pradesh who are wealthy and politically connected, and are able to buy land and invest in construction. They also identify a nexus between real estate developers, politicians, and officials, which also clearly extends to labour contractors and sub-contractors who become involved at a later stage in the recruiting of low-paid migrant workers. So far, Andhra-based Muniraju Reddy and his son Bhuvan Reddy have been arrested in the Babusapalya case for flouting regulations and constructing illegally.

Unfortunately, it is workers who pay with their lives. Migrant workers do not receive legal protections. They are not provided with safety hats and are denied minimum wages, insurance, or other benefits. They often find themselves exploited by the thekedars, who are notorious for withholding pay and meting out other forms of abuse.

Demands for accountability and worker protection

It is clear that accountability is lacking on multiple levels. Regular surveys of illegal constructions by engineers would enhance accountability and place more checks and balances on real estate construction. An investigation into the contractors, engineers, and officials who are responsible for the Babusapalya incident is also the need of the hour. Finally, the Labour Department needs to comprehensively survey the plight of migrant workers in the city and their housing conditions.

Existing policies need to be strengthened. In the wake of this tragedy, the All India Central Council of Trade Unions (AICCTU) has pointed out the paltry minimum wage under MNREGA, which is further driving people to out-migrate, and has called for the expeditious processing of worker compensation, which should be increased from Rs 5 lakh to 10 lakh, as well as the strengthening of existing migrant worker laws.

The Inter-State Migrant Workmen (Regulations of Employment and Conditions of Service) Act, 1979 is one of those laws. It provides for occupational safeguards and calls for mandatory licences for contractors. The Building and Other Construction Workers (Regulation of Employment and Conditions of Services) Act, 1996 is another act. It recognises that construction labour is one of the most numerous and vulnerable segments of the unorganised sector, characterised by its causal nature, temporary relationships with employer, uncertain and long working hours, lack of basic amenities, lack of data on workers, and inadequate welfare facilities. Section 34 of the Act requires employers to provide temporary accommodations with “separate cooking place, bathing, washing and lavatory facilities.”

Without strengthening these minimum worker safeguards and accountability surrounding real estate construction, the Babusapalya tragedy will unfortunately not be an isolated incident.

Sachinkumar Rathod is a senior research consultant based in Bengaluru and Dr Malini Ranganathan is an associate professor in the Department of Environment, Development, and Health at the School of International Service, American University, Washington, DC.

Views expressed are the authors’ own.

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