Focussing her lecture on the tribal and Dalit migrant labourers from Bihar and Jharkhand, Alpa Shah, Associate Professor, london School of Economics and Political Science, painted a grim picture of the future of industrialisation in India.
Speaking at Silver Jubilee lecture at the international conference on ‘Bihar and Jharkhand: Shared History to Shared Vision’, organised by ADRI, Patna, she said the migrant labourers suffer the worst kind of exploitation with poor wages, no social benefits and no housing.
To top it all, they can neither speak the language nor are they considered the residents of the States they migrate to work. This is creating an urban proletariat in the country. Citing the latest figures, she said there are about 140 million internal casual migrant labourers in India. Economic development in India is leading to sharp tribal-regional-caste divisions, she added.
“The kind of unbridled capitalism that is leading to growth across various sectors is thriving on a huge number of migrants from Bihar and Jharkhand who work in debilitating conditions. These migrant workers are employed in tea plantations in Kerala; chemical industry in Tamil Nadu; road construction in Himachal and J&K; farm activities in Gujarat, building construction in Delhi and NCR; brick kilns in West Bengal among others,” the lSE associate professor said.
Ruchira Gupta, founder, Apne Aap Women Worldwide and Visiting Professor, New York University, praised the development during last over one decade under the Nitish Kumar Government in terms of gender equality and access to education, adding at the same time that the Government was still skimming the top of the bottom. She said the ‘last girl’ was still missing the development benefits.
She explained the term as meaning the weakest – a girl who was poor and of low caste. Citing the case of 23 girls from Forbesganj in Bihar where they were “bought from hospitals just when they were 10 days old and then employed for prostitution” and about whom the police said they had eloped, Gupta said to reach the ‘last girl’ police reforms were the most important prerequisite.
Others who presented their papers in this Technical Session were Rajiva Ranjan Verma, former DG, National Crime Record Bureau, Government of India; Alf Gunvald Nilsen, Associate Professor, University of Adger, Norway; and Kazuya Nakamizo, Professor, Graduate School of Asian and African Areas Studies, Kyoto University, Japan.