Much indignation has been expressed at the treatment of Indian contract labour by a US employer in Mississippi. The government has even stirred itself to request details about the protest by Indian workers, who complained of apparently abysmal living conditions provided by the company, Signal International, which had employed workers supplied by a Mumbai agent on one-year contracts.
Earlier this year, the government banned unskilled workers from emigrating to Bahrain, ostensibly to ensure that they were paid the minimum wage of 100 Bahraini dinars (approximately Rs 10,000) a month. Last year, the government also intervened in a protest about pay and working conditions for Indian labour in Dubai.
No one should cavil at the government protecting the interests of Indians overseas, especially when it concerns workers who are often in a weak bargaining position. But such official concern would be more convincing if it had been matched by similar solicitude for the 400 million workers in the unorganised sector in India.
Outside of small and marginal farmers, these workers would probably rank among India's most disenfranchised and live in conditions that put in the shade complaints from the US and West Asia, however justified. A cursory glance at the living conditions of labour hired by some of India's largest real estate companies would make the maligned Mississippi bunk beds appear luxurious, and a minimum pay of Rs 10,000 a month equivalent to a king's ransom.
Unorganised sector workers account for almost 90 per cent of India's labour force and are mostly employed in rural jobs, but are increasingly migrating to the cities to meet the demands of the booming construction and manufacturing industries largely dominated by the private sector. Being migrant and casual in nature, they are outside the purview of India's tough labour laws and the collective bargaining strength of the unions.
Indeed, the irony of India's inflexible labour legislation is that employers ensure that they keep their labour force outside its ambit by simply rehiring workers after specified intervals and at rates that are entirely discretionary.
Surveys have shown that almost 80 per cent of these workers earn less than Rs 20 a day, or less than half the government-stipulated rural minimum wage of Rs 49 a day and urban wage of Rs 67 (in many states, like Haryana, the official minimum wage is much higher).
The state-owned enterprises are a good example of the restrictions that organised-sector workers can impose on the strategic flexibility of corporations to respond to competition. The result is that more than three-fourths of labour in the world's largest democracy has no wherewithal to address their problems. That is why, unlike their overseas compatriots - who have opted to cross the waters in search of more humane work conditions in the first place - no one hears of revolts on the thousands of building sites or factory premises around India against Dickensian working conditions.
The government could argue that it has introduced the long-delayed Unorganised Sector Worker's Social Security Bill, approved by the Cabinet in May and introduced in the Rajya Sabha in last year's monsoon session, which is expected to provide for pension and other benefits for unorganised sector workers. It is now widely being recognised - not least by the Left allies that had pressured the government to introduce it - that the Bill raises more issues than it addresses.
For a start, there are no specifics on how the scheme, which requires matching contributions from employer and employee, will be implemented, nor how the government plans to raise the money (nearly Rs 9,000 crore) needed to fund it. Like the agricultural loan waiver announced in this Budget, the intention of the Bill appears more significant than its efficacy.
That is why it remains critical for the government to stay focused on finding solutions to an urgent domestic problem even as it makes gestures for Indian workers who have gone overseas.
