India’s economic growth has consistently relied on low-waged, precarious and flexible labour. Combined with agrarian collapse in many regions, this reality has resulted in massive distress migration from rural areas to urban and industrial markets.
The numbers are staggering. India’s circular migrant workforce is estimated to be over 140 million people. Construction alone engages nearly 50 million migrant workers — a large proportion of whom are low-waged, contractual and casual. Many other sectors of the economy — manufacturing, mining, transportation, sanitation, domestic work, vending — comprise mainly migrant, informal workers.
The lives of these workers are defined by erratic. . .
