Shrill battle for basics

Rahul Devesh

All labour has dignity, said Martin Luther King Jr once. But it certainly loses its worth if the man remains homeless, gets little to eat and nothing to wear. This was the plight of the labourers, who rushed towards me, thinking as if I would be their employer, at Labour Chowk in Chandigarh on Tuesday afternoon. They belonged to different age-groups and were mostly small farmers from Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, who migrated to the city in the hope of better wages.

A brief interaction with them was enough to show that food, clothing and shelter are still their prime concerns and they were out of the ambit of welfare schemes. Neither have they got LPG cylinders nor subsidised food. Getting a house under the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana is just a dream.

“Earlier, during the Congress regime, we used to get ration at subsidised rates. Now, even that has been stopped. Moreover, the city MP is inaccessible. Even the administration does not listen to us,” complained another daily wager.

Demonetisation had hit them hard too. They are yet to recover from its aftershocks. Their earnings have declined and most were not able to remit enough money to their families. “Earlier, we used to get enough employment and food. Now, we are famished. Notebandi has destroyed us. Often, we don’t get work for days even after turning up at the chowk at 8 in the morning. Moreover, our landlord is hell bent on taking his rent on the 10th of every month,” said Nabi Hasan, a resident of Behlana.

The education of their children was also a worry. They did not want them to drop out of their school. Ravinder, a 16-year-old boy from Badayun, UP, too had to discontinue his study after Class X to earn a living.

However, their biggest grievance was against the police. They alleged that the policemen beat them up for standing at the chowk. “They take us to the police station and leave us only after taking bribe,” said a youth showing his swollen hand.

They only wanted the basics. As some of them claimed, they did not want to sleep on the footpath. Cooking pakoras, as PM Narendra Modi had advised, is not an option for them. The police, as they claimed, would take away their belongings.

They had a word of caution for the government too. The Ram temple is important for them but employment is more crucial. As Sushil Kumar, a labourer from Lucknow, said, “Even to go to a temple, you need some money.”

‘Not a terrorist’

While I was listening to the grievances of the labourers, Dwarika Prasad Yadav, a man in his late 20s, thrust his Aaadhar card into my hand and said, “Aatankvadi nahin hain sahib. Is desh ke nagrik hain. Na roti hai, na ghar aur na kapda. Barbad kar ke rakh diya hai humein.”