Super-exploitation of Adivasi Migrant Workers: The Political Economy of Migration from Southern Rajasthan to Gujarat

Abstract

This article offers a political economy account of labour migration of Adivasi workers from southern Rajasthan to growth centres in Gujarat. It unpacks the structural forces that shape this labour mobility, which erupted only as recently as 30 years back. The article focuses on three industries that are key employers of migrant workers—construction, textile as well as small hotels and restaurants in the Gujarati cities of Ahmedabad and Surat. It presents evidence on labour market segmentation and resulting unequal wage distribution between migrants in this corridor by their social group. This is complemented by an extensive mapping of the informal practices that violate applicable legal provisions found in these industry segments. Through these, the article teases out the mechanisms by which the community undergoes what in Marxian terms are referred to as surplus extraction and super-exploitation. The article finds that Gujarat’s economy utilizes the historically low socio-economic position of Adivasis for capitalist accumulation, such that the community’s poverty and disadvantaged position is reproduced inter-generationally, instead of being interrupted by their employment in the growth centres of the state. JEL: O15, J61, N35

Circular Migration and Precarity: Perspectives from Rural Bihar

“…The immediate crisis of migration-the exodus of migrant workers-stems from a deeper, structural crisis of migration in India. This can be seen from a Marxist analytical framework where processes of capitalist accumulation have led to surplus extraction and super-exploitation of labour (Jain and Sharma 2019;Lerche and Shah 2018). Migration, crucial for capitalist growth and labour mobility, far from being voluntary, is viewed as a compulsion generated in the interest of capital (Shah and Lerche 2020;Vijay 2005).…”

Stolen citizenship, stolen freedoms

“…That around 92% of the workforce of the country is unorganised 3 is not necessarily due to lack of laws, but due to firms and establishments circumventing the existing laws with impunity in the absence of effective regulatory bodies (Government of India 2002). This allows employers to easily keep workers off their books, declaring their firm to be smaller than minimum-size criteria of applicable laws with no real threat of being found out (Jain & Sharma 2018). The state of Gujarat exemplifies the complicit nature of the state in all of this.…”

“…Here, circular migrants tend to occupy the most disadvantageous segments with the most adverse terms and conditions of work, and with highly limited vertical or horizontal mobility. Borrowing the Marxian term, circular migrants are often referred to as the 'super-exploited' (Shah & Lerche 2017;Jain & Sharma 2018). These segments are further divided along the lines of gender, caste, tribe and religion, such that circular migrants are disproportionately represented by historically disadvantaged and stigmatised social groups of Dalits, Adivasis and Muslims, with significant overlap with the categories of child and bonded labourers (NCEUS 2007;Papola 2012; Breman 2013; Shah & Lerche 2017).…”

“…(1) extending their work day (through blatant or hidden ways of unpaid or underpaid overtime, especially through on-site living); (2) increasing the intensity of their work (i.e. the degree of mental and physical exertion needed to perform tasks, especially in hazardous and strenuous work and living conditions where employer refuses to bear any costs of safety or basic facilities); (3) payment below value (underpayment of migrant workers vis-à-vis local workers, and unequal pay for women and children); and (4) abandoning the security of the household (by refusing to pay or take responsibility for workplace accidents, illnesses, education of children or the old age of the worker) (Frank 1978;Jain & Sharma 2018). Consequently, large costs get shifted on to the migrant household: employing them during their productive years for maximum extraction without payment of living wages; dispensing with them as soon as younger, cheaper and stronger workers are available; and leaving the household without any protection or security for the workers' non-productive years.…”

“…The unilateral emphasis on economic growth and official programmes such as 'Make in India' that valorise home-grown production activity, but without any discourse on the rights or needs of the labouring populations that fuel such growth, further erode the value ascribed to workers in the public imagination. Evidence suggests that in the organized sector, value added to the wage share has been either stagnant or facing decline in the last few years, not to speak of the mushrooming informal sectors that employ mobile citizens, where under-payment of labour is widespread (Abraham & Sasikumar 2017;Jain & Sharma 2018). Increased flows of foreign direct investment are offered not by adhering to the ethics that they follow in their points of origin, but by making India friendly to investment at the cost of labourers' livelihoods, and by curtailing their basic political rights to organize themselves (Dasgupta 2017).…”