Editorial: They Labour. Do We Notice?

They power development with their sweat, plod away, are frequently humiliated, are ill-treated even more often, and yet they persevere. Had it not been for them, development plans would never have moved beyond the paper they are drafted on. Take a look around; the sewage lines do not get laid only because there is a budget for it, but because there are stomachs desperate enough to work through cold, wet nights to lay them. For all the urban woes of disrupted water supplies and poor road conditions, the fact that the disruptions are repaired and the potholes eventually levelled out is thanks to labour which is able and ready. Cardamom is not a cash crop because Sikkim has progressive farmers, but because there are backs willing to take the load by the maund. Trekking is possible not only because Sikkim is pretty, but because realities are quite ugly for some who bend their backs carrying loads wearing slippers and plastic shoes up trails where even the tougher trekkers slip despite their firmer soles. They do not figure anywhere in the pecking order, and, in most cases don’t even get to enjoy the infrastructure they build.
Unfortunately, they also make easy targets. Take for example the recent allegations levelled from distant Jharkhand by a group of escaped labourers who complained of inhuman treatment by BRO officials who had engaged them for work on Sikkim roads. This group did not even know where in Sikkim they were deployed. During the earthquake last year, while locals had their organisations and government available for assistance, shell-shocked hydel labourers were left to their own devices, fleeing Sikkim without even collecting, or being offered for that matter, their due wages. It was the desperation of the situations and the seriousness of the allegations which fetched these two episodes some media attention. During ‘normal’ times, the daily woes of labourers go largely unnoticed and hence also unreported. One can only hope that cases of extreme privation are rare. What is definitely not rare however is the general anonymity in which the labour force works and fades away. This again, is not a government’s failing, but a societal shortcoming. It is because we, as consumers, do not pay enough heed to basic human rights that the labour, as a class, gets denied. The West now has the luxury to pay attention to such issues which the developing world still looks at as distractions. When we celebrate laws banning bonded labour and child labour in India, we should perhaps thank buyers in the West who put pressure on producing nations to become more humane. In Sikkim, the societal distancing is made even easier because the government does everything to paint a rosy picture. The Government is the largest employer, so it can fix a minimum daily wage of Rs. 130 per day. Rs. 130 a day is subsistence wage, remunerations barely enough for a family to get by. How many private employers recognise this and pay their workers accordingly? How many domestic servants, even discounting meals, are offered such remuneration? And yet there are people willing to work for less, willing to look the other way despite a law [of minimum wage] being broken.
The labour force does not require a more compassionate government, it requires fellow citizens who notice them, listen to them, respect them and when the situation demands, speaks for them.