Anatomy of Exploitation

Stories about Bihar's migrant labour will continue to be told only during elections, but with silence on the question of class

- Manish Maskara

ONE of the significant issues that were ignored during the Bihar election discourse is how the state has remained a catchment area for labourers and how they have been historically exploited to make profits from their labour.

Even today, they are unwittingly caught in the labour contracting system—the missing piece of conversation in the Bihar model of development. There exists a social texture to the hidden nature of class, i.e., the social relations of exploitation of Bihari migrants via the labour contracting system.

Though a few political parties spoke of providing employment and ensuring freedom from unemployment (berozgaari se azadi), they did not touch, let alone address, the working conditions of Bihari migrants across India. While a number of Bihari youth aspire for a government job (sarkari naukri), getting one is not easy because of numerous reasons such as competition, eligibility and so on. However, a disproportionate number of Bihari migrant labourers, who may also aspire for a naukri to achieve stability, continue to work by doing kaam—for instance, in textile factories or construction work with little social and financial security. This freedom from unemployment has been one of the key conversations in the state of Bihar obscuring exploitation of labourers at workplaces.