Why should migrants miss the bus?

A scheme to empower women is meaningless if it excludes those who really need it.

The newly elected government in Karnataka recently launched ‘Shakti’, a scheme that offers free travel to women and transgender people on government-run bus services within the state. The scheme has been a big hit, seeing massive uptake from women from all walks of life. While this is a laudable initiative that seeks to improve female workforce participation, the scheme is currently offered only to women who can prove their domicile in the city, thus excluding several lakhs of migrant women workers, from the promise of mobility. Regrettably, such exclusion of migrant workers extends to several other frontiers, including food and housing, despite the
enormous hardships in their lives that were exposed during the Covid-induced lockdowns.

Bengaluru is one of the biggest destinations for migrant workers in the country. Studies show that sectors such as garment manufacturing and services in the city are heavily dependent on women migrants. A 2018 report from Labour Without Liberty estimates that there are around 1200 garment factories in Bengaluru employing approximately five lakh workers, 80 per cent of whom are women. It is estimated that between 15,000 and 70,000 migrant women from states such as Jharkhand, Odisha, Assam, and MP are working in Bengaluru’s garment sector, comprising about 30 per cent of its current workforce.

Also Read: Evaluate Shakti scheme on its outcome, not intention

A significant majority of these women are not known to have government-issued ID cards with a Karnataka address, contrary to claims made by the BMTC Managing Director when the scheme was launched last month. A 2017 study commissioned by the Karnataka Labour Department found that about 70 per cent of intra-state migrants and around 91 per cent of inter-state migrants in Bengaluru and Mysore did not have an identity document issued at the workplace.

The situation is unlikely to have improved much since then. Several organisations working closely with migrant workers attest to the fact that a lack of identity documents at their destinations is one of the biggest problems faced by migrant workers. Hence, mandating such proofs would only hinder access to entitlements for several thousands of migrant women.

A 2019 study from Fields of View on garment workers in Bengaluru reveals that they earn a sparse monthly income of Rs 7,000, out of which 7.14 per cent is spent on transportation expenses, compared to 3.65 per cent of income spent by an ordinary resident of the city on transport. In a scenario where garment clusters in the city such as Peenya are serviced inadequately by BMTC, exclusion from this critical, employment-enabling service can seriously jeopardise the livelihoods of the lowly-paid migrant women workers. The criticality of this workforce in sustaining Bengaluru’s economy arguably outweighs the additional fiscal expenditure incurred in extending this service to migrant women workers. Besides enhancing gender and employment outcomes, it will also considerably reduce the onerous bureaucratic layers involved in verifying domicile documents each time to determine eligibility. The positive outcomes documented in studies from Tamil Nadu and Delhi, which have been running free bus travel for all women for the past few years, are sufficient to bolster the case for greater inclusion of migrant women workers.

Also Read: Shakti scheme: More women travel in govt buses

Unfortunately, the Shakti scheme is not an isolated example. Even schemes designed with a specific focus on migrant workers, introduced after Covid, have been plagued by patchy implementation on the ground. For example, the One Nation, One Ration Card Scheme was launched with a progressive policy vision that promised portability and access to food security for vulnerable migrant workers in far-flung destinations. However, barring a few states such as Delhi and Gurgaon, the scheme has yet to take off fully in any other part of the country. A number of systemic issues contribute to this conundrum: district offices have very little information on the modalities of implementation; fair price shop dealers do not have any special incentives to distribute subsidised grains to workers who are not in their catchment areas, especially when undistributed grains fetch a higher price in black markets. Migrant families are in the grip of widespread misinformation that availing themselves of subsidised grains from the city would cut them off from entitlements in the villages. ONORC, a scheme that held abundant promise to ensure food security for some of the most marginalised sections of the country that survive on bare minimum wages, has grossly failed so far in delivering on its potential.

Similarly, the Affordable Rental Housing Scheme (ARHC) was also conceived as a model to ensure the supply of adequate rental housing units for migrants in cities, both through repurposing vacant government housing and through PPP models to develop new rental stock. However, even after two years of its launch, the scheme has seen very slow implementation in most states. In Gujarat, barring Ahmedabad and Surat, the scheme has not been rolled out in any other city, despite the huge presence of migrants across the state. The economics of the scheme also serve the higher strata of migrants, who have skilled employment and a stable income. With monthly rents as high as Rs 5,000, the housing needs of the more seasonal migrants who work at the bottom rungs and live in open spaces or temporary settlements in the city with unreliable access to public provisioning are not even a part of the design of the scheme.

Driven by factors such as climate change and a consequent decline in rural livelihoods, low-end migration to cities continues unabated. Migrants endure harsh work and living conditions in their bid to find a foothold in the city, yet our policy paradigm continues to be myopic and excludes them from a whole host of critical entitlements, including food, housing,
and transportation.

The Karnataka government is currently well-positioned to send out a positive signal to its large migrant workforce by opening up free travel to ALL women, irrespective of their domicile. A more inclusive policy vision that acknowledges and embraces the contributions of migrants will go a long way towards creating a productive workforce, a healthy economy, and a resilient citizenry.

(The writer is Director of Knowledge and Policy at the Work Fair and Free Foundation)