Anjali poses with her three sons in front of her house, between open air sewers and a swampy private property. We are in the Rajendanagar District, in the heart of the huge Koramangala slum, in Bangalore. Anjali’s parents fled the poverty of Tamil Nadu rural areas over 40 years ago. Anjali is now 37 and has never known any other life than the one in the slum of this South Indian megalopolis.
Anjali is a daily worker in the construction industry. Every day, she struggles to help her family survive. But she only finds work very irregularly in different companies for one or a few consecutive days. Sometimes she has to look for weeks before she finds a job. Her plight is one that her female neighbours share since they are also daily wage earners. Her neighbour Raliyamma sums up their situation: “The days we don’t work, we have nothing to cook.”
For roughly 100 rupees per day (barely €1.5), these women carry construction material on their heads all day. Work-related injuries are common and many suffer from respiratory diseases. Their families get nothing to eat every time they stop working.
In June 2009, Anjali decided to participate in founding a union for construction workers to “help one another and ensure that laws are implemented.” Rada, a young Fedina social worker, lives in the slum and fights with the construction workers to defend their rights. The law guarantees informal workers certain rights, such as medical cover in case of accident, scholarships for children and state loans for building a house.
Every fortnight, about 30 female workers meet with Rada. Anjali explains: “At first, everyone would only talk about their own difficulties, and we all have a lot of problems! But after listening to other people’s predicaments, we realized that we all faced the same obstacles in order to survive. So we decided to join hands.” On two occasions, a lawyer came to inform them of their rights and the procedure to be followed in claiming them. In October 2009, Anjali took part in a seminar organized by Fedina on the subject of ‘International Law And Decent Employment’ where representatives from marginalized populations from all over South India gathered.
Following these meetings and after participating in training courses, the women from the movement founded a union for the Rajendanagar construction workers which now already has 150 members. In a few months, as soon as the union is recognized by the authorities, they will be able to claim the status of informal workers as well as the rights that ensue. For Anjali, it’s only the beginning: “Now that we’re all united, we will solve our problems together.”
This article has originally been published in French in Résonances, December 2009
