Housing for workers

Context: Affordable accommodation for casual labourers should be pushed forward in order to face concerns related to livelihood and economic downturn.

Impact of COVID:

• Loss of Employment: for the workers in the cities as the payment shave dried up.
• Loss of shelter and livelihoods: has pushed them back to the villages.
• General Economic difficulties: might cause workers to stay at home and further reduce the number of “casual workers” that are crucial for growth and development.

Analyzing various options

• Ensuring non-farm employment: closer to the migrants’ native place.

• Strengths: Living cost of the workers would drop, wages in rural would go up and factories would automatically have to pay more to attract them.
• Weaknesses: Need large infrastructure upgrade to the most under-developed areas, depends on overcoming the clustering in job creation profound in India.

• Ensuring Urban Housing: to help ease the process of migration with the help of the private sector.

• Dormitory style housing: made from low-cost and pre-fabricated materials, with basic housekeeping services and amenities.

• Chinese model: Employer directly builds dormitory-style accommodation for their workers, or contract out work to PSU. 

• E.g. Many of the “chawls” in the mill town of Bombay were built by the textile mills themselves. 

Way forward:

• Providing a decent rather than graceless: extinct for the migrants by pursuing affordable housing and provisioning public amenities.