For better conditions of work

Context: The COVID pandemic is an opportunity to rebuild economic production through di?erent institutional arrangements. Migrant workers can look towards forming cooperatives and unions.

Problems of the Migrant Workers

• Terrible living conditions and shocking treatment: in the cities that repel them from comming back to the cities.
• Inadequate MGNREGA: 

• Provides relief only for the short term.
• It is a vulnerable wage-earning occupation due to its dependence on rains.
• It has not enough work to engage all people.

• Concerns for fair treatment: Wages of the workers are also dependent on the casual favors (sexual demands) of the contractor. Poor salaries and no social benefits increase vulnerability.

Way Forward:

• Forming Cooperative Societies: 
• In Rural Areas:

• Both returning migrants and MGNREGA workers can form cooperatives.
• They can form hubs which develop their services or products that can be sold with better terms and conditions.
• E.g. Several tailors in a village in Bihar can come together to form cooperative, attracting contracts from both local and elsewhere.

• In Urban Areas:

• Workers without enough marketed skills in local areas can re-enter cities as a labor cooperative.
• Demand housing and other support systems that provide them a decent living, not only wages.

• NGOs and National Cooperative union: can intervene to provide a solution to the workers who do not want to return to the cities:
• E.g. AMUL Model is a lesser-known model that is not sophisticated and is fair in terms of wages that can be implemented.
• Ensure fair wages: Cooperatives ensure fair wages with the removal of exploitative middlemen.
• Reshape MGNREGA: so that its funds can be used to enable women or artisans to market their products.
• Dispersed production: To fill the demand of the cities with collective marketing of the rural areas by creating new kinds of economic structures- a pyramid of group economic activity
• Successful unionization of workers: can protect them from exploitation. It will promote dispersed production for both local and export markets. 

Conclusion: Arrangements to rebuild India where cities are not congested and where standards of rural area are improved provides an optimal solution for workers and growth in GDP alike.