Can We Ever De-fragment Society?

“The reason why the world lacks unity, and lies broken and in heaps, is because man is disunited with himself.” Ralph Waldo Emerson

There are about 35 million labourers in India. The work they do is characterised by their inherent risk to the life and limb of the workers and by their poor living conditions.
Veteran activist Baba Adhav, who has been fighting to make the world wake up to the woes of labourers says, “We Indians do not value manual work. There is a strange prejudice against it in society, especially among white collared sections. We seem to have forgotten that the construction workers who build our high rises, the domestic workers who serve us, the vegetable vendors who provide for our daily needs and the waste-pickers who keep our cities clean are as much a part of modern day India as the information technologists and technocrats. The lives of migrant construction labourers seem to be of no value to anyone. One labourer dies in the city every day on an average, but no one seems to be bothered. ”
Leaving their home towns, migrant rural folks end up as construction workers in cities most times. Wages for agricultural work in the village are as low as Rs 10 a day for women and Rs 20 for men. Working at urban construction sites fetches more money. Making ends meet in a city though, devoid of support systems is an everyday battle.

As a mentor for BCIL, I wished to learn how well construction workers fared by living amongst them for some time. Mr. Hariharan, CEO of BCIL lauded my idea and expressed that all things we did as labour welfare programmes were rubbish anyway. He also wished to know how his organisation could improve the lot of construction workers who worked for him. I was offered accomodation—a 9’x10’ tin-shed with a single bulb— at one of their construction sites—BCIL Collective. Radha, my wife and I, ate food with the workers, drank their water and mingled with them for 3 days.
The bulb in our shed had to burn all night as otherwise the night guests—6 to 7 rats—would trample over us. The thin metal sheets between each shed hardly cut off any sound from any of the sheds. Squabbles, cries of babies and discussions could be listened into by anyone who wanted to. The heat from the scorching sun set Radha’s skin on fire. Many workers, slept out during nights to get breeze, by the side of a smoke column rising from smouldering leaves to keep away pesky mosquitoes that sang their way through nights.
Make-shift chulas helped cook their food that was as tasty if not tastier than what urbanites would eat in their homes.

Children defied pains of running noses, itching bodies and malnutrition and merrily scampered to and fro through the whole campus. Their heads were lice-ridden and skins hungered for some nutritious food. A two year old looked like he was only 9 months old.
The scenes we experienced will remain etched in our minds forever. A child carrying another, three-fourths her height trying to feed it food that looked like it could have some more gravy to shoot it down one’s throat; women tidying their “homes” so like an urban housewife polishing her brass curios; enterprising men giving out their only possessions like a TV for rent for others on a daily basis; women chastising men to stop them from drinking; the list is long.
Men who had over 10 acres of land in their hometowns had wandered to Bangalore seeking money as there was no water to irrigate their lands. Reason being, giant dams had damned water forever into their lands in order to power homes city folks lived in.
A friend who visited us at the camp could not sit inside our shed. She was petrified of the rats and sand peppered floor.

When asked if the labourers would go back to their villages, they said they wouldn’t. Said Sarwesh a contractor having many labourers working for him—all of them his relatives—,”We may visit our village once in a while but we will never return to her. Our life is here in the city.”
“Won’t you miss your big house and open fields?” we asked him.
“When you experience hunger and have many mouths to feed, you cannot choose what you want in life. The land no longer feeds us. We have to fend for ourselves. There are many farmers who have similar problems. Some of them die in frustration and others come away like us in search of money. Here we are assured of two square meals a day. That is something I will never give up again.
“Our children can go to school here. They will learn to read and write and then they can get better jobs and live better in the city. When I go to my hometown I carry money for my folks there. I am a hero for them. It is better this way.”
Instead of saying that they needed roti, makaan and kapada, Muthugappa said, “If you can assure us of weekly payment, water and power, we can take care of the rest.”
We asked a son of a worker in his teens who goes to a school outside the campus,”What will you do to earn a living when you grow up?”
“Don’t know yet.” answered the lad with well oiled hair and trousers that were trying to mimic some urban lad, ”But I would certainly not want to be a mason.”
I could see that effects of building dams had spoilt two genrations and maybe the rest that would follow.

Change must begin somewhere, mustn’t it? Why should labourers who construct and polish houses for monied urbanites to live in comfort themselves put up with terrible living conditions that I could hardly bear for three days?
You may ask, where should we begin to make the change? Of course, we could initiate changes in the labour sheds; replace tin roofs and walls with compressed bamboo sheets, recycle waste water to grow vegetables in a garden nearby, get rodents to live in peace elsewhere, educate the children better, improve their nutrition, provide better health care facilities, impress upon the young men to give back to the villages what they deserve, or get the adults to learn to read and write. But I fear that would be putting a plaster to a wounded soul.
Somewhere, somehow, we have started living like islands.
What struck me like a ton of bricks was the realisation of the deep divide that exists in the world we live in.
I realised that some of us wished to have exclusive use of all resources. This leads to excessive consumption, gated communities and insulated minds. What we see as fragments of society outside definitely is an extension of what is inside of us.
Our minds are fragmented. Clearly we must do something about learning to live an integrated life. Those rats and insects have every right to live in this planet as we do. Those children of labourers have the same right to education and happiness as our children have. There can be no place for unhappiness in one part of our minds while we feel joy in another. One mind, one soul, one man could build an integrated society. That soul could be me...or you too. Why not?

– Krish Murali Eswar