Oust BJP to Save Construction Workers
Arka Rajpandit
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THE construction workers are a sizable part of the electorate; more than five crore construction workers are expected to cast their votes in this election.
The Modi-led BJP government seeks to return to power by making claims and extending guarantees. However, what has been the experience of construction workers?
During the last ten years of its rule, the BJP government, led by Modi, betrayed the working people of our country by unleashing systemic onslaughts on thier lives and livelihoods. It has pursued policies that benefit big corporates, domestic and foreign, by attacking the wages, working conditions, and hard-won rights of the workers. These calamitous policies led to massive job losses, unemployment, high price rises, poverty, and hunger. The construction workers, have also experienced these.
In the last ten years, we have also witnessed systematic attacks on construction workers' welfare board. The BJP government at the centre and several state governments weakened the democratic functioning of boards by dropping trade union representatives, especially CITU representatives. They have been looting the corpus and diverting funds for political purposes. The benefits of the workers have been curtailed drastically. The total unspent construction workers' welfare fund is more than Rs 43,000 crore! According to the information given in parliament in February 2022 by Rameswar Teli, minister of state for labour, out of the Rs 78,521.24 crore collected as cess, only Rs 35,399.40 crore had been spent, i.e. nearly 55 per cent of the total corpus remains unspent.
Migrant workers comprise large sections of construction workers. Instead of strengthening the BOCW Act and the Inter-State Migrant Workmen Act, the Modi government subsumed these two laws, along with several labour laws, into the Code on Occupational Health and Safety and Working Conditions (OHSWC). Some laws covering construction workers were subsumed under the Code on Social Security. Once labour codes are implemented, the BOCW Act, the Welfare Cess Act and the Inter-state Migrant Workmen Act will cease to operate. The collection of cess, registration process, responsibilities of the employers and functioning of the welfare board will all get diluted. The government will have the power to interfere with the investment of any money by the welfare board, which is workers’ money, including its investment in the share market. The Code on Social Security provides for self-assessment of cess by the employer, as well as a reduced rate of cess and interest. The OHSWC Code highly dilutes all the existing rights of migrant workers under the Inter-state Migrant Workmen’s Act.
The Modi government could not notify the labour codes because of the stiff opposition from the joint trade union movement. However, if the BJP returns to power for the third time, it will definitely notify the rules.
Information related to electoral bonds released by the SBI and Election Commission reveals that the BJP was the largest beneficiary of corporate funds through electoral bonds, though other political parties, except the Left, also received corporate funds through electoral bonds. Only the Left parties declared that they would not accept electoral bonds.
Big construction and real estate companies are among the major donors to the BJP. Hyderabad-based Megha Engineering and Infrastructure donated Rs 966 crores, becoming the largest donor to BJP. It is associated with projects like the Zojila Tunnel, the Char Dham Tunnel, and Maharashtra Samruddhi Marg. Hyderabad-based Navayuga Engineering Company, which built the Silkyara tunnel in Uttarakhand that collapsed late last year, also purchased electoral bonds worth Rs 55 crores between 2019 and 2022. A couple of months before the Silkyara incident, 20 people, including two site engineers and 12 workers, were crushed to death after a girder launching machine collapsed on them. They were constructing a viaduct on the Samruddhi Expressway in Thane, under Navayuga.
In addition to that, the top 25 real estate developers donated over Rs 630 crore to the BJP, and the big construction companies and real estate companies donated crores of rupees to the BJP with the intention of getting big-ticket projects defying standard operating procedures on safety protocols, environmental issues and work welfare issues. Electoral bonds were used to make the BJP government look the other way while these companies were blatantly flouting safety norms, putting the lives of construction workers at risk and denying them their due wages and social security benefits. The electoral bonds revelations expose the nexus of the Modi government with the big corporations at the cost of workers’ lives. The blatant compromise on safety protocols amounts to accidental deaths and permanent injuries. A study conducted by HMT found that the annual construction site injury rate per 100,000 women workers was 82.26. The annual construction site injury rate per 100,000 male workers was 146.5.
In addition to its pro-corporate policies, the BJP, along with RSS and its various outfits, with the open patronage of the Modi government, has been spreading rabid communal venom to divide workers and all sections of the people and disrupt their unity. This weakens our united struggles against the onslaught of our working and living conditions, benefiting the corporate classes.
Thus, a third term for the BJP government would be disastrous for the construction workers and all toiling people in general. With this understanding, the Construction Workers’ Federation of India (CWFI) calls for ousting the Modi regime from power. CWFI has decided to have an extensive campaign during elections by reaching each and every member of its affiliated unions, their family members, and their neighbourhood through in-person meetings, distributing campaign materials, holding street corner meetings, etc.
The CWFI urges the construction workers to use your vote and oust the Modi government from power and Defeat BJP and its allies. It also urges the workers to strengthen the Left parties, which have always stood with the workers and toiling people in their struggle for their rights.
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