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While the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act -
if it is effectively implemented - is likely to have
many positive consequences, one of the potential benefits
that has been inadequately recognised is how it may
improve the welfare of around 60 million children. These
are children of migrant workers, who are currently among
those very adversely affected by the recent patterns
of increased material pressure which has driven adult
men and women to short term migration in search of work.
Consider
the evidence that we have. Both aggregate official data
and all the available micro studies suggest that there
has been a very substantial increase in short-term economic
migration in the recent past, driven by the reduced
viability of cultivation, displacement, asset deprivation
and collapse of employment generation in most parts
of rural India. The more significant change recently
has been the increased migration of women, with men
or in groups or even on their own.
Of course, this puts huge pressures and creates new
possibilities for oppression of women migrants, who
are more vulnerable to all sorts of exploitation, both
physical and material. While migration can be an important
source of new economic opportunities, distress migration
among the poor, and especially of poor women, tends
to deepen existing inequalities, and make fragile and
vulnerable situations even worse. But the worst consequences
may well be on the children of such migrants, who are
even less visible to policy makers.
A recent study by Mobile Crèches ''Labour Mobility
and the Rights of Children'', Mobile Crèches,
New Delhi, March 2006) brings this out very clearly.
Using official data from the Census and NSSO, the study
estimates that there were about 30 million migrant women
workers and 60 million children, of whom around half
were children under 6 years of age, in 2000.
The dismal conditions of migrant workers in their places
of work and temporary residence are well known. Such
workers generally do not receive the minimum wages because
of their inferior bargaining power, and late payment
or non-payment of wages are constant threats or realities.
Women usually receive significantly lower wages, between
half to two-thirds of what the men workers receive.
The works contracts are usually casual, insecure and
highly exploitative. The residence is usually in shanty
towns or in temporary roadside constructions, with little
or nothing in the way of basic sanitation, access to
clean drinking water, and so on.
But, even apart from these features that make the quality
of life very poor for the migrant family as a whole,
there are other features that impact directly on children.
Constant movement with no fixed abode, or residence
in cramped, unhealthy and restricted quarters are obviously
undesirable. But for migrant children, the problems
may begin even before birth because of the pressures
on the mother which operate to reduce birth weight,
then reduce possibilities for breast feeding, then prevent
regular immunisation, and then expose the child to all
sorts of infections because of poor sanitation and overcrowding.
There are also other concerns. Migrant families do not
have access to all the normal rights of citizens because
they are not seen as residents of the area where they
work. Therefore, the children do not have access to
immunisation and other health services, cannot attend
anganwadis or local schools, and often simply have to
accompany their mothers at their workplaces such as
construction sites. These are unhealthy, often hazardous
places for infant and young children who end up spending
most of their waking hours there. And there is very
poor nutrition available for growing children.
These conditions lead to constant prevalence among such
migrant children of a range of illnesses including respiratory
ailments and waterborne diseases. One 1998 study of
children of migrant workers at worksites showed that
53 per cent of the children under five years were malnourished
and 27 per cent were severely malnourished.
If migrants have been ignored by public policy, and
thus face an insidious but extensive system of social
and economic discrimination, this is even more true
of the children of migrants, who are generally invisible
to the public eye. Yet, beyond the clichés of
how children are the future of the country and so on,
there are huge dangers in allowing this neglect to continue.
It is not just that early childhood is the period of
life of maximum vulnerability, physical and mental development
and dependence upon adults, such that events and processes
in this period have long term repercussions for future
capabilities and life chances. It is also that the itinerant
life with constant material struggle for survival and
lack of basic facilities makes survival almost a miracle
that is seen as the result of tough and often individualistic
choices. The kernels of the future society that is thereby
being created are surely full of dark possibilities.
So it is absolutely imperative for both society at large
and government policy in particular to make the issue
of basic protection for migrant families and the provision
of public services and systems for migrants, including
children, a basic priority. |
