Building a Wider
Horizon With Labour
Migrant home-based women workers, who form the lowest rungs of India's labour chain, are working for as little as Rs 10 - Rs 15 for over eight hours a day during the pandemic, in the face of employers' apathy and the lack of access to urban welfare schemes, a study by labour rights organisation Aajeevika Bureau has found. While public attention has remained focussed on the worker exodus during the lockdown, the distress of migrant families that chose to remain in India's cities remains undocumented. In Ahmedabad, one of India's textiles hubs, women from many such families are employed as home-based workers by domestic and global businesses. Many of them told researchers they were struggling to survive because their wages had gone unpaid and debts were mounting.
