This Tambourine Man sings for the benefit of construction workers
The centre of attention was Dev, a travelling musician, strumming his guitar and kazoo. He sang from his compendium of songs on workers and inequality, as the workers looked on, amused
Mumbai: Last Friday morning, the space outside Khar railway station was thronging with thousands of labourers, all waiting to be picked up for the day’s work. This was par for the course. In the midst of one pocket of workers was an unusual scene.
The centre of attention was Dev, a travelling musician, strumming his guitar and kazoo. He sang from his compendium of songs on workers and inequality, as the workers looked on, amused.
A few feet away, a team of the trade union Kamgar Sanrakshan Sammaan Sangh (KSSS) was trying to entice workers to sign up for a “labour card,” indicating registration onto the Building and Other Construction Workers (BOCW) welfare board.
“Signing up makes a worker eligible for monetary benefits for marriage, children’s education, daughter’s marriage, house purchase, health issues, death, and more,” Akhilesh Rao told the workers, collecting their documents on a makeshift seat. Elsewhere, Kaynat Khan took down contact numbers of interested workers, filling them in on the documents required of them.
“We have been working to facilitate worker’s registrations onto the BOCW board for three years now,” said Bilal Khan, president of the KSSS. “The music sessions, called Ahvaan, meaning invitation, have worked as an icebreaker to get through to the workers, when they’re in the frenzy of looking for work.”
Happy with the response of the month-long campaign, having piqued the interest of around 600 workers, Dev’s chapter is over. But the sessions will continue with other artists.
“I grew up in a small servants’ quarters in Delhi,” said Dev, explaining his motivation to sing for the workers. “My father, who worked as a peon in the government, was an alcoholic and would constantly fight with my mum. After my twelfth grade, I took up many odd jobs like selling clothes and books, earning ₹600 a day.”
Despite the odds, Dev made it to working for a French bank in Bengaluru. In 2020, however, he abruptly left to start Ishqestan.
“I was happy, but I couldn’t shake off the feeling that I was meant for more,” he said, as he jumped from his 9-5 to singing from place to place to spread a message of love and the love of life. His most popular song is ‘Zindagi Mubarak.’
Discussions with Khan, a friend, led to Ahvaan. “The way I see it, the workers are getting some unexpected delight at the start of their workday, and it is also leading to some concrete impact,” he said.
Systemic hurdles often take the joy out of the song, however. Currently, new registrations have been on a pause from March 16 due to the model code of conduct. The KSSS is planning to contest the freeze. Even when registrations are on, awareness about the welfare board is low, and the process to register and claim benefits so tedious, few workers go through with it.
The numbers are proof. In the three years KSSS has been facilitating registrations, they’ve only managed to register around 2,000 workers.
As per Khan, more than 50% of the workers that initially sign up for registration drop out, or are kicked out, of the process. No-shows or lack of documents are some of the reasons.
“I’ve been working as a construction worker for eight years. I know about the card vaguely, but I am not registered,” said Dilshad Ahmed, 30. “Now that I know more about the benefits, and that it is free, I will sign up.”
But by far, the biggest hurdle to registration is the required 90-day work certificate. “Construction workers don’t have the documents to prove their work. Employees do not give their information so easily either,” said Khan.
As a result, till July 2023, out of the nearly three lakh construction workers estimated by Khan, Mumbai had only 28,206 active registered construction workers.
The BOCW board generates a corpus out of the 1% cess collected from construction companies and workers fees. Of the ₹12,902 crore statewide collection, by September 2023, less than half, ₹5,931 crore had been disbursed to the workers.
An official from the BOCW said as the field of construction is a migratory field, workers are bound to fall through the cracks. “We advertise about the BOCW welfare board and give instructions to districts to carry out registration campaigns. We’ve also given them formats for a booklet to be distributed to workers in which they can enter employers’ details, which then can be used for the 90-day work certificate,” she said.
“There is a lot of running around to do, documents to collect. When we started out, many of the BMC’s wards flat out refused to give the certificate, saying they didn’t know about the welfare board,” say Rao and Khan, determined to fight on.