- July 18, 2021
- Posted by: Muskan Khurana
- Category: EDUCATION, EDUCATION IN DEVELOPING NATIONS, Featured, Latest Work
The story of the migrant labourers of India is grounded in uncertainty and precariousness, the two emotions that a human mind despises and fears. Theirs is a life of constant struggle to make the two ends meet each day, often exacerbated by local crisis like joblessness and poor health, and this time has blown out of proportions because of the pandemic.
Migrant labourers in India are the rural poor migrating to urban cities and towns in search of better opportunities for livelihood. They leave behind their small landholdings, less than one hectare, that are not productive enough to generate a surplus to sustain their families. According to the Draft National Policy on Migrant Labor – prepared by NITI Aayog, the first wave of the pandemic itself sent 10 million back to their villages, due to diminishing savings and poor prospects of industries’ reopening.
With Right to elementary education for children between 6 to14 years becoming a fundamental right and the enactment of the Right to Education Act in 2009, while the school enrolment rates of both girls and boys have reached around 90%, access to continuous education for the children of migrant labour is a goal that is far from achieved. Census of India 2011 data show that 8 states, viz. Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, and West Bengal, accounted for over two-thirds of the children who dropped out. These are also the states that witness the largest outmigration of labour.
These migrant labourers work as construction workers and as informal and unskilled labour in industries, such as the textiles industry. Their periods of migration are erratic, based on the demand in such sectors and don’t match the academic calendars of the local schools. Therefore, their children are forced to drop out of schools and accompany them to urban localities, often to dingy rooms in narrow cramped streets, far from the environment needed for these children to educate themselves.
While the Right to Education Act recognises such challenges faced by these children and makes it compulsory for the local government schools in towns and cities to admit such children, these good intentions haven’t seen fruition. These children face challenges in covering up the missed syllabus, which may altogether be being taught in a different language. Schools under the State Board mostly prescribe their state’s primary language as the medium of education. Hence, these migrant children face a double whammy, which is mostly compounded by a slow disinterest and de-motivation creeping in. And if this is not enough, a shift by their parents to another town or locality for work or back to their village because of lack of any work at all, ruins the last ditch effort that they might have made to continue their education. The truth is that a lack of access to continuous good quality education entraps these children in the vicious cycle of poverty and informal labour, with little scope of coming out of it. And it is unfair to accuse them or their parents for not trying enough to get educated; it is the lack of sensitivity shown by the political dispensation for decades, to first of all recognise the unique challenges faced by the migrant labourers and their families, and to acknowledge that the latter itself is not a homogenous category.
The most important step to solve a problem is to recognise that one exists. For that, we need data about this segment of the Indian population- the estimated number of migrant labourers moving inter-state and intrastate in India, and the number of children dropping out of school because of this reality. It took a pandemic and intervention by the Supreme Court for the government to acknowledge the importance of such data, that too just to fathom and understand the magnitude of the crisis.
While we attempt to do so, we must take steps, even though belatedly, to secure continuous educational opportunities for such children. States such as Odisha and Karnataka run seasonal hostels for such children so that when their parents migrate to the urban areas, they can stay in these hostels and continue their education. These hostels have saved many children from dropping out of school and getting an education in their mother tongue. They also save them from the unhygienic and polluted surroundings that they would have been exposed to in the urban slums. The daily mid-day meal in their school also continues to provide them daily basic nutrition and hence prevent stunting or wasting. It also gives relief to their migrant parents about the safety, health and education of their children.
There is a need for other states experiencing out-migration of migrant labourers to adopt this policy. Can’t we eventually have hostels attached to every local government school in India for children of such migrant labourers and for others who do not have environments conducive for a healthy childhood at their homes? What about poor children with an alcoholic or abusive parent? Don’t we owe these children a normal childhood with a peaceful environment that enables them to study and grow?
This might seem like a far–fetched idea to a middle class Indian because our ideas are called practical or impractical based on our current reality. After sending our kids to school with hefty fees and toiling hard for it, good quality free education with facilities like hostels for the children of underprivileged backgrounds seems unrealistic and impractical. But we need to remember, in a democracy, we only get what we ask for, sometimes for years altogether.
There is a need to put pressure on the government to increase its spending on education, from about 4% of the GDP to at least 6- 7%, and to make provisions for ensuring access to residential facilities for the children of migrant labourers in India, who contribute to over 10% of Indian GDP and have built the very foundations of our cities- be it the bridges, skyscrapers or the urban private schools.
We also need to acknowledge that policies don’t work in silos. Eventually, the government along with the civil society needs to improve the life chances of the rural poor migrating to urban centres, as then we can hope that the children don’t drop out of their schools to support their parents to improve their livelihood.
