Circular Migrant Workers and Housing in Indian Cities: A View from Ahmedabad

Abstract

The paper examines the living spaces and related experiences of circular labour migrants in the construction sector in Ahmedabad; and interrogates the urban policy, planning and governance regimes as well as labour legislation and governance regimes shaping these. The paper also pays attention to migrants’ agency in shaping their housing in the city in the context of these regimes and their own multilocal lives. Their housing question is also situated in the context of the broader housing question of the urban poor which consists of a diversity of groups facing shared and differentiated exclusions and vulnerabilities in the city.

Executive Summary

Circular labour migrants in the construction sector in Ahmedabad inhabit four typologies of living spaces. Workers recruited from the city’s labour chowks live predominantly in informal rental housing, squatter settlements and homeless settlements, while those recruited as part of labour gangs in villages live predominantly in temporary employer-provided labour colonies, aka worksite housing. The article discusses the living conditions in these four typologies, and uses three lenses to analyse this housing. The first lens is of urban policy, planning and governance regimes vis-a-vis the housing of and for the urban poor. This reveals how the state’s differentiated politics vis-à-vis housing informalities and the urban poor, which is manifested in its policies, programmes, and planning and governance practices, creates uneven welfarist inclusions as well as differentiated possibilities for claims-making by different groups of the urban poor. This results in specific inadequacies of shelter, basic services and tenure security in the different typologies of living spaces of circular migrant workers. The second lens of policy and governance regimes vis-à-vis labour reveals how the provisions of shelter and basic services in worksite housing are shaped by the regulation of employers under labour laws, and the mode of provisioning by employers and job contractors in this context. The third lens is of migrants’ agency in shaping their housing in the city in the context of urban policy, planning and governance regimes as well as their own multilocal lives across village and city. This lens reveals the relationships that migrants from nearby tribal districts have to their village, and how their practices around housing in the city are shaped by these relationships alongside the constraints and possibilities they face in the city given their vulnerabilities as poor, informal workers and circular migrants. The article concludes with recommendations for urban policy, planning and governance that would improve the informal housing of circular migrant construction workers, and create new formal housing that is relevant for these migrant workers.

Migration is an important contributor to urbanization, with migrant workers being a cornerstone of the Indian economy. The census and projections from the NSS 2007–2008 data show that of the 482 million workers in India in 2011, 194 million were permanent and semi-permanent migrants and 15 million were temporary migrants (Bhagat et al., 2020), with the rate of temporary migration being seven times higher than that of permanent migration (Keshri & Bhagat, 2013). The NSS, the only official survey enumerating non-permanent migrants, in fact, fails to capture the scale of what is variously termed temporary, short-duration, seasonal and circular labour migration. ¹ Scholarly estimates range from 40 million seasonal and short-duration migrants (Srivastava, 2012a) to 100 million circular migrants (which includes seasonal and short-duration migrants and longer-term migrants), whose economic contribution is estimated as 10% of national GDP (Deshingkar & Akter, 2009). ² According to NSS 2007–2008 data, temporary migration is directed mainly towards urban areas, and most of these migrants are poor and disadvantaged castes (Keshri & Bhagat, 2013). At their urban destinations, they are concentrated in informal employment, and face a range of social, economic and political vulnerabilities which are not due to migration per se but loopholes and faulty implementation of protective legislation and the non-recognition of these migrants in policy, including urban policies and planning (Bhagat, 2012; Deshingkar & Akter, 2009; Srivastava, 2012a).

The Government of India’s Ministry of Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation constituted a Working Group on Migration, whose 2017 report gave a roadmap for migrants’ inclusion at their urban work destinations (GOI, 2017). There are also long-standing recommendations to formulate a migration policy and approach social protection and questions of food security, education, health, shelter/housing, labour market interventions and social security from a migration lens (Srivastava, 2012a, 2012b; UNESCO & UNICEF, 2012). However, the central government’s response to these recommendations, the 2017 report and the migrant crisis during the COVID-19 pandemic leaves much to be desired.

Consider the critical question that is the focus of this article: the housing of labour migrants in cities. In 2020, the Affordable Rental Housing Complexes (ARHC) scheme was launched under Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana, the central government’s ongoing flagship housing programme. The scheme proposes to ‘ensure a dignified living environment for urban migrants/poor close to their workplaces at affordable rates’. ³ Given this objective and as India’s first national rental housing scheme, ARHC is a historic step. But analyses of the scheme’s scale, modalities and economics as well as the needs of migrants and other urban poor which shape the nature of their housing demand, indicate that it will fail to deliver on its promises (Bhatia, 2021; Harish, 2021; Harish & Gajjar, 2021; Naik et al., 2021). The other relevant national programme is the Shelter for the Urban Homeless (SUH) scheme launched in 2013, but its potential to benefit homeless migrants remains unrealized due to various reasons (CISHAA, 2020). More broadly, the draft national policy on migrant labour, which was prepared in 2021 and appears to have some directions for migrant workers’ housing, has still not been released in the public domain. Meanwhile, four new labour codes were passed in the Indian Parliament in 2020 and are expected to be implemented soon. This includes the Code on Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions which mentions temporary accommodation for workers by employers. However, what this will mean for migrants’ housing remains unclear since the labour codes ignore informal-sector workers, especially migrants (Varma et al., 2020).

This article is set against this backdrop of the Indian state’s unsatisfactory efforts to address migrant workers’ housing in cities. While scholars and practitioners working on migration and development have cast an eye over urban policies, programmes and planning, arguing that migrants remain invisible in these, leading to poor insecure living conditions (Bhagat, 2012; Khandelwal et al., 2012; Srivastava, 2012a), fine-grained research on migrants’ living conditions and the dynamics engendering these conditions are still scarce (see, e.g., Aajeevika Bureau, 2020; Agarwal, 2016; Kotal et al., 2022; Naik, 2015, 2019; Srivastava, 2016). This article contributes to this literature by examining the living spaces and related experiences of circular labour migrants in the construction sector in Ahmedabad; the policy and governance regimes shaping these; and migrants’ agency in shaping their housing in the city in the context of these regimes and their own multilocal lives.

The construction sector is labour-intensive, employing around 50 million workers (Srivastava, 2016). It is the principal industry employing migrant workers with an estimated 40 million circular migrants (Deshingkar & Akter, 2009) of which around 18 million are temporary and short-duration migrants (Srivastava, 2012b). A partially invisible hierarchical recruitment chain (with job contractors, sub-contractors, labour contractors, etc) creates an ambiguous relationship between the principal employer (the owner of a construction project) and the workers, leading to difficulties around occupational safety, fair wages and decent shelter and services. The sector is thus significant for migrant housing.

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

The article draws upon four small research studies which have progressively developed a more well-rounded view and analysis of the housing of circular migrant workers in Ahmedabad’s construction sector. The studies cover four typologies of living spaces of two circular migrant groups defined by the two main recruitment channels through which workers are employed in construction. In one recruitment channel, the labour contractor or job contractor goes to a city’s labour chowk—called naka in Ahmedabad—where construction workers, including circular migrants, gather to find work. These circular migrant naka workers migrate to the city and find a place to live, usually in informal types of tenure, by drawing on the knowledge and support of kin and other migration-source-area based networks. Their three predominant living spaces are rental housing, squatter settlements and homeless settlements. In the other channel of recruitment, labour contractors assemble labour gangs in villages and are involved in their migration that brings them to a specific construction site. These workers live predominantly in temporary employer-provided labour colonies, aka worksite housing.

The studies interrogated the conditions in each of these four predominant typologies of living spaces, and the policy and governance regimes shaping these conditions. The mode of provisioning by employers/job contractors was also examined for worksite housing. Two studies delved into the experiences and practices of circular migrant naka workers in relation to their living spaces, with one of these studies also investigating migrants’ multilocal lives across village and city to understand how this shapes their habitations of the city. Here, we focused on circular migrants who are Scheduled Tribes from the contiguous belt of five tribal districts in eastern Gujarat (Dahod and Panchmahal), southern Rajasthan (Banswara and Dungarpur) and western Madhya Pradesh (MP) (Jhabua) due to: (a) their highly inadequate living spaces; (b) this contiguous belt being a major source of construction workers in Gujarat; and (c) easy accessibility of these districts from Ahmedabad.

In terms of research methods, the studies involved: (a) observations and informal discussions with circular migrant nakaworkers in 11 informal settlements; semi-structured interviews and informal conversations with 14 circular migrants; and visits to the village homes of 12 of them over 2016–2017; (b) a housing survey in 2018 with 224 circular migrant naka workers; (c) observations and informal discussions with circular migrant nakaworkers in 20 informal settlements; and focus group discussions with 37 residents from 8 settlements during 2018; (d) mapping of provisions in labour colonies at 14 construction sites and questionnaires with relevant staff of the developer/construction company in 2019; (e) interviews with 6 developers in 2019; (f) analysis of relevant legislation, plans and policies, official documents, and planning and governance practices over 2016–2019; and (g) interviews and discussions with government officials over 2017–2019. Interviews and discussions with workers in labour colonies at construction sites were not done since gaining entry to sites simply to document the colonies had been negotiated with great difficulty. ⁴

The article uses three lenses to decipher and analyse the housing of circular migrant construction workers. The first lens is that of urban policy, planning and governance regimes vis-a-vis the housing of and for the urban poor. Urban poor is an umbrella term that encompasses diverse groups based on income, occupation, social identity, migration status, etc. In terms of migration status, the urban poor include non-migrants, permanent and semi-permanent migrants (a heterogenous group in itself, with those settled in the city since different durations, including more recent migrants) and circular migrants (also a heterogenous group, from short-term to long-term migrants; migrant families and single-male migrants; those who have been migrating since a long time and more recent migrants). There is an overall marginalization of the urban poor, which has worsened under neoliberal market-driven and elite-driven urban development. An underlying dynamic at play has been the production of what Bhan (2016) calls ‘planned illegalities’, that is, spatial informalities emerging not because of a lack of urban planning per se but because of the nature of urban planning in India. Although the state and urban planning is in fact implicated in the production of spatial informalities such as the informal settlements of the poor, these settlements are primarily viewed through the lens of illegality. This results, on the one hand, in legitimizing state-led evictions, and on the other hand, in the state’s grudging, partial and fragmented adoption of a welfarist approach towards these settlements, driven partly by political imperatives and claims-making by the urban poor (Desai et al., 2020). The state thus grants recognition to many informal settlements and incrementally extends infrastructures, services and (usually de facto) tenure security to them. This provides a foundation for the urban poor to invest their limited resources in incrementally improving their houses in these settlements. However, the nature of the state’s politics vis-à-vis these housing informalities and the urban poor—which is manifested in urban policies, programmes, and planning and governance practices—is differentiated in ways that create uneven welfarist inclusions and possibilities for claims-making. I examine the informal typologies of living spaces of circular migrant naka workers in this context, interrogating how their particular conditions of shelter, basic services and tenure security are shaped by this differentiated politics. I also briefly consider how urban planning and government programmes for new formal housing for the urban poor are shaped by the state’s differentiated politics vis-à-vis the urban poor.

The second lens that this article uses is policy and governance regimes vis-à-vis labour. These regimes are shaped by the political economy of development, wherein the predominant workforce is in the informal/unorganized sector with the state showing little commitment to the protection of and rights for these workers. The labour laws that have provisions to regulate the employers of these workers particularly fail to do so in the case of circular migrant workers, a group within this unorganized workforce whose migration status compounds their exclusion from labour rights and welfare. In this context, I examine the worksite housing in which many circular migrant construction workers live, interrogating how the nature of shelter and basic services are shaped by the regulation of and practices of employers.

The third lens is of migrant agency in the context of the constraints and possibilities created by these regimes as well as migrants’ multilocal lives. Engaging with the concept of multilocality, which points to participation in social and economic activities in several places (Trager, 2005) and draws attention to multilocational livelihoods and multilocational households (Deshingkar & Farrington, 2009; Schmidt-Kallert, 2012), the paper briefly describes the migrants’ multilocal lives, illuminating the nature of their relationships to their village, and how this shapes their circular mobilities and their habitations of the city.

LIVING SPACES OF CIRCULAR MIGRANT CONSTRUCTION WORKERS

Circular migrant nakaworkers live in three main typologies in Ahmedabad. Our housing survey shows 48% were in rental housing, 18% in squatter settlements and 14% in settlements in public spaces. The remaining 20% were across other typologies such as employer-provided housing, paying rent to live in the open on seasonally-used farmland and public housing. The survey shows that most prefer to live near the naka, that is, access to preferred work opportunities, with the majority (70%) travelling less than 20 minutes to reach the naka, and the majority (71%) also incurring no travel costs as they walked between home and naka.

New formal housing created for the urban poor in the last two decades under government programmes is only a drop in the ocean, and moreover has been ownership-based housing which is inaccessible to circular migrants due to eligibility criteria which require furnishing residential proof documents for the city, sometimes prior to a particular date (known as the cut-off date). Furthermore, despite being subsidized, this housing is unaffordable to most circular migrants whose multilocal lives involve significant remittances to the village. Land supplied for formal social housing through urban planning instruments—such as the macro-level Master Plan/Development Plan and in Gujarat’s case also the micro-level Town Planning Schemes—has been used for such ownership housing. This will not change with the ARHC scheme under which land supply for rental housing for the urban poor is to come primarily from public authorities with vacant built public housing stock and public and private landowners with vacant land. ⁵ Circular migrant nakaworkers will therefore continue to turn to informal typologies of living spaces given the state’s differentiated politics which creates discrimination and exclusion rather than addressing the diversity of needs.

This section discusses the three main informal living spaces of the migrant nakaworkers as well as worksite housing.

Rental Housing

One-third of urban households in India live in rental housing, the majority in informal rentals provided by small-scale individual landlords (Harish, 2021). The tenants include a range of urban poor households: permanent, semi-permanent and circular migrants; migrants from various places of origin and working across various occupations; single male migrants and migrant families; etc. On the supply side, there is diversity in physical typology, nature of informality, shelter quality, type and adequacy of basic services, and rent levels (Desai & Mahadevia, 2014; Kotal 2022; Naik, 2015; Sampat & Sohane, 2023). Although written rental agreements are rare, implying tenure insecurity, studies reveal complex social relations underlying tenancy resulting in varied practices amongst landlords with instances of ad-hoc rent increases and evictions as well as allowing tenants flexibility in rent payment (Naik, 2015, 2019).

In our 2018 survey, 59% of the circular migrant naka workers living in rental housing were from the aforementioned contiguous belt of five tribal districts across Gujarat, Rajasthan and MP, while the remaining 41% were from other districts of these three states and various districts of Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh. Their rental housing included rooms in rental chalis (i.e., clusters of rooms) developed by landlords in squatter settlements, unauthorized colonies ⁶ and urban villages; rooms given for rent by landlords in their own house in urban villages and formal and unauthorized housing societies; small pockets of rental rooms on farmlands in the city periphery, rented flats in ownership-based public housing, and in rare cases rented flats in private buildings. Overall, 30% had pucca shelters, 63% semi-pucca shelters, and 7% kutcha shelters, with shelter quality varying widely amongst semi-pucca rooms. Only 23% had an individual tap while 74% used a shared water source. Landlords usually provide common taps, which are connected to a bore-well, handpump or municipal connection. 3% fetched water from surrounding areas. Only 20% had individual toilets while 64% used shared toilets. Landlords usually provide shared toilets but their adequacy varies in terms of toilet/room ratio and level of maintenance. Overall, 9% practiced open defecation and 7% used pay-and-use or public toilets suggesting that for this 16%, their landlords had either not built any toilets or had provided dysfunctional or extremely inadequate numbers of toilets. Overall, 95% had access to electricity, with little more than half paying for electricity in addition to rent. A total of 58% of those living in rentals were families while 42% were single male migrants who shared a room between 2 and 6 men to make the rent affordable.

The rental housing inhabited by circular migrant naka workers in 2018 was found to be mainly in the range of ₹1,001–₹3,000 per month, with 41% living in rentals of ₹1,001–₹2,000 per month and 47% in rentals of ₹2,001–₹3,000 per month. Migrants living in these rentals experienced various difficulties associated with poor housing. For instance, in 2017, Mani-bhai, an unskilled single male migrant sharing a ₹2,000 per month room in Ishwarbhai ni Chali reported that the chali, which consisted of rows of ground-floor semi-pucca rooms, had no toilets, forcing tenants to defecate in a nearby field; no paving or drainage in the lanes, leading to severe waterlogging in monsoon; and shared water taps from which they had to fill and store water twice a day. His brother Lalit-bhai, a skilled worker who sometimes migrated with family members and sometimes migrated on his own (sharing a room with other migrants in the latter instances), generally accessed better quality housing for almost double the rent in the adjacent Bhikhabhai ni Chali. This consisted of a two-storey pucca building with rooms for ₹3,500–₹4,000 per month; 3–4 toilets shared between 12 to 15 rooms; and a water tap in each room. Migrant families who live in rentals, most often live in cheaper, poor quality rooms since higher rent is unaffordable unless the household head is a skilled worker and there are other earning members in the migrating family.

Almost none of the circular migrant nakaworkers had a written rental agreement, indicating the absence of formal tenure security. A total of 19% reported a past experience of eviction/harassment by the landlord or feeling fear or threat or concern about eviction/harassment in their current location. Discussions with migrants revealed the nuances of their experiences and perceptions of eviction/harassment. Some pointed out that they moved rooms frequently because landlords do not want a migrant to occupy the same room for a long time and therefore arbitrarily increase the rent to force the tenant to move out. Some explained that landlords harass tenants about their water or electricity use in order to force them to leave. Evictions by landlords are therefore not interpreted by workers as simply blatant expulsions since these kinds of intimidating practices by landlords might also force them to move out. While low tenure security is a reality for many migrant workers, 41% also reported living in their current rental since more than 3 years, with little less than half of them living in their current rental since 10 years or more. Many of these migrants reported having good relations with their landlord and living in the same rental for a long time. This reveals the wide variations in landlords’ practices and tenure security.

The state’s lack of recognition of this rental housing supply contributes to the conditions in this rental sector. In squatter settlements and unauthorized settlements recognized as slums by Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation (AMC), government schemes to give individual water and drainage connections and subsidize individual toilet construction are targeted at the informal houseowners only and do not engage with landlordism and tenancy. The state’s differentiated politics plays out here vis-à-vis the tenure status of the residents of these settlements, recognizing informal houseowners but not informal tenants. The tenants therefore have no recourse to the state if landlords provide inadequate services. AMC’s settlement-level infrastructure may also create inadequacies for tenants, who can do little about this, especially if they are circular migrants who lack political rights in the city. In urban villages and the unauthorized settlements and developments not recognized as slums, AMC provides services to the private plots. However, it does not regulate conditions inside the plots where inadequate rental housing may have been constructed without development and building use permissions.

Squatter Settlements

A diversity of urban poor households inhabits squatter settlements on public and private lands in Indian cities. Basic services and tenure security vary between settlements, shaped by the differentiated politics around informality, with state interventions differing based on landownership, land-use zoning, real-estate pressures, age of settlement, social demography and migrant status of the community, political patronage, collective demands from residents, etc. These factors also influence decisions to officially recognize the settlement (through legal notification or listing) as a slum, an important governmental category that brings the settlement under the ambit of slum policies and programmes.

In Ahmedabad, some of the most inadequate and insecure squatter settlements are home to circular migrant naka workers from the aforementioned contiguous tribal belt of Gujarat, Rajasthan and MP, along with some permanent/semi-permanent migrants from other marginalized communities such as Scheduled Castes, De-Notified Tribes and Nomadic Tribes. Many of these settlements are 15–20 years old, and many of their residents have been moving back and forth between their village and Ahmedabad since many years. The latest city-wide slum survey, which enumerated 691 slum settlements in 2009–2010 (CEPT & AMC, 2014), does not include these settlements as they are not recognized by the AMC. Centre for Labour Research and Action’s (CLRA) efforts to get them recognized as slums have seen municipal officials stating that these migrants are in the city temporarily. Current national programmes such as Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation (AMRUT) and Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM) aim for universal coverage of water and sanitation. One of AMRUT’s objectives is to ensure that every household has access to a tap with assured water supply and a sewerage connection, while SBM’s guidelines proactively allow for household or community toilets in unrecognized slums to eradicate open defecation. The city government’s differentiated politics with regard to migration status, which is informed by its sedentary bias (Aajeevika Bureau, 2020), not only denies the settlements of circular migrant nakaworkers recognition as a slum, but also shapes the translation of national programmes on the ground and local schemes for water and sanitation, denying basic services to their settlements. Absence of city-based documents (which is itself an outcome of a sedentary bias in urban governance) and lack of political patronage due to denial of formal political (i.e., voting) rights in the city makes it easier for the city government to perpetuate these denials.

In our 2018 survey, 85% of the circular migrant naka workers living in squatter settlements had kutcha shelters, while 15% lived in the open and tied their belongings into a bundle before leaving for work. One reason for living in kutcha shelters or the open was low tenure security. Some migrants explained that they made kutcha shelters because they would lose their investment in case of eviction. Others reported that the landowner did not permit any kind of shelter or allowed only kutcha construction. The implications for migrants’ lived experiences were considerable. Migrants explained that termites and rodents ate away at the wooden columns. The plastic sheets and cloth tore in the summer’s harsh heat. The wooden columns rotted away due to waterlogging in the monsoon and the shelter could even get blown away in strong rain and wind. Migrants rebuilt their shelter at least once a year, often after the monsoon, and made intermittent investments and repairs, contributing their own labour towards this. They spent between ₹3,000 and ₹8,000 on rebuilding, depending on the quality of materials purchased, the construction waste materials collected, and the extent to which materials could be salvaged from the previous structure. New plastic sheets, which cost ₹1,000–₹4,000 depending on quality, were purchased before the monsoon, while the type and cost of intermittent repairs varied.

The kutcha shelters offered little protection to the occupants and their possessions during the rains, destabilizing life and livelihoods. Flour and other foodstuff got wet and had to be thrown away. When there was waterlogging or the firewood got damp, they could not cook and had to purchase food or go hungry. If the shelter flooded, they spent the night huddled on a cot or tried to find refuge in the surrounding area. Those who lived in the open were even more vulnerable to the physical elements. They were also vulnerable to theft of belongings and destruction of their possessions by stray cattle.

With regard to municipal services, none of the circular migrant naka workers living in squatter settlements had an individual tap and 19% used a shared water source within the settlement. An overwhelming 81% filled water from outside the settlement, a time-consuming and cumbersome process. Migrants reported that one or two members from each household woke up early and set out to get water from surrounding areas. The majority obtained water through informal arrangements with security guards/caretakers at government facilities such as a water distribution station, sewage treatment plant or police chowky, and with middle-class residents and shopkeepers. Water was available for only a few hours every morning and in some instances also in the evening. Fetching adequate water for bathing, washing, drinking and cooking generally involved multiple rounds on foot or by cycle, and at some places there were long queues for water. While most did not have to pay for water, they had to establish and sustain informal arrangements for water access. In a basti near the Vasna police chowky, migrants got water from nearby housing societies, and in return they often swept the house compound of the residents who gave them water. In the Baraf Factory Basti, a shopkeeper allowed migrants to fill water from a tap near his shop on the condition that they buy tea and snacks from him. One migrant living in Amul Garden Basti mentioned that the caretaker at the water distribution station had stopped allowing anyone to fill water after a conflict over water broke out amongst some migrants, however, he had been allowed to restart filling water because of the goodwill he had built up by regularly sweeping the area around the water tap.

None of the circular migrant naka workers living in squatter settlements had an individual toilet, with an overwhelming 81% practicing open defecation and 19% using pay-and-use, public or mobile toilets. Contrast this with the city’s listed slums, i.e. recognized slums where 60% of households have piped water in their premises; 62% of households have individual toilets; 15% share a toilet with their immediate neighbour; and 23% use community or pay-and-use toilets (CEPT & AMC, 2014). AMC provides mobile toilets in some settlements of circular migrants, but they are insufficient, have maintenance issues and lack bathing facilities. AMC has different models for building and operating pay-and-use toilets. The pay-and-use toilets built in slums are free or have a nominal monthly fee for slum residents whereas those built in public spaces can charge per use. The pay-and-use toilets in the vicinity of the circular migrant settlements are in public spaces. The caretakers charge ₹1 for urinal use, ₹3–₹5 for toilet use, ₹10 for bathing and ₹10 for washing clothes. A couple working as unskilled labour would spend ₹50 per day or ₹1,500 per month, that is, 10% of monthly earnings, on sanitation if both used these toilets just once a day for toilet use, bathing and washing clothes. ⁷ Being unaffordable, migrants used them intermittently. Moreover, many pay-and-use toilets in public spaces are closed between 11 pm and 5 am. In some settlements, women were caught between the reducing possibilities for open defecation and the lack of viable sanitation alternatives. For instance, women from Sundarvan basti pointed out that practising open defecation along the adjacent railway tracks was getting difficult because of the construction of multistorey buildings, however, there were inadequate mobile toilets. Bathing in cloth or plastic-sheet enclosures near their shelters was the only affordable option for most migrants. Access to electricity was also poor with 90% not having electricity connections compared to only 15% in the city’s listed slums (CEPT & AMC, 2014).

As mentioned earlier, these settlements have low tenure security. About, 63% reported a past experience of eviction or feeling fear or threat or concern about eviction in their current location. Some settlements located on Railways land have seen recurring eviction or threat of eviction. The Majur Adhikar Manch, a union established by CLRA, has worked to develop the capacities of the residents to stall evictions. CLRA has also filed PILs and obtained stay orders. If evictions finally go through, most households would likely be denied resettlement because of absence of city-based documents amongst circular migrants.

Settlements in Public Spaces

The homeless in Indian cities live under flyovers, on footpaths and along roadsides. In Ahmedabad, the homeless population is diverse in terms of social background, occupation, migrant status, etc. Some homeless settlements located within walking distance to nakas comprise of circular migrant workers from the tribal belt of eastern Gujarat and southern Rajasthan. In fact, each settlement often consists of families and/or single male migrants from a particular tehsilor set of villages. Their living conditions are similar to other homeless communities. Most stay in the open, tying their belongings into a bundle every morning before leaving for the naka. Those who live on footpaths and roadsides have been able to build kutcha shelters in peripheral areas of the city, however, in most developed areas, the AMC and police allow plastic-sheet tent structures only during the monsoon. These tent structures provide some shelter in monsoon, however, cooking is often not possible when it rains and migrants reported purchasing food, getting food from people passing by, and even sleeping on a hungry stomach. The tent structures offer no protection in the event of heavy rain and waterlogging, and the migrants had to find refuge in the surrounding area. Those who live under flyovers fared better in the monsoons. Migrants living in the open also reported instances of theft of their belongings and destruction by stray animals during the day, as well as theft of money and mobile phones at night while they were asleep after a hard day’s work.

Migrants living in public spaces faced huge challenges with regard to water and sanitation access. Obtaining enough water was a time-consuming, laborious and uncertain process. Migrants made multiple rounds in nearby areas to search for and collect enough water. Even where migrants had succeeded in negotiating a relatively regular source of water supply, this access could be fragile. Migrants living in a footpath settlement in the Jivraj area reported that a nearby temple had allowed them to fill water from its drinking water facility until a tap was broken. In fact, a young migrant girl who had been filling water at the time of the broken tap’s discovery was beaten by someone for allegedly breaking the tap.

According to our 2018 survey, 73% of those living in homeless settlements used pay-and-use toilets while 27% resorted to a combination of open defecation and pay-and-use toilets. As previously discussed, using pay-and-use toilets located in public spaces for all of one’s daily sanitation needs is unaffordable to the poor. Bathing was therefore done in the open or in open-to-sky cloth or plastic-sheet enclosures made on the pavement/roadside. Women’s narratives revealed gendered experiences and practices. For instance, women had to juggle their morning ablutions spread across a pay-and-use toilet (most opened at 5 am and could have long queues) and a bathing enclosure on the roadside (which they preferred to use before sunrise), and their morning chores of cooking, washing up, getting their children ready and helping to tie up the belongings into a bundle, before heading for the naka at 7:45 am. Women mentioned waking up at 4 am, and explained that it was often easier to resort to open defecation in the dark rather than wait for the pay-and-use toilet to open and potentially get delayed due to a long queue which would then force them to bathe in daylight. On the other hand, the men were unconstrained by gendered norms of modesty and privacy and could easily bathe in the daylight; and their morning chores consisted mainly of fetching water and tying up their belongings. This made it easier for men to use the pay and use toilet and navigate their other bodily and domestic activities before leaving for the naka.

A total of 36% reported a past experience of eviction or feeling fear or threat or concern about eviction in their current location. Our research in two footpath settlements located in middle-class residential areas revealed that the AMC or police evicted them when VIPs came to the area or housing societies complained about their presence and their belongings were intermittently taken away, requiring them to spend ₹2,000 to buy essential lost items.

Homeless shelters, if built as per the SUH scheme guidelines, have potential for addressing the needs of the homeless, however, implementation is influenced by elitist desires to sanitize public spaces. The AMC and police have even tried to forcibly move the homeless to the shelters. Some shelters are used by groups of circular migrant nakaworkers, and serve some of their basic needs, but other needs remained unaddressed, like the need for family rooms instead of just male and female dormitories which the migrants are then forced to adapt for family living. The migrants prefer to cook their own food because of food preferences and household economics, but the shelters make no provision for this and migrants therefore cook in the surrounding open space. The AMC has been slow to understand the needs and priorities of different homeless groups, which should inform the location, design and management of the homeless shelters, as well as put an end to state violence against the homeless. Supplying land for homeless shelters is also an issue. Of the 30 shelters operational in 2020, almost half were built under flyovers while many others were built on land allocated in the TPS for open spaces/gardens. Thus, the shelters’ total capacity was less than 1,800 persons whereas the homeless population in the city was 8095 persons as per the 2018–2019 government-commissioned homeless survey (CISHAA, 2020). ⁸

Worksite Housing

Large number of migrant construction workers live in worksite-specific temporary labour colonies in Indian cities. Most labour colonies are inadequate, albeit to varying degrees. One reason is that the regulatory frameworks vis-à-vis such worksite housing are ridden with legislative, policy and governance gaps. Here we highlight the crucial gaps. The Building and Other Construction Workers (BOCW) Act 1996 regulates construction projects employing ten or more construction workers and where construction cost is more than ₹10 lakh. These construction sites are required to provide temporary accommodation to workers and the BOCW Central Rules mention washing, bathing and toilet facilities; drinking water provision; and separate cooking space in the accommodation. However, there are no standards for the accommodation (e.g., floor space per worker, acceptable materials) and common facilities (e.g., toilet to worker ratio). The Inter-State Migrant Workers Act and the Contract Labour Act are also applicable to many construction workers and the Central Rules include norms for shelter and basic services for workers, but they are poorly implemented due to many reasons. Overall, the Labour Department has inadequate human resources to enforce the labour laws and weak mechanisms for enforcement. The invisibility of worksite housing in urban policy, planning and governance is another reason for its inadequacy. It appears in urban governance only in the development permission process wherein developers sign a bond with the AMC stating that they will provide temporary housing and sanitation to the workers. No standards are specified. Built outside the framework of planning and building regulations, this worksite housing by employers is a type of temporary informality and akin to temporary slums. Although such worksite housing is an urban issue and should concern all state authorities involved in urban housing, water and sanitation, spatial planning and overall urban development, it is framed as a labour issue only and therefore the concern of the labour authorities only. This absolves the state of the responsibility to ensure land for temporary housing for workers, and to enable employers to provide adequate basic services at construction worksites or other plots of land with temporary workers’ housing.

Another factor creating inadequacies in worksite housing is employers’ practices and attitudes vis-a-vis workers. Consider the mode of provisioning, that is, who makes the provisions, who makes decisions about the nature of provisions, and how costs are incurred on these provisions. Our research at 14 construction sites found that in the 13 private construction projects, the responsibility for various aspects of the labour colony is split between the principal employer (the owner of the construction project) and the job contractors (who are also considered employers under labour laws). ⁹ The latter are contractors/construction companies who are contracted by the former for undertaking jobs such as masonry, RCC, flooring and painting. The principal employer usually arranges for land for the labour colony (which may involve leasing land if there is inadequate land on the worksite), provides a main water source (like bore-well), arranges for an electricity connection and pays electricity charges. They might contribute, wholly or partly, towards the materials for the labour accommodation. The job contractors usually build most of the accommodation and either the principal employer or the job contractor builds the water and sanitation facilities, and undertakes management and maintenance.

In the absence of effective state regulation, employers face no pressure to ensure adequate worksite housing. The principal employer does not give specifications or standards for the provisions to the job contractors (although some cite the labour legislation where there are written contracts), neither do they pay them a dedicated amount to finance these provisions. The job contractors decide the nature of the provisions they are responsible for and fund them from their job rates/tender costs. By stating that job contractors make these decisions, principal employers such as private developers sidestep their ultimate responsibility for worksite housing. We studied two sites where developers were directly involved in the making of the labour colony, and although the rooms were much better, at one site water and sanitation facilities were still inadequate. Most developers and job contractors explain away inadequacies as being in line with workers’ way of living.

In many cases, developers are unwilling to spend money on leasing land for the labour colony, let alone spending on workers’ transport if available land is far from the worksite. Therefore, as construction progresses, workers are accommodated in the basement or ground/upper floors of the under-construction building. Leasing land for a labour colony (and incurring transport costs for workers if the land is at a distance) would also be financially unfeasible for small/medium-scale developers and projects. This takes us back to urban policy, planning and governance which lacks frameworks to support and enable developers and job contractors to make adequate provisions. The costs incurred on the labour colony, in absolute terms and as a percentage of total construction cost, remains vague. However, our research revealed that less than 1% of total construction cost is spent in many cases, and between 1% and 2% where relatively better provisions are made.

Regarding nature of provisions, more than half of the 14 construction sites had more than one labour colony since there was more than one job contractor/construction company, with each responsible for its workers. Some important differences in provisions were related to the scale of the job contractors. Small/medium-scale contractors usually gave their workers materials to build the rooms themselves. Metal sheets were widely used for walls and roofing with the structure made from metal or timber supports. Some colonies used brick or hollow concrete blocks which provide some thermal comfort unlike metal sheets. Rooms lacked natural light and ventilation; had no foundation and rarely any proper flooring; and usually poor electrical wiring. Water and sanitation varied, but in many cases potable water was not provided; toilets were inadequate in number and poorly maintained; sometimes toilets were not separate for men and women; bathing spaces were open or barely enclosed; and solid waste management was an issue. The conditions of basic services were more or less the same where workers were living inside the under-construction buildings.

Large construction companies arranged for the building of the rooms and construction was generally more systematic using prefab options to facilitate quick assembly and dismantling of the structure and the re-use of most materials across multiple worksites. Rooms were sturdier with foundation and proper structural frame, and usually had flooring and better electrical wiring, but walls and roofing was still from corrugated metal sheets in most cases and lacked natural light and ventilation. Only one construction company had built rooms with windows and had made the walls from materials with better thermal properties. Variations were found in type of water and sanitation facilities provided by the large construction companies, but potable water provision was common and there were usually adequate number of toilets for men and women, although there were also instances of gender-insensitive bathing spaces and poor toilet maintenance.

MULTILOCAL LIVES OF CIRCULAR MIGRANTS

Circular migrants from the tribal belt of eastern Gujarat, southern Rajasthan and western MP are a major part of the workforce in Ahmedabad’s construction sector. For these migrants, rural–urban migration is an important livelihood strategy to cope with declining subsistence agriculture and debt as well as a strategy for reproducing agricultural livelihoods and valued aspects of agrarian lifestyles (Mosse et al., 2005). Migration to the city is thus part of a multilocal livelihood strategy, and for many migrants the village retains a certain primacy in their multilocal lives across city and village, although the nature of their relationships with the village and the city can shift over time.

Our research found that while many households in this semi-arid region have small landholdings (2–5 bigha or 0.8–2 acre), they continue to cultivate this land which produces food to meet household needs to some degree. Some are able to produce a surplus to sell, but for most their agricultural income is inadequate to meet a growing household’s needs. Some members of the household therefore migrate to cities but most of these migrating members also contribute labour for farming. Their migration cycles are thus shaped by how much cultivable land they have and the crop cycles, with the main crop being the monsoon crop, most also growing a winter crop, and very few growing a summer crop. Their specific migration cycle is furthermore shaped by the duration and frequency of a migrant’s contribution of labour for farming. This in turn depends on the nature of their multilocal household. For instance, if a non-migrating family member can undertake most farming activities then the migrant can contribute less labour whereas the absence of such a family member means that the migrant has to contribute more labour. Some migrants are therefore in the city for almost the entire year, but they make several trips to the village for varying durations, from a couple of days to couple of weeks, for farming activities. Other migrants are seasonal, staying in the village for the entire monsoon crop cycle, and migrating to the city during the winter and summer during which they return to the village as and when required to contribute to farming activities. Still other seasonal migrants stay in the village for both the monsoon and winter crop cycles, coming to the city only during the summer.

The village is also a space where important aspects of these migrants’ social lives are reproduced. Being in the village for festivals such as Diwali (which coincides with harvesting the monsoon crop) and Holi (which coincides with harvesting of the winter crop and, if irrigation is available, sowing the summer crop) is important and those who are in the city return to the village for up to a month for these festivals. Migrants also return to the village for varying durations during the post-Holi marriage season. Marriages are not only occasions for celebration, but also involve fulfilling social obligations. Migrants who leave behind children in the village might return for few days now and then to visit them. Many also return to the village to cast their vote during elections. Other events such as pregnancy and childbirth for women migrants. recovering from ill health, and dealing with the ill health of an elderly parent living in the village trigger longer stays in the village. Remittances are spent on agricultural inputs, reflecting the role of urban livelihoods in reproducing their agricultural livelihood; expenses for the household members living in the village; improvements to their village house; social obligations and debt repayment.

Migrants’ relationships to the city and their decisions around housing in the city are shaped by a combination of the constraints/possibilities they face in the city and their aforementioned relationships to their village. The latter includes their pre-existing relationship to their land and the agrarian livelihood it provides them, which despite being precarious is not to be neglected. It also includes their pre-existing relationship to their village home and community, which gives them a sense of home, social support, and collective social and cultural life although it can also be a source of burdensome social obligations. However, as one migrant explained, returning to the village to give appropriate chandla contributions during marriages is necessary to remain a part of the community although this is a major expense. In the context of agrarian distress and their exploitation in the city, migrants have limited earnings, time and energy to invest in their lives in both the village and the city. The city is therefore first and foremost a space to labour to support and nurture their pre-existing relationships to the village. In the case of migrants who go to the naka to get work, this means spending minimally on housing in the city and maximizing remittances from their earnings. It also means sustaining their migration cycle, which results in most of them being hard-pressed to find the time and energy required for collective action and building political capital that could pressure the state to improve their housing conditions in the city. In the case of migrants who go to work and live on worksites, some do make enquiries with the contractor about the facilities that will be provided to them. One contractor explained that workers ask him if there is adequate water and a facility for charging their mobiles in the labour colony. Workers might factor this into their decisions about which contractor to work with/which site to work on, and this might place some pressure on contractors to provide certain facilities. However, the priority of supporting and nurturing their relationships to the village means that their negotiations with contractors revolve mainly around advances and wages (and possibly the duration for which they can return to their village), and not the various facets of housing at the worksite.

CONCLUDING DISCUSSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS

In 2017, my attempt to persuade a bureaucrat overseeing AMC’s housing programmes about the need to address circular migrant workers’ housing in Ahmedabad, was met with an accusation from him. ‘They want laddus in both hands’, he said, suggesting that these migrants should not make claims in both the village and the city. Such articulations reflect a lack of understanding of their multilocal lives which take shape in the context of a combination of rural distress and underdevelopment but also their connections and attachments to their village, the hostility they face in the city from various quarters but also the opportunities they carve out in the city for survival, reproducing valued aspects of their rural lives and fulfilling evolving aspirations. Policy and governance regimes—vis-à-vis labour as well as urban policy and planning—must appreciate this multilocality of so many of the city’s working residents, and address their housing inadequacies and vulnerabilities in the city.

Beyond inadequacies, our research on the living spaces of circular migrant construction workers also reveal certain priorities vis-a-vis housing. The circular migrants who go to a naka to find work prioritize living near the naka, which gives them access to preferred work opportunities. Like many other groups among the urban poor, they make a trade-off between living near workplaces/opportunities and the adequacy of shelter and basic services (Naik et al., 2021). This crucial housing-livelihood link (which also includes the importance of residential spaces being able to accommodate livelihood activities) is echoed across the housing literature and must be central to how housing is conceptualized for those who work in the informal sector. Unfortunately, government programmes continue to equate housing with a puccahouse, usually ownership based, increasingly in multistorey buildings. Circular migrant naka workers also prioritize living amongst kin and migration-source-area-based networks. Again, the housing literature provides ample evidence of the importance of this collective dimension of housing for the urban poor, of housing as constituting a socio-spatial community of trust-based support networks. Housing interventions for the urban poor can no longer afford to neglect this. Circular migrants also prioritize mobility across village and city and sending necessary remittances. This shapes their perception of housing affordability. Other urban poor groups also form priorities over their life-cycle around how to spend their limited economic resources, which shapes their housing affordability. We must appreciate these priorities that shape their housing decisions in the city. And we must appreciate the array of housing types and tenure options that the urban poor, including circular migrants, can turn to in our cities, most in the informal sector, as they try to survive as well as build better lives. This informal housing requires systematic state support to improve it, alongside creating new housing stock of different types and tenure options.

Recommendations

Circular migrants’ squatter settlements should be recognized by city governments and no evictions should be carried out without due process. Using a cut-off date and requiring documents with city address as eligibility criteria for resettlement in case of eviction should be removed. To start with, stopgap measures are required for water and sanitation provision such as installation of common water taps and more numbers of mobile toilets, as well as arranging 24 × 7 access to nearby pay-and-use toilets at no charge or nominal monthly charges. India’s urban housing programmes must include an in-situ upgrading programme for informal settlements; State government or ULBs can also launch this programme in the absence of a national programme. With regard to squatter settlements on Railways land, civil society organizations have tried to dialogue with the central government to find a viable solution for these settlements. Their efforts could benefit from support of State governments and ULBs, and the search for a solution should ensure that circular migrants are included.

Homeless settlements must be tentatively recognized, putting an end to evictions and harassment and making some arrangements for water and sanitation for them. Homeless shelters need serious attention in terms of their numbers and capacity, location, design and management so that they can address the myriad needs of different homeless groups, including circular migrants.

The National Urban Rental Housing Policy should be finalized after consultations with all stakeholders. The ARHC scheme, which is unlikely to create rental options for circular migrants, needs a rethink. For this, the government must engage with the policy work done on institutionalizing formal social rental housing in India (e.g., Indian Institute for Human Settlements, 2015) and with various stakeholders. Indian cities need rental units of different types (rooms, houses, dormitories, etc), different rent levels and tenures (short-stay, long-stay), as well as rent-to-own schemes to open the possibility of ownership for renters. Furthermore, India cannot afford to ignore the existing private, largely informal rental housing sector. We need innovative mechanisms to recognize and regulate this sector so that landlords provide a minimum quality of shelter and basic services. The state’s support through in-situ upgrading of informal settlements with enhanced tenure security will be vital to encourage and enable landlords to make better provisions. The Model Tenancy Act 2021, critiqued for its shortcomings including its orientation towards formal rental housing, must broaden its scope and coverage (Manish & Naik, 2021).

Using BOCW cess funds for temporary housing for migrant workers in construction needs proper consideration. In the past, the Building and Other Construction Workers Welfare Board (BOCWWB) in Gujarat has built rooms on large-scale construction sites; this needs a rethink since use of cess funds should not absolve employers of their responsibility to provide temporary housing. We recommend using these funds to finance the construction of rental housing affordable to migrant nakaworkers, for which land must be supplied by city governments and urban development authorities. Some funds may be used to develop the necessary social, financial, technical and tenure management capacities among non-state entities so that this housing is well managed. The use of cess funds to give rent vouchers to migrant workers should also be explored for the longer term.

Urban policy and planning must address the question of adequate land supply for new affordable housing stock for the urban poor, which should include ownership housing, rental housing and homeless shelters. The geography of this land supply must take into account proximity to the urban poor’s workplaces and work opportunities. For casual daily-wagers like migrant naka workers, proximity to nakas is particularly important because securing work on a daily basis is an uncertain affair, making cost of transport to a naka unviable.

Regulation of employers’ provision of worksite housing requires urgent attention. The new Code on Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions mentions employer provision of temporary living accommodation for workers. Standards for provisions and mechanisms of enforcement must be included in the Rules drafted by State governments. Adequate human resources for enforcement need to be ensured. Moreover, the State government’s urban housing department and urban local bodies should be involved in designing and enforcing this regulatory framework since worksite housing is also an urban policy and governance issue. Besides regulation, city governments have a role in providing adequate water and sewerage connections to construction work-sites or other plots of land that are sites of worksite housing. Urban policy and planning will have to grapple with the question of land supply for employer-provided temporary workers’ housing in the construction sector. This could even be permanent housing which employers can temporarily lease for their workers. In terms of employers’ practices vis-a-vis worksite housing, a first step is that the cost of worksite housing should be included as a separate line item in the total construction budget and in tenders/contracts based on a clear articulation of the kind of provisions to be made.