Migrantscape: Supporting migrants, their families and communities
 
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Migrantscape 

Supporting migrant workers, their families and communities 

Welcome to Aajeevika Bureau’s inaugural Migrantscape newsletter, where we reflect on our highlights from 2017 and look ahead to 2018. We are excited to be bringing you this first edition of Migrantscape, updating our partners and supporters on our work.
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Reflecting on migrants' lives and livelihoods

Our Co-Founder Krishnavatar Sharma reflects upon the rising danger and precarity facing migrant workers, their families and communities.

READ MORE 

Pictured: Krishnavatar Sharma, Co-Founder and Programme Director, Aajeevika Bureau

12 Years of Impact: in numbers 

-   We facilitated 460,000 linkages to identity, skills, social security, legal aid, health care and financial services, for migrant workers and their families
-   Migrant workers claimed back around ₹13 crore ($2 million) of hard-earned wages with the help of our legal team
-   Our legal team resolved an average of 110 wage disputes each month
-   Our LabourLine for migrant workers took an average of 130 calls a day
-   Our STEP Academy trained 7,623 young people

-   Our partner, financial services provider, Shram Sarathi received national recognition at the Inclusion Plus awards organized by Metlife Foundation
-   Shram Sarathi delivered loans to over 7,000 migrant families, with repayment rates of 99.5%
-   Our partner, Basic Healthcare Services (BHS), received 107,151 in footfall across its clinicscs and Primary Health Centre - providing affordable and high quality health care
-   BHS safely delivered 1,288 babies

Did you know? Quiz 

What proportion of Indians are seasonal, internal migrants, moving temporarily for work?
(See below for the answer!)
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Honouring International Migrants Day 

Aajeevika Bureau organised a series of events to celebrate International Migrants Day on 18 December 2017, including a drawing competition for children of migrants, and a photo competition for migrant workers. This resulted in press coverage in  ScrollYour Story and Indian Express. 

For an informative overview of the issue of internal migration in India, please read Amrita Sharma’s blog on the occasion of International Migrants Day. 

Raising the voices of migrant workers in Ahmedabad

Aajeevika Bureau led a sustained campaign during the Gujarat Election, issuing migrant workers’  demands to party candidates. Although tribal migrants constitute almost 15% of the state’s population, they remain voiceless and invisible.
 
Our campaign resulted in official posters from the Election Commission, encouraging tribal migrant workers to vote, and informing them they had a right to take a day off and vote in their village. The campaign resulted in significant media coverage across Gujarati press and national press, alongside an Opinion Piece from Aajeevika Bureau in The Wire.
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Amrita Sharma, Aajeevika Bureau
Quoted in Reuters and Gulf Times

“This fire accident just shows how migrant workers live. They work in overcrowded, poorly ventilated spaces. Their work and living conditions are highly precarious. There is a complete void in enforcement of labour laws.”
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Kailash's Story

Armed with a few sets of clothes and innumerable aspirations, Kailash Umariya left his village in Ajmer, Rajasthan, as a teenager.

“From toothbrushes, shoes and toys, to pendrives, sweaters and clothes- I sold everything,” says Umariya, who spent the first few years on Delhi‘s streets. It was the desire to "make it big"  in Mumbai, the "Sapnon ki Nagari" or land of dreams, which drew him to the city twelve years ago.

“I began my career as a helper on construction sites in Mumbai. While I ended up doing odd jobs at the beginning, I gradually picked up plumbing skills,” says the 35-year-old. Kailash now lives with his family in Mumbai and is gratified to report that he has work every day of the week.

Kailash Umariya is a founding member of Aajeevika Bureau‘s Kamgaar Sahayta Samiti in Mumbai, a worker's collective co-established with Aajeevika Bureau and employers, workers and other local stakeholders in Kurla. The committee negotiates and reflects upon issues related to labour, rights and demands, and takes collective decisions for workers' well-being. .
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Addressing precarious, informal work and life in the cities 

The events of 2017 brought into sharp focus how precarious migrant lives are in the cities they move to. While 12 migrant workers died in a preventable fire in Mumbai, a three-year-old child died in an informal settlement in Ahmedabad, falling off its cot into the flood waters of the Monsoon. These tragedies vastly underestimate the total number of migrants who died or were injured across India in 2017. Aajeevika Bureau was deeply saddened by these events, and believes that as a society we cannot accept such a loss of life.

Recognising that migrant workers face risk and danger in work and life, Aajeevika Bureau has strengthened its support for migrants in cities. We opened a new office in Mumbai in December, and expanded our range of support services in Surat and Ahmedabad.
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Building knowledge on migration and informality

Aajeevika Bureau held its 4th knowledge symposium in Ahmedabad in July 2017. We shared six studies focusing on under-studied dimensions of migrant communities, to an eminent panel of nine leading scholars and discussants from across India. Themes included: informal housing arrangements; traditional financial institutions; occupational health of migrant communities; and labour of women and girls in rural wage markets.

Pictured: Prof. Ravi Srivastava and Prof. Pushpendra engaging with study presentations.
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Protecting lives at work

A key priority for Aajeevika Bureau is the health and safety of migrants at work. We are focusing on an industry that cuts stones to produce beautiful carvings for the temple construction market, but claims the lives of its workers through silicosis, the oldest known occupational disease.

In Pindwara, workers carve silica rich stones, releasing large volumes of dust. Inhalation leads to the fatal respiratory disease of silicosis, for which there is no known cure. Due to its unsafe production practices, nearly 2,000 workers are facing death from silicosis. 

Working with the local administration and Rajasthan‘s Labour and Health departments, we are acting to reduce this threat to workers‘ lives. So far, the Pneumoconiosis Board has certified 763 stone carving workers from Pindwara as silicosis victims.
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Building state capacity to support migrants

Aajeevika Bureau‘s Centre for Migration and Labour Solutions (CMLS) and the International Labour Organisation (ILO) secured key commitments from the state governments of Kerala and Bihar. CMLS and the ILO co-hosted two policy roundtables, where both states committed to Migrant Resource Centres, and to prioritise migration as a key issue.

Pictured: Rajiv Khandelwal, Co-Founder and Executive Director, Aajeevika Bureau

Looking ahead

In 2018, three key themes will dominate our work.  

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Reducing the burden on women and girls

We are seeing new forms of migration by women and girls into daily wage labour that is highly hazardous and precarious, such as in construction work. Women face a disproportionate burden of work, both paid and unpaid, which impacts their health and well-being. We are looking to increase women and girls' access to basic facilities, such as sanitation, and make work less hazardous. This new area for Aajeevika Bureau will be a key focus in 2018.

Preventing worker deaths

Aajeevika Bureau is seeing an alarming increase in able-bodied men and women suffering from early death due to silicosis, contracted at work.  We are launching a one of a kind initiative with the Labour Department and Human Rights Commission of Rajasthan, alongside leading occupational health experts and engineers, to create dust control technologies, designed to prevent the onset of silicosis.
Please look out for our continuing work on this key issue, to ensure that more lives are not lost.

Putting the last first 

A key priority for 2018 is to adapt our range of services and interventions to the needs of the most vulnerable, high-migration families. Pratham Parivar or 'First Families' live in remote, rural areas.  They are vulnerable in one or more of the following areas:
 -  Chronic illness
-  High and long-standing debt
-  Presence of child labourers in the household
-  Women headed families of single women
We seek to provide for these families needs and vulnerabilities, and tailor our services to those life moments when our support is needed the most.
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Did you know Quiz Answer

1 in 10 Indians is a seasonal, internal migrant, moving temporarily for work. 

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