CHENNAI: The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme might ensure 100 days of work for villagers. But these urban labourers, who gather at MGR Nagar market and go to work in the construction sites across the city, don’t have any such assurance. They begin their day with uncertainty and in two hours they will know if the day is going to be prosperous or unlucky. It’s 6 am. As hired sweepers (sometimes owners themselves) clear the garbage before their shops at the MGR market, a gathering slowly starts taking shape around the place. Men wearing worn-off sandals and women carrying tiffin boxes in mesh bags settle down in the shades of huge banners that have been put up by party men who never miss celebrating their leader’s birthday.Before it’s 7 am, the crowd grows to about a hundred. While the assembly looks haphazard to any onlooker, actually there is a pattern to it. While women labourers and masons sit on either side of the market road, painters and tile-flooring workers stand on the other side of the junction. Except politics, they discuss most things under the sun, the popular ones being the experience in the previous day’s work, wages and expenditures.Actually, they’re better paid — Rs 300 for female helpers, Rs 500 for male helpers, Rs 550 for masons that goes upto Rs 600 if it’s for concrete work. The wages are in the same order for painters and tiles workers. If it’s ‘market workers’, as they’re called, the wages are always higher than that of other labourers. However, how many days a month they get to work is a question. Suddenly, a loud voice creates a flutter. A look around reveals that the voice is coming from a speaker attached to a car. Quite a novel way to do business! From teashops, petty shops and push carts carrying koozhu, to a breakfast stall that sells freshly-made idlis, pooris and dosas, all for these labourers, the market has many such small businesses. By the time it’s peak-hour traffic, the junction literally turns into a market.Agents, builders and owners arrive in bikes and these men move towards them. The nature of job is detailed, and accordingly, number of people and wages are fixed. Surprisingly, women don’t approach these builders. It’s always the men who negotiate for them. But the women clarify the details: ‘If I have to climb staircase carrying sand or concrete mixture, it’s extra,’ they say. But at the end of the negotiation, the probability of getting the job is 50-50.Sixty-year-old Kali says that labourers have been gathering at the junction for nearly 40 years from different places of the city — Koyembedu, Velachery and Kundrathur. Arjun moved to Chennai from Kanchipuram 20 years ago seeking better opportunities. Now he’s married and his wife works in a garment company while their children study at an adjacent Corporation-run school in MGR Nagar.People come here even from Cuddalore, Villupuram, Salem and other districts. While Perumal, a painter from Salem, has been here for past 15 days, another Perumal from Cuddalore has taken a house on rent along with others for three months. “Four of us share the rent of `3,000,” he says. When it becomes hard to find jobs in their respective native towns, both Perumals come here. There is also an association of these workers, but without much power to decide on anything.While women were initially reluctant to talk, they did after making sure that their faces won’t be revealed! Their major concern is the distance of workplace. “If it’s nearby, we’ll comeback home soon and cook dinner for children,” says Manimegalai, who always leaves her children in neighbour’s house before setting off to work. Most of their husbands are also into this job and so, they go together for work. While permanent residents have got ration cards, they don’t seem to have any idea of insurance schemes. “We didn’t even register for Kalaigner Insurance Scheme, because we were hired that day,” says Uma.By 9am, half the people gathered at the market place know their fate. While some head to work, others still wait hoping to get, at least, a meagre job. Those left behind are mostly the old men and women who the employers deemed unfit. While weary women start walking back towards their houses, an old man gets up and announces his plan for the day — a bath in a public toilet and rest on the Marina Beach.
Comments
0 comment