India’s booming construction sector faces acute labour shortages and welfare challenges. Migrant workers suffer due to fragmented registration, documentation barriers, and inconsistent benefits. A centralized system linking BOCW with e-Shram, accepting alternative proofs and ensuring inter-state portability could streamline registrations, enhance transparency, and significantly boost skill development and job retention.
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Construction is the fastest-growing sector, contributing about 9% to the national GDP and projected to reach $1.4 trillion by 2025.
Even with projections of a 3 crore workforce by 2030, shortages in labour have become an emergent issue. Industries have pointed out workers' disinclination to move due to welfare scheme dependencies.
Construction workers face several challenges such as job insecurity, regular relocations, and lack of regular welfare benefits.
The unorganized nature of employment, documentation barriers, and absence of inter-state welfare portability enhance their vulnerabilities, leading to an insecure environment for workers and their families.
Fragmented employment
The construction industry's dependence on migrant labourers creates significant instability. Despite the Building and Other Construction Workers (Regulation of Employment and Conditions of Service) (BOCW) Act, 1996, workers struggle to access promised benefits.
Documentation Barriers
Workers lack permanent addresses and face difficulties in receiving identity proofs, birth certificates, and residence documents.
They require an 'employment certificate', which many contractors fail to provide, leaving workers unable to establish their eligibility for welfare benefits.
State-level discrepancies
State governments collect a 1-2% construction cess under the BOCW Act, around 75% of these funds remain unused due to fragmented worker databases, inconsistent verification protocols, complex registration processes, Seasonal employment disruptions, such as heat waves or pollution-related construction bans.
When workers move to another state, they lose access to benefits. This discourages workers from registering for schemes, and increases their financial vulnerability.
A centralized welfare initiative like “One Nation One Ration Card scheme” would ensure inter-state portability of benefits.
Linking BOCW registrations to the Universal Account Number on the e-Shram portal would allow workers to access entitlements regardless of their location.
A centralized real-time tracking system would minimize bureaucratic delays and enhance transparency.
Accepting alternative proofs and relaxing verification norms would ease registration processes.
Comprehensive skill development programs aligned to industry needs enhance worker productivity and job retention.
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PRACTICE QUESTION Q. Urbanization has led to unprecedented construction activity in Indian cities. Discuss the challenges of rapid urbanization and how sustainable construction practices can address them. 250 words |
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