A substantial proportion of migrants belonging to the working poor classes are unable to establish legal housing relationships in the city. At least half of the migrants have become indispensable to the city's economy by filling cheap labour-oriented and unskilled jobs (Mumbai Human Development Report, 2009). Many more reforms are in the pipeline, such as coastal zoning changes and the repeal of the Rent Control Act.
The experience of the homeless migrants is deeply rooted in the larger economic and political developments that are transforming the city. This phase has also witnessed the distancing of the better-off classes from the politics of the poor. The Oval Trust pursued an agenda that looked most uncivil if viewed from the perspective of the hawkers and squatters.
The subtext is clear – the price to pay for being homeless and without regular work in the city is forced labor at subhuman wages – to punish the person and “teach the person” to become industrious labor (Raghavan and Tarique 2011) . On the other side of the pavement is the residential colony, which is also protected by high walls and wrought iron fencing. Males who worked in the area and passers-by used to urinate on the other side of the sidewalk in front of their hut.
Middle-class worldviews tend to de-legitimize lifestyles associated with lower-class lifeworlds, making "the poor" strange and distant (Veness 1993).
Labouring Dangerously: Death and Old Age in the Informal Economy in Mumbai City
I have attempted this through a study of migrant labor around two phenomena – morbidity and the employment of older people in the informal labor force; and in two different professions. With the introduction of the term 'informal sector' in the 1970s by Keith Hart and various studies, it was recognized that this unregulated and growing sector of the economy had become indispensable. The parents of the former four, all Dalits, migrated to the city to escape the drought and abject poverty in the village.
Some of the workers whose families owned land in the village could not survive because the land was too small or dependent on rain. They have no land in the village and the income is too insufficient to even visit her village. In addition to this job, he worked part-time in the nearby areas.
He then joined the contract labor union hoping to become permanent in the job because he noticed that some of the migrants in the city doing this work became permanent in their jobs. One of the visible changes in the city of Mumbai is the presence of significant numbers of what appear to be elderly or older migrants working as security guards across various types of properties. Labor force participation of the elderly can enable them to be economically independent in the short term, 'especially in light of its externalities'.
Arriving in Mumbai and the first years of finding a foothold in the city were full of difficulties for all migrants. Narayan bought the mill after 6 years with his savings and by selling land in the village. Since he came to the city, he lived in a shantytown in the northeastern part of the city, in a semi-concrete apartment.
It has given him a livelihood, and a better life than his parents' as landless farm workers in the village. This reproduction of the Precariat within the increasingly inadequate welfare regime promises to be one of the greatest challenges for the country in the coming years. 1The fieldwork for the study was conducted in the city of Mumbai, through interviews with workers, relatives and union activists (in the case of conservationists).
Migrant, Vigilants and Violence
A Study of Security Guards in Mumbai
Our first challenge was to figure out the number of security guards in the city. One, we visited security agencies, met agency owners to understand the nature and scope of business of private security agencies in the city. This apparent lack of clarity about the number of guards and security agencies in the city is indicative of the covert nature of the industry, the secretive nature of its operations and the political connections it has.
It is both a political and a methodological challenge to locate and understand the conditions of the working class, which is scattered and fragmented among various businesses in the city. The agrarian crisis remains one of the main drivers of migration to the city, as evidenced by our interaction with security agents in the city. In fact, the politics of belonging to the city has survived by preserving the figure of the city.
The next section attempts to explore the migrant's relationship with the city in the specific context of our research on security agents, and the uncertainties that characterize their work and life in Mumbai. Most of the guards we encountered during our fieldwork in the city of Mumbai are migrants from the states of UP, Bihar, Odisha and certain districts in Western Maharashtra. Yet, in the politics of the city, these migrants are separated as the Marathi and the non-Marathi migrants.
These binaries coalesce in the entrenched but external and academic formulation of outsider and insider. Our share in the property was gradually reduced, with the property being divided among all family members. This self-deprecation appears in the context of the larger work situation that undermines their self-esteem.
Working in the post of security sometimes entails being mistreated by residents of society. They illustrate the important role the rounder plays in the working life of the guards. The local population, in their perception, seems docile, lazy and entrenched in the comfort created by the migrant's labor.
The social requires building materials and the ethnographer must be attentive to the 'building materials' in the construction of urban socialities in and through the migrant's life. This public condemnation of 'migrants' reinforces the stereotypes and polarization of migrants in the city, thereby justifying the conditions of structural violence in which most of them live.
The Emergence of the Migrant as a Problem Figure in Contemporary Mumbai 1
Chronicles of Violence and Issues of Justice
The basic event for the change in economic character was the 1960s when the state of Maharashtra was created. These changes in the economic structure are accompanied by the appearance of nativism and "sons of the soil" feelings in the city is my hypothesis, which we will talk about in more detail later. In recent times, Mumbai has achieved the status of the financial capital of the country and has achieved an economic boom since liberalisation.
In the first half of the 20th century, Bombay grew mainly due to the movement of people from other parts of the country. According to sociologist Sujata Patel, “the economic activities of the city attracted migrants from nearby rural districts and eventually from the entire country. Bombay gained much of its population through in-migration rather than natural growth and the majority of the city's working population consisted of migrants (Joshi and Joshi 1976).
In 1961 immigrants made up 84 percent of the working population, and between 1941 and 1971 two-thirds of the city's residents were born outside the city (Patel 2003). Violence has been integral and a process throughout the history and geography of the city of Bombay/Mumbai. In 1974, the Shiv Sena started anti-Dalit riots in Worli BDD Chawls in Mumbai, which spread to other areas of the city and continued for a week.
The law introduced the idea of unauthorized and illegal which was used against the urban poor of the city who are part of the migrant population. The rise of Shiv Sena also had a root in the struggle of the Bombay Pradesh Congress Committee (BPCC) and Maharashtra Pradesh Congress Committee (MPCC) over the status of Bombay. During the colonial rule, the worthy migrants were welcomed while those who were inappropriate in relation to the economic functions of the city were labeled as unworthy and thus opposed in the city.
The composition of the uninvited migrants varied according to the political needs of the Shiv Sena and the demands of the capitalist demands of the city. Heuze, G (1995): 'Cultural Populism: The Appeal of the Shiv Sena' in Bombay: A Metaphor of Contemporary India, edited by S. Lele, J (1995): 'The Saffronisation of the Shiv Sena: The Political Economy of the City, State and Nation' in Patel S and Thorner A (1995) eds Bombay: Metaphor for Modern India (Delhi Oxford University Press).
CRG Publications
Anya Pakistan - 'n Bengaalse versameling vertaalde geskrifte uit, Ander stemme uit Pakistan, geredigeer deur Ranabir Samaddar, versprei deur Mahanirban Calcutta Research Group, Kolkata. Parbotyo Chattogram - Simanter Rajniti O Sangram - Debjani Datta & Anasua Basu Ray Chaudhury, versprei deur Mahanirban Calcutta Research Group, Kolkata. Abiram Raktopat - Tripuranarir Sangram - Geredigeer deur Krishna Bandyopadhyay, versprei deur Mahanirban Calcutta Research Group, Kolkata.
Rethinking 1905: Spatial Inequality, Uneven Development and Nationalism- Authored by David Ludden Published by Mahanirban Calcutta Research Group (MCRG). Climate Change Induced Displacement: A Challenge to International Law- Authored by Walter Kalin Published by Mahanirban Calcutta Research Group (MCRG). Civil Society Dialogue on Human Rights and Peace in the North-East (First, Second and Third) 2.
UN Guiding Principles for IDPs - A report on workshops, advocacy meetings and document translations. Report of the Three-Year Program of Research and Dialogue on Development, Democracy and Governance - Lessons and Policy Implications, 2013.
