Every morning, Lalita Rathod joins the mass of labourers outside Khar station, an “open labour market” where people are chosen for work at construction sites. But this last fortnight, the wait outside the station has been one huge disappointment for Lalita and other daily-wagers from the Bharat Nagar slums — nobody needs them.“In the last one month, finding a job has become really difficult. Some of my neighbours have returned to their villages as they couldn’t earn enough to pay rent here. They hope to get back after a few months when things get better,” says Lalita who brings home Rs 250 a day by lifting earth and gravel at construction sites. She says she can find a job as a domestic help but that will just get her Rs 1,000 a month — not good enough because she has five school-going children. Rafiq Khan, a construction contractor, points to a row of skilled labourers — masons, painters, plumbers. “This line has reduced by half lately. Many have gone back to their villages and will remain there till we call them for work. First, there was an exodus of construction workers from Bihar after attacks by the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena. Now, there is a lull in the real estate market. They wait here endlessly for some work.” For a city that has some 45 million square feet under construction, Rathod and Khan’s experiences might come across as stray cases. But even the best plans have gone all wrong, so several developers are focusing on selective projects or on completing one building instead of four. At the Kalpataru Aura project in Ghatkopar, work has been stopped on all buildings except one. The DLF construction site in Lower Parel, which had earlier planned to employ about 1,000 workers, has very few workers at the site. As the pace of construction activity in Mumbai takes a beating, hundreds of labourers find themselves at the receiving end. Nirman, an organisation that works closely with such workers, estimates that Mumbai has about 2.5 lakh construction workers, including those in the open labour market (mostly from slum colonies) and those staying at construction sites (migrants who come to the city to work on specific projects). But these were figures at the peak of the construction boom a year ago. Nirman project coordinator Pradeep Shinde says there has been a drop in these numbers in recent months as workers are gradually returning to their villages. He says it is too early though to guess the extent of this reverse migration. Mahesh Mudda, chairman of the Builder Association of India, says the realty industry in Mumbai has downsized its labour force by about 20 per cent. “Millions of labourers will be forced out of work because it doesn’t look like the industry will bounce back, not for another six months at least,” he says. “Right now we are just concentrating on completing a few projects. Those that have still not commenced on ground or those under construction, where office space has not yet been sold, have been put on hold,” says Pujit Agarwal of Orbit Constructions which has a host of projects in South Mumbai. He says there has been hardly any demand for new projects this year. “Over the next few months, as the pace reduces further, there will also be a dip in the requirement of labour force.” Devika Mahadevan of Mobile crèche, a non-profit organisation that teaches children of construction workers at 25 project sites of reputed developers, says the number of children staying at project sites has reduced to one-third. “It has just started, the workers dread the prospect of what in going to happen next,” she says.
