Real estate is in high demand for construction laborers. Labor shortage in the real estate sector creates higher trouble to the real estate developers.
Real estate developers find it difficult to finish their projects on time without having sufficient laborers. The real estate sector has become the second best employment -provider in India after the Information Technology. However some reports say that a few real estate developers offers cash advances to the laborers for getting them on to the work site.
Due to the extremely fast paced real estate development, Noida has become one of the largest pools of migrant workers in UP. Construction workers flow to Noida in large numbers. Most of them get employment in real estate sector while those who fail to get employed resort to crime.
National Human Rights Commission’s – NHRC- report disclosed that most of the bonded- labor cases are reported from Uttar Pradesh. Labor department officials said that the migrant construction workers are extremely exploited and are inclined to debt.
Bonded labor is abolished in 1976. Yet this is very much visible in India. Bonded labor is a form of labor in which the laborer is initially helped by the employer and forces the employee to bondage later. Though there are few such cases are reported, the vast number of migrant laborers is a sign to this.
Most of the migrant laborers are brought to the real estate construction sites by some intermediaries. Some of the migrations are fostered by some advance- payment to the laborers or to his/ her family members. Sociologist Surinder S Jodhka states that this leads to the formation of a new relationship. He added that the “dependency”- based such relations are another form of bonded labor.
These migrant workers who mostly work in the real estate sector are further doomed to lead their lives in in wretched living conditions. Such living conditions are highly unhygienic and harmful to their health. They are forced to live in “urban villages” where the migrants are dumped and found living in groups.
A senior police officer said that these migrant construction workers are formed from across the country. Majority of them find job in the real estate sector and those who fail to secure a job resort to crime.
The police official continued that there are some who are forced to crime by those professional moneylenders who lend money in advance to these laborers as a means to exploit them in future. So in all the ways the bonded labor exists in India even decades after its abolishment.