JULY / AUGUST 2013
to sleep outside. Most of their ailments are due to lack of water, skin problems like scabies,” says Maggie Sarin coordinator of the Gurgaon chapter of the Delhi Commonwealth Women’s Association (DCWA). They run a mobile clinic in the
slums of Gurgaon and in the nearly ten years that they have been operating there she has seen it all: a worker’s child bitten by a rabid dog, broken limbs reset at government hospitals that never set right and have rendered workers crippled and unable to support their families, a mother hospitalized after having her sixth child in as many years – the child, suff ering from malnutrition, needed to be put on a drip to give him a fi ghting chance.
These are social issues and fall
between the remit of government services for the poor, the builders’ responsibility and society at large. “Often the peripheral slums that crop up around the labour camps
have even more dire conditions than those inside the camps,” says Sarin. Standards by which construction
companies house and manage their staff vary considerably in India. Sarin says, “The conditions have improved slightly over the last decade and some builders are
Workers refuse casts so they can carry on working
better than others. This is in part an infl uence of foreign builders coming in.” There are labour camps where the semi-trained and skilled staff live with their families and then there are the shantytowns where yet more vast numbers of migrant labourers live. These camps have a seedy underbelly, quack doctors and
a black market complete with thugs and ‘boss-men’ who provide ‘protection’, though some also help provide doctors and schools. Daily labourers from these shantytowns cannot aff ord to take time off as they are paid by the hour. “Workers have been known to refuse casts and ask that limbs be strapped up and that they get painkillers so they can carry on working instead,” says Sarin. Sobha developers, one of India’s
larger construction companies, were happy to open their gates and give OPP free access to their facility in North India. They are proud to have set a benchmark for local best practices at their labour camps and are willing to be open with anyone who might ask to visit. Requests to visit similar facilities in the NCR region were either ignored or denied. I did sneak into another camp, though I was unable to take pictures there. Sobha’s practices go above and beyond meeting government
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