The hypocrisy of our concern for workers trapped in Uttarkashi tunnel | Sanjay Srivastava
The migrant labour force produces the visible signs of national pride — governments proudly proclaim the making of a new and global India — but itself becomes invisibilised
Written by Sanjay Srivastava
Updated: November 25, 2023
We build statues, name stadiums and write hagiographies to honour Bollywood stars, cricketers, politicians and a pantheon of celebrities. But for the human infrastructure of the nation — the women and men who build tunnels and highways, run factories, service middle-class homes — there are only obituaries of anonymity. The hapless migrant worker is truly the forgotten citizen, mainly breaking the surface of national consciousness as a figure in televised tragedy. “National greatness” is attributed to the products of migrant exertion — shiny new expressways and gigantic statues — but is never expressed in the vocabulary of care and policy requirements for those who make the nation great.
Flung from the abjection of village life into the hostility of their new, distant environments, migrant workers largely exist in the national consciousness as dispensable life. They are driven out of cities during periods of health crises,
