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Paper short abstract:

We examine the legal mechanisms for compensation against industrial accidents for migrant and informal workers in India. We discuss limitations of the law, how workers and labor organizations navigate them, and the potential of more widespread use of the legal protections for enhanced worker safety.

Paper long abstract:

Informal workers in India navigate 3D (dirty, dangerous and demeaning) conditions and precarious employments. Many of them are internal migrants from rural to urban India, navigating everyday risks at work. Small and big accidents are common, though few official records exist of these phenomena. In this paper, we examine legal protections against such risks to health and safety of workers. Through long-term ethnography, legislative and judicial analysis, we discuss the legal mechanism of litigation and compensation available to informal and migrant workers facing occupational injuries under the Employees Compensation Act, 1923. However, workers experience making claims under the Act challenging, especially in terms of procedural delays and evidence generation (like employment, police, and medical record). As a result, ad-hoc extra-judicial payments wherein compensation amounts are far lower than legal compensation, are dominant in Indian informal industry. We take the case of a labour organisation’s initiative for enhanced legal awareness, aid, and mediation, among rural youth who migrate to the western Indian states of Gujarat and Maharashtra to work in manufacturing and construction sectors. We show how this initiative attempts to make the Act more accessible for informal and migrant workers. Workers’ assertion of legal rights, we argue, has become doubly urgent. In the larger context of rising accidents alongside a shrinking of labour laws by the Indian state, we argue for an enhanced understanding of expanding legal accessibility, awareness and use by migrant, informal workers