Indian Workers

Not only in Los Angeles are workers leveraging institutions for their right to demand a better quality of life based on their labor. In India, workers have been protesting in the Delhi capital, for 100 days now. Demanding for “budget cuts imposed by the union government, unpaid wages, and mandatory digitization that has excluded already poor and vulnerable workers from accessing the scheme and its benefits.”

“Known as the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), the scheme was first introduced in 2005 and provides 100 days of guaranteed work in over 700 districts across rural India. MGNREGA has been a critical source of livelihood for millions of rural households across the country, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic.

In December 2022, the Union Ministry of Rural Development (MoRD) issued a notice for the compulsory use of the National Mobile Monitoring System (NMMS), an app-based attendance system requiring workers to upload two time-stamped and geo-tagged photographs a day, across all MGNREGA worksites starting January 1, 2023.”

“There were people from villages in the forest areas of Belgaum in the state of Karnataka. Historically, as people [mainly men] would migrate to cities to work, the women would be home. There were entire villages where there was an absence of men. After the MGNREGA came in, things became better, there were opportunities for work even for senior citizens, a means of survival.”