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Article

13 May 2015

Author:
Anurag Kotoky, Bloomberg

As India manufacturing booms, labourers suffer

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s new deal to boost the economy has a simple logic: Cheap labor lures companies from high-cost nations, and new jobs will improve the lives of millions of poor villagers. The reality on the ground shows how difficult the task will be...At Alang, the world’s biggest shipbreaking yard in western India’sGujarat state, workers earn about $4 daily standing in 100 degrees Fahrenheit heat for 12 hours to cut vessels. Migrants from the heartland’s poorest states, the laborers are often unaware of their rights, but very aware of their risks – death, which often eliminates a family’s sole breadwinner...India’s labor laws cover only a small percentage of the workforce, and its social safety net is far behind China’s...“If you want to make India a powerful manufacturing base, you must simultaneously improve the conditions of labor,” said Colin Gonsalves, founder of Human Rights Law Network, who has argued labor cases frequently before India’s Supreme Court.