It’ll Take More Than $4 a Day to Improve Life for India’s Workers
Employees sit round a colleague using a cutting torch at an Ishwar Engineering Co. factory in Mumbai, Maharashtra, India.
Photographer: Dhiraj Singh/BloombergThis article is for subscribers only.
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 ground reality shows how difficult the task will be.
At Alang, the world’s biggest shipbreaking yard in western India’s Gujarat 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 bread winner.