India’s Govt Has Ignored the Dreams of Its Urban Migrants

My father recently took an Ola to go shopping. During the trip, my father began chatting with the driver Amar, who revealed that he was the son of a vegetable vendor. Amar expressed gratitude for being able to avail of a higher employment opportunity, and told my father that he dreams of being able to afford higher education for both his children.

Similarly, Anuj, a contestant in one of the popular dace reality shows on TV, happens to be a fruit seller, whose passion for and talent in dance brought him to this stage.

He revealed during one of the episodes of the dance programme that he had participated only to aid his children’s educational goals.

Both these stories have a common theme: Amar and Anuj are both aspiring to become a part of the big urban dream of giving their children a better future.

Rising Population of Urban Migrants

Every year we celebrate stories of a domestic help’s child or a daily wage earner’s child performing outstandingly in one of the board exams or national level exams. These stories serve as inspiration to the rest of the ‘aspiring classes’ who continue to hold faith in the idea that humble beginnings should not deter one from achieving the impossible, especially in terms of career goals.

In his 2014 Budget Speech, the then Finance Minister Arun Jaitley had mentioned that rural migration (to urban) areas was increasing, and to accommodate the needs of the migrants, new cities would need to be built.

Four years have gone by, and the Government of India has hardly delivered on any of its promises for this particular section of society.

These urban migrants who form the core of the aspiring class often reside in slums, work for fifteen to sixteen hours a day (at a minimum), and often have little or no access to basic civic amenities. The members of this class have no social security, are often poverty stricken and malnourished. Even under such dire circumstances, they want their children to receive education and improve their living standards.

What India Can Learn From China’s Anti-Poverty Drive

The current situation however is grim: There are no jobs even for those who have passed their 12th grade exams. In fact, many organisations are often not willing to hire even those from this aspirational class of people, who have managed to go through college. Now, when prestigious and highly-coveted institutes like Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) have increased the fee-structure, how can an individual from a lower income group hope to gain admission, even after cracking the entrance exams?

Every year more and more people migrate from the villages to the cities for better employment opportunities and higher living standards.

But the government has chosen to ignore them and as a result, India’s urban poverty is consistently increasing. In fact, the Indian government should take lessons from China in dealing with urban poverty. A report in The Guardian claims that China’s Communist government has been taking measures to fight poverty, one of them being, to re-settle “marginalised rural poor... in new, government-subsidised homes”.

With the rate of success stories increasing among the urban poor, the Government of India should immediately tweak its policies to improve their living standards and create more viable job opportunities for them. It is important for a welfare government to help convert the dreams of the aspiring classes into reality, before their aspirations die premature deaths.

(Jagriti Gangopadhyay (PhD) is a Post-Doctoral Fellow at Manipal Centre for Humanities (MCPH). This is a personal account and the views expressed are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for them.)