A Path to Social Safety for Migrant Workers | Ashif Shaikh | TED

So most of us here are migrants.

We have moved for opportunities and a better life for ourselves

and our children.

There are three quarters of a billion workers globally

who migrate within their countries.

Some go to the nearest town for a short duration,

and some travel thousands of miles for months, even years,

leaving all they know, including their families, behind.

These migrants work at a construction site,

manufacturing units,

agriculture fields.

But unlike us,

they are not migrating for opportunities, but to survive.

The majority of them are poor,

working for very low wages and lack safety nets.

Many face hunger,

debt

and exploitation.

Without safety nets, one job loss, one health emergency,

undermine years of effort

and keep them trapped in the cycles of poverty.

I come from India.

India is the fastest-growing economy in the world

and home to 200 million internal migrants.

These migrants directly contribute at least 10 percent

in our three-trillion GDP,

but they lack safety nets.

What's remarkable is that we have a huge safety-net system in India

which provides various benefits

like cash transfer, food subsidy, health care, insurance.

In fact, there are 7,000 benefits available

with billions of dollars allocated for the poor, including migrants.

And evidence shows that these benefits help in a huge way.

And globally, safety nets [help] reduce poverty by 40 percent.

But migrants [can’t] access them and access is not very easy.

Most do not know about the benefit.

If they do, requirements are too complex and too many

for the migrants who are daily-wage earners.

So the money and programs exist,

but the delivery system is just not working.

And this is what our team and partners at Migrant Resilience Collaborative

are trying to fix.

Our goal is simple.

We build resilience and ensure dignity of the migrant community.

For this, we have adopted a two-pronged strategy.

Our team, over 1,000 people, themselves come from the migrant community,

helps millions across 100 districts

to overcome the challenges in the delivery

and access of their benefits.

And at the same time,

we establish a feedback loop from the community

to the government and industry.

So we can improve the underlying system,

policy design and accountability to fix the system long-term

for tens of millions more.

In just two and a half years,

what we started as an audacious idea,

is today the planet’s largest

grassroots-led collaborative for the migrants

and has helped over three million households

for the social security benefits.

Benefits for the people like Suresh.

We met Suresh when he was looking for daily job work in Mumbai.

Let's hear from him.

(Video) Suresh Waidande: My wife and I work very hard to ensure that our children

do not have to do hard labor,

that they get a good education.

My name is Suresh Bhimrao Waidande.

I'm from the Khatav Block of Satara district.

I got tired of being poor and quit school to work for daily wages.

I decided that I had to work hard to survive

and make sure that I could feed my family.

So I came to Mumbai.

When I arrived I took the Koyna Express from Satara to Mumbai.

It was my first time taking a train.

I saw mountains, valleys, canyons and tunnels.

The atmosphere was so different.

For my first job, I was paid something like 30-40 rupees a day

(less than 50 cents USD).

As a daily laborer, there are many problems.

and some are really difficult to overcome.

If workers take on jobs without proper identification

or attendance cards [to track their hours],

they can potentially lose payment.

Sometimes the employer doesn't pay for your travel like they should,

or they promise you work and then give it to someone else.

There is a lot of injustice.

Such information is shared by Jan Sahas.

But not everything about our work is formal,

so they ask us to be careful and aware.

They provide us information about our rights.

And assure us of support if we are treated unfairly

or face any injustice.

Whether it's Mumbai or any other city in India,

the country cannot survive without workers like us.

The great poet Annabhau Sathe used to say,

this land is not resting on Earth but on callused hands of workers.

The only way that any town, village or country can develop

is through the hard labor of workers.

(Applause)

AS: With support of our team,

Suresh has access to food security,

insurance and a hope to continue education for his children.

(Applause)

And most importantly, most importantly,

knowledge on how to access his rights and entitlements.

Let me leave you with this.

With climate change,

the migration is set to grow at an unprecedented scale

in our countries.

We will scale our program across south and southeast Asia

to share our work with the world.

There are hundreds of millions of people who work very hard

to build modern society from the ground up.

The buildings where we live or work in,

the airport, the big hotels,

but yet none of these [are] accessible for them.

This is the moment where we should recognize their contribution.

And ensure they will no longer be invisible or ignored.

They belong.

We do this work to honor their dignity.

Thank you.

(Applause)