About Us Nirmana

MISSION

To facilitate a social movement across the country led by the unorganized sector workers towards the proper implementation of the Construction Workers Act, 1996 and to bring into effect a comprehensive central legislation that ensures social security for all the Unorganized Sector Workers

VISION

We envisage the kind of Governance which ensures and implements the Fundamental Rights and Social Security measures for all the Unorganized Sector Workers in the Country

Background

The NIRMANA SOCIETY was started in 1988 to provide logistic support to the National Campaign Committee – Construction Labour (NCC-CL) which has been campaigning for a comprehensive Central Legislation since 1985 to provide social security and labour welfare to construction workers who now comprise a workforce of over 30 million out of 370 million unorganized sector workers.
During the initial period, NIRMANA supported campaign activities, awareness generation amongst construction workers, certain welfare activities like child care, education, civic amenities, health-care services, free legal aid etc. in several slums of North-West Delhi through local donations and collaboration with NGOs such as Legal Aid and Advice Center and others. It also supported the organization of six Housing and Multi-purpose Co-operative Societies under “Punarvas Scheme” (Re-settlement) of Slum Division of Municipal Corporation of Delhi (then under Delhi Development Authority).

Activities of the Organization

1. Advocacy for Comprehensive Central Legislation to provide Social Security to 3 million Construction Workers:

The National Campaign of Construction Workers for a Comprehensive Central Legislation has been unique in many ways. It was NCC-CL under the Chairmanship of the former judge of the Supreme Court of India Justice V.R. Krishna Iyer which recognized for the first time at a 1985 workshop that the existing labour and social security legislation has been designed for the organised sector and cannot be implemented in the unorganised sector. Most existing legislation is implementable only if there exists a long term employer-employee relationship and a permanent team of employees; in the unorganised sector the employer-employee relationship keeps changing. It was realized that implementation of legislation for unorganised sector workers like construction workers would require mediation through instruments such as a Tripartite Board to fill the gap due to the absence of a ‘management’ in this sector.
Secondly, NCC-CL was unique in its understanding that instead of demanding that the government draft a suitable legislation for Construction Workers, people’s groups should themselves initiate such moves. The Campaign drafted a detailed legislation along with detailed rules, with the active participation of the Construction Workers themselves. Thirdly, the NCC-CL discussed the Bill and Scheme drafted by the core-team at various seminars and workshops all over the country and then pressurized the government by submitting its Bill and Scheme as a Petition to the Petitions Committee of Parliament.
Another crucial role that NCC-CL has played is to coordinate, link and maintain a long term relationship and unity among the Central Trade Unions and independent organisations of Construction Workers on the proposed Bill and Scheme. NCC-CL and its representatives believe that the Campaign and its proposal reflect the development of the joint vision of all the participants, including the Central Trade Unions.
However, NIRMANA’s support to the NCC-CL campaign has had a crucial influence on the enactment of the following Central Legislations by the Parliament:

(a) The Building and Other Construction Workers (Regulation of Employment and Conditions of Service) Act 1996, (27 of 1996).

(b) The Building and Other Construction Workers Welfare Cess Act, 1996 (28 of 1996).

The successful enactment of central laws does not, unfortunately, translate automatically into implementation at State and Union Territory levels, in a federal system. In the two decades following the enactment, Nirmana has played a key role in supporting the State and Union Territory Level Campaign’s attempts to ensure implementation. It has had an impact on the implementation/notification of the Rules in the States of Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat and in the Union Territories of Delhi and Pudduchery. Currently the NCC-CL campaign has approached the Supreme Court of India through a PIL, with the help of the Human Rights Law Network, to ask for a directive for immediate implementation of the 1996 Acts all over the country. It has identified this strategy, given the limited resources available for a countrywide grassroots campaign and the indifference of the governments of the different States and UTs. By 2010-11 the monitoring of the implementation by the Supreme Court resulted in the foundation of tri partite Boards in all the 35 States and Union Territories. It has also intensifying the campaign to amend the 1996 Acts to bring them closer to the NCC-CL proposal.
In the present phase, the NCC-CL is utilizing its experience of the construction workers campaign to demand regulation of employment conditions and social security measures to cover all other segments of the unorganized sector. The Second Labour Commission has recommended social security conditions be provided to the entire unorganised sector.

2. National Campaign Committee – Unorganised Sector Workers:

NIRMANA has been supporting the National Campaign Committee for the Unorganised Sector Workers to ensure that a really effective and implimentable legislation is passed by the Parliament in accordance with the recommendations of the Second Labour Commission. Our experience has shown us that the recommendations of the National Labour Commission are not enough for the government to enact legislation. The First National Commission of Labour under the Chairmanship of Justice Gajender Gadkar had recommended decasualization of construction labour but the government never took any notice of it. Even after the NCC-CL submitted its Petition along with a proposed Bill and Scheme to the Petition Committee of Lok Sabha the Labour Ministry introduced a hollow and misleading Bill in Parliament. It was only after the Petition committee recommended that the Govt. Bill should be withdrawn that the situation changed.
Similarly, it was only after the recommendations of the second National Labour Commission the NDA Government came out with different versions of the social security Bills for the Unorganised Sector none of which were sufficient to achieve the targeted goals. This time soon after the NCC-USW submitted a petition signed by over one million Unorganised Sector Workers to be Petition Committee of Lok Sabha after a rally of 20, 000 Unorganised Sector Workers to the Parliament and a detailed Bill on Social security of the Unorganised Sector Workers to the Prime Minister that the Govt machinery came into action.
The National Advisory Council and National Commission for Enterprises in the Unorganised Sector (NCEUS) came out with several alternate draft Bills and a Report on Social Security of the Unorganised Sector Workers. Inspite of similarity of views on major issues this time it has been more difficult to unite all the groups and organisations involved. Even after a joint meeting of the Central Trade Unions, Agriculture Workers Organisations, NCC-RW, NCC-USW, NCL, NTUI, SEWA and several others where a broad common understanding was reached, a few of the participants continued canvassing for the defective NCEUS type proposal for a social security bill bereft of provisions for regulation of employment and for a common bill for agriculture workers and other Unorganised Sector Workers.
Logistic support for NCC-USW has played a crucial role in this policy debate, as there is no other open platform in the country which is willing to keep the focus on genuinely implimentable social security along with employment regulation legislation for Unorganised Sector Workers.

3. Apna Nirman Mazdoor Cooperatives of Construction Workers:

From 1994 to 1999 NIRMANA collaborated with Habitat Polytech and Center for Education and Communication (CEC) on a Construction Workers Cooperative Project.
In this joint project, CEC provided research support, Habitat Polytech provided skill upgradation and fund management and NIRMANA provided organizational inputs for cooperative formation. The NIRMANA core project staff -- consisting of Project Director, Field Coordinators, Accountant and Field Assistants -- all worked from the NIRMANA Project Office at Pushpanjali in Pitampura, located in North-West Delhi. Since NIRMANA was given registration under FCRA in 1997 end, the funding of the last year of the Cooperative Project was organized through NIRMANA. This project was funded by Bread for the World (BDW). Apna Nirman Mazdoor Co-operative of Construction Workers was organised to consolidate individual contracts. We expected a few individual contractors to take work in the name of the co-operative but this concept of a co-operative society did not succeed.
However, execution of construction work taken up by the ANM Co-operative society to establish itself in the initial phase gave us unexpected insights into the industry from which we understood why the builders’ lobby was opposed to the ‘Regulation of Employment’ suggested by the Bill and Scheme proposed by NCC-CL. Inspire of building a rapport with all the top officials in the slum department we were not able to realize our Bills without paying a ‘substantial commission’ to various officials. This is a common practice in all the departments dealing in civil construction. To conceal the payment of such commissions, builders resort to manipulation of the ‘muster roll’. This is a major reason why all builders’ organisations are against keeping any real record of employment. However, to provide social security to construction workers it is essential to have an accurate record of employment.
Over the past decade, the Construction Workers Cooperative has extended its support to other migrant groups such as full time in-house Domestic Workers from Jharkhand and its surrounding tribal regions. NIRMANA has also extended its service to the migrant Rickshaw Pullers community in Delhi to form a Cooperative to use new innovative designs of Rickshaws.

4. Cooperatives of Tribal Domestic Workers from Jharkhand: (1998-Present)

In 1998 NIRMANA set up Nirmala Niketan as a Cooperative Society of Domestic Helpers. Since separate registration of Nirmana Niketan as a cooperative society was difficult, we decided to integrate it with the Nirmala Sundharam Memorial Apna Nirmana Mazdoor Cooperative Society Ltd., which was registered by us a few years earlier.
There are over 2,00,000 girls from the tribal areas of Jharkhand and adjoining tribal areas of Chhatisgarh, Orissa and West Bengal working in Delhi as "Domestic Workers". There are few organizations to take care of their social needs. Their main requirement is shelter in Delhi, placement linkages, health and medical care, saving system, education, legal protection, and skill training for long-term resettlement in their native places for the reversal of the present trend of migration to Delhi and other cities. This effort is at an initial stage and requires various collaborations with committed groups in Delhi and in the tribal areas. During the past ten years Nirmala Niketan has provided over 1000 placements to domestic workers to all over the city, to get a deeper understanding of working conditions of domestic helpers and to develop a long-term development plan for them. Initially for two-three years Nirmala Niketan collaborated with like minded organizations which led to the formation of a Joint Platform of 14 placement groups in Delhi. However, the collaboration could not continue in the next phase when it came to the effectively mobilizing the domestic workers working in Delhi and for developing sustainable programs/vocations for their resettlement in their native place. Meanwhile, a seminar on Domestic Workers, organised by Nirmala Niketan at the World Social Forum in Mumbai in 2003, was a big step forward in the direction of building an international level network.
Since the inclusion of ‘domestic work’ in the schedule of hazardous employments under the Child Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Act 1986 on 10th Oct, 2006, Nirmala Niketan has organised two workshops to ensure implementation of the ban on child labour in this sector. This process has led to the development of a proposal to form a Tripartite Board to regulate domestic work through legislation. The Tripartite Board will ensure implementation of the ban on child labour in domestic work, control trafficking, help in tracing child victims of trafficking, regulate placement agencies and put an end to their exploitation of domestic workers, provide social security to domestic workers, ensure healthy and safe routes of migration, and also provide employers with efficient and reliable domestic workers.
Instead of using Nirmala Niketan’s name we sought the help of National Commission for Women in developing the proposal of a comprehensive Legislation for Domestic workers which got over whelping support of almost all participants from 15 States in National Workshop organized by National Commission for Women. This proposal also influenced the ILO team in India and had an impact on the Conventions adopted by the ILO in its 100th conference. Since then we have consolidated a platform in name of National Campaign for Domestic Workers to take forward the National Commission for Women proposal towards enactment. During last few years three National meetings have been organized on this proposal in Delhi and Chennai.