Background of the case and procedural history

 The appellants, Mayadhar Nayak and Baina Nayak, were daily wagers belonging to the Scheduled Castes, who served the Government Treasury Branch of SBI in Bhubaneswar as cleaners and sweepers for approximately three decades, starting in 1994 and 1995, respectively.

The appellants had previously approached the Court in 1999 regarding non-regularisation of service and denial of pay on par with temporary employees. This produced an interim protective order on October 28, 1999 where the Court said, “If there is work for the Petitioners, they may not be retrenched.” The Court had directed the Bank to pay them remuneration under the Minimum Wages Act and be allowed to continue working as long as work was available, without being substituted by new hands. The Court also asked the bank to consider their cases for regularisation if any vacancies arose.

In 2007, the appellants again approached the Court claiming that the Bank was seeking to fill up the posts of Sweepers and other menial staff without considering their claim for appointment. This time too, the Court asked the bank to consider their cases for regularisation if any vacancies arose, keeping in view the length of their engagement and the services.

In terms of the above order, Appellants were paid on September 17, 2021 the arrears of minimum wages quantified at Rs.1, 61,619/- , each, for the period between April, 2017 & June, 2021.

Around five years later, in 2012, the appellants filed another petition for their recognition as temporary employees, pay parity under the principle of ‘equal pay for equal work’, release of bonus for the financial year 2011–12, and extension of all temporary service benefits as granted to similarly situated employees of the Bank.

In 2020, the appellants another petition seeking regularisation of their services, contending that the Bank had regularised the services of a similarly situated employee engaged as a ‘Liftman’ at the time, the appellants were receiving a consolidated monthly remuneration of Rs.16,406/- while other temporary employees of the Bank were receiving Rs.27,443/-.

On June 20 2025, a single judge bench Justice S.K. Panigrahi which was hearing both the petitions together dismissed the appellants’ writ petitions finding all their claims unsustainable. The judgment read:

“While this Court does not disregard the long and uninterrupted service rendered by the petitioners, it is well-settled that mere length of service does not by itself confer a right to regularisation. The consistent position in law is that engagement on a daily wage or casual basis, however prolonged, cannot mature into a claim for regular appointment in the absence of sanctioned posts and adherence to a lawful selection process.” (Para 18).

In 2022, the Bank had sought permission to retrench the Appellants as being surplus workers.

On July 19, 2025, the appellants were retrenched by the bank as surplus workers under Section 25F of Industrial Disputes Act, 1947 and were paid roughly Rs. 3.31 lakh each as statutory compensation and payment due to a policy shift toward outsourcing driven by IT developments in banking.

The division bench presently hearing the case, had to decide whether

• the appellants, after nearly 30 years of service were entitled to regularisation and consequential monetary benefits,
• the previous court orders, which only directed the payment of minimum wages and conditional consideration for vacancies, barred the appellants’ current claims for regularisation, and
• what constitutes fair ‘remediable and reparative justice’ for manual labourers in an era of outsourcing and AI, when regularisation might impose an excessive financial burden on the employer.

High Court’s intervention

 The Division Bench partially allowed the appeals and set aside the order of the Single Judge through an order on May 18, 2026. In that it said:

“There appears to be a prima facie case for granting relief to the Appellants herein, who admittedly have put in service as Sweepers, first Appellant from 1994, and the second from 1995. The law, as it now stands in the June of its life, tilts in favour of the Appellant’s herein, inasmuch as, arguably, the impugned order of the learned Single Judge has missed the march”

• Declined Regularisation

The Court declined to order regularisation. Reliance was placed on Supreme Court’s rulings in Jaggo v. Union of India (2024), and Shripal v. Nagar Nigam (2025) but the Court noted it would cause the Bank to bear the brunt of losing huge money and that the appellants’ prior cases only resulted in a direction for minimum wages. At the same time, the Court observed that the appellants’ earlier rounds of litigation had not secured them much real benefit, since those orders only directed payment of minimum wages, which SBI had already paid. Because of this, the Bench held that the regularisation claim in the present appeals was, to an extent, barred by the principle of res judicata.

The Court then referred to a coordinate Bench’s order in Secretary, Berhampur Cooperative Central Bank Ltd. v. Bhaba Sundar Dalai (2026), where Rs 10 lakh had been awarded as compensation in lieu of regularisation. However, the Bench distinguished that case as there was no res judicata bar in it, and the employees’ service was comparatively shorter.

The Court took note of two mitigating factors specific to the present appellants, that they had roughly ten years left before superannuation, and that both belonged to Scheduled Castes, as relevant considerations in shaping the final relief.

• Justification for the Compensation Amount

In the May order, the Court had suggested both the sides to negotiate a settlement with fairness and justice. The SBI proposed to pay a lump sum compensation of Rs. 5 lakh to each of the appellants to settle the dispute. However, the appellants rejected the bank’s offer and during a personal interaction with the Court, they stated they would settle for Rs. 25 lakh each

The Court evaluated both proposals and described the Bank’s Rs. 5 lakh offer inadequate. It said:

“Rupees 5 lakh offer made by the Bank as compensation is too frugal to be mentioned, when bread is costlier than blood, Rupee value now-a-days dwindling down. The Appellants, who have given their sweat & blood, cannot seek gainful employment elsewhere at their present declining age. They were working only as sweepers with not much education nor with due social status.” (Para 7.3.2)

Instead, the Court awarded a lump sum compensation of Rs. 20, 00,000 (Twenty Lakh) to each appellant in lieu of regularisation and continued service.

While deciding the compensation amount, it remarked:

“In the AI era, we are not sure that they would be able to eke out their livelihood, having spent prime of their life blood in the menial job all these years. Even Rs.10 lakh compensation awarded by the Coordinate Bench to the workmen of a Cooperative Bank would not constitute a solid yardstick for determining what should be paid to these poor persons. Should Appellants be regularized in service, it would incur more expenditure than otherwise.” (Para 7.3.2)

The Bank was ordered to pay the total Rs. 40 lakh within eight weeks. Any delay would trigger an interest penalty (1% for the first month and 2% thereafter), which the Court directed should be recovered personally from the erring bank officials.

The full judgment may be read here:

Why Regularisation Never Came

 The Fifth Schedule to the Industrial Disputes Act, 1947, that designates certain practices as unfair labour practices includes:

 “10. To employ workmen as “badlis”, casuals or temporaries and to continue them as such for years, with the object of depriving them of the status and privileges of permanent workmen.”

 For thirty years, and over 240 days annually, the appellants discharged their duty in continuity. For context, the Government Treasury Branch of the Bank occupies more than 11,000 square feet, spread over three levels comprising the upper basement, ground floor, and first floor. The premises include eight toilets and six urinals. The Appellants had been performing cleaning duties in the said premises along with outsourced employees.

The denial of regularisation and long-term benefits to contractual or temporary workers is a heavily litigated issue in India, and not unique to the present case. In Secretary, State of Karnataka v. Umadevi (2006) the Court clarified that temporary, daily wage, or contractual employees do not possess a legal or fundamental right to be made permanent. It held that a court cannot issue a writ of mandamus to make a worker permanent because the worker has no enforceable legal right to such a status, and the State has no legal duty to provide it outside of established rules. However, the Court also provided a narrow exception as a one-time measure for workers who have completed at least 10 years of service. Regularisation, it held, may be permitted where the appointment was irregular (meaning it suffered from a procedural flaw) but not illegal.

In Jaggo v. Union of India (2024), the Supreme Court said that the appellants’ long and uninterrupted service, for periods extending well beyond ten years, cannot be brushed aside merely by labelling their initial appointments as part-time or contractual. The essence of their employment must be considered in the light of their sustained contribution, the integral nature of their work, and the fact that no evidence suggests their entry was through any illegal or surreptitious route. The judgment read:

“The claim by the respondents that these were not regular posts lacks merit, as the nature of the work performed by the appellants was perennial and fundamental to the functioning of the offices. The recurring nature of these duties necessitates their classification as regular posts, irrespective of how their initial engagements were labelled. It is also noteworthy that subsequent outsourcing of these same tasks to private agencies after the appellants’ termination demonstrates the inherent need for these services. This act of outsourcing, which effectively replaced one set of workers with another, further underscores that the work in question was neither temporary nor occasional.” (Para 13)

In Mahanadi Coalfields Ltd. vs Brajrajnagar Coal Mines Workers Union (2024), the Court held that workers engaged to perform work of regular and perennial nature cannot be treated as contract labour.

Similarly, last year, in Shripal vs Nagar Nigam (2025), the Supreme Court while acknowledging the precedence in Umadevi, emphasised that workers performing duties that are integral, ongoing, and perennial to an institution’s functions should not be relegated to perpetual daily-wage status. The judgment authored by Justice Vikram Nath said:

“While the judgment in Uma Devi (supra) sought to curtail the practice of backdoor entries and ensure appointments adhered to constitutional principles, it is regrettable that its principles are often misinterpreted or misapplied to deny legitimate claims of long-serving employees. This judgment aimed to distinguish between “illegal” and “irregular” appointments. It categorically held that employees in irregular appointments, who were engaged in duly sanctioned posts and had served continuously for more than ten years, should be considered for regularization as a one-time measure. However, the laudable intent of the judgment is being subverted when institutions rely on its dicta to indiscriminately reject the claims of employees, even in cases where their appointments are not illegal, but merely lack adherence to procedural formalities.” (Para 26).

“Indian labour law strongly disfavours perpetual daily-wage or contractual engagements in circumstances where the work is permanent in nature. Morally and legally, workers who fulfil ongoing municipal requirements year after year cannot be dismissed summarily as dispensable, particularly in the absence of a genuine contractor agreement.” (Para 15).

To continue extracting regular labour for decades while pleading a lack of sanctioned strength is a position the Court found legally and morally unsustainable in Dharam Singh vs State of UP (2025).

In January this year, in Bhola Nath vs The State Of Jharkhand (2026), the Court while finding the State’s refusal to regularise the workers who had served for over a decade to be a clear derogation of equality principles, directed the State to forthwith regularise the appellants against the sanctioned posts they were initially appointed to, granting them all consequential service benefits

Hence, while long service alone does not guarantee automatic regularisation, the Supreme Court has ruled that continuing workers in identical, perpetual roles on temporary wages while denying them benefits can be considered arbitrary and discriminatory.

During the litigation, the appellants in present case- Mayadhar Nayak supported his wife, two children, and a father aged about 80 years. On the other hand, Baina Nayak was the sole caretaker of a mentally and physically disabled child and another son, all of whom dependent on his meagre income of about Rs 16,000.

On paper, the Nayaks had reason to expect a better outcome. They approached the High Court as early as 1999 where a coordinate bench even secured them protection against retrenchment in 1999, and in 2007 the Court directed SBI to consider them if sweeper vacancies were filled. Yet each of these interventions never fruitioned into regularisation.

When two vacancies did arise after the 2007/2008 orders, SBI chose to outsource the cleaning function rather than fill the posts departmentally citing a policy shift attributed to changes in banking operations. Because this outsourcing decision was never independently challenged, it stood, and it extinguished the very condition on which the appellants’ continued engagement depended. Rather than terminating long-serving casual workers outright, the restructuring of the underlying work itself dissolved the employee’s along with the post. By the time the Division Bench heard the 2025 appeals, it held that the earlier 2007/2008 orders had already adjudicated.

Compensation and Delayed Justice

 Regularisation would have given the appellants a pension, medical benefits, promotional prospects, and crucially continued income until superannuation. A one-time payment, however large, is a terminal substitute.

 None of this is to say compensation is worthless. Rs20 lakh each is a materially significant, life-altering sum, and the Court’s insistence on interest for delay and personal liability of erring officials for that interest is a genuinely useful enforcement mechanism. But as a systemic remedy for decades of institutionalised casualisation, compensation calculated case-by-case, in peculiar facts and circumstances, explicitly disclaiming precedential value, plausibly should not substitute for either a binding regularisation scheme or statutory reform that removes employers’ incentive to keep essential, perennial work permanently temporary! While salary or lump-sum compensation prevents destitution, it does not cure systemic exploitation. Compensation is at best a consolation, and workers deserve justice, not just money. Compensation does little to restore lost career opportunities, dignity and security.

 “The Appellants have been fighting the legal battles since about three decades, complete justice eluding for one or the other reason,” acknowledged the Orissa High Court in the present case.

This is not unusual. Delay is a common feature of our judicial system. Labour disputes in India typically take somewhere between seven to ten years to reach a final judgment. Pendency of labour disputes in general for long period of time leads to frustration among workers.

The Delhi High Court recently flagged this delay directly, describing the backlog of pending labour matters before constitutional courts as a “sorry state of affairs” in the constitutional courts where the “poor labourers are forced to fight tooth and nail to get justice for themselves”. Reported the Indian Express.

Labour Law in the AI-era

 Tucked into the judgment’s compensation calculus, the Bench doubted the appellants could “eke out their livelihood… in the AI era,” having spent their working lives in menial labour with little education. This, on one level, was an acknowledgment that older, low-skilled workers pushed out of long-term employment have genuinely diminished prospects of re-entering the labour market. But it is worth reading as part of a broader, nascent judicial awareness that automation and technological change will compound the harm of insecure employment for low-skill, manual roles.

A public employer that outsources or automates a function bears a one-time restructuring cost but the displaced worker bears a lifetime cost, often without the education or capital to pivot into new work. The Court’s remark implicitly recognises this asymmetry, even if it does not translate it into a legal standard.

“Perennial nature of work” as a legal test may itself be eroding. Much of the jurisprudence on regularisation and contract labour assumes that if work is genuinely permanent, it should attract permanent labour protections. But work that was perennial for thirty years can be redefined as time-limited or eliminable through outsourcing plus technology, without ever being tested against the perennial nature standard in a contested proceeding.

Indian courts have long tied the right to livelihood, and by extension dignity, to Article 21. It would perhaps be an overreach to describe this as an emerging AI-era jurisprudence. But future litigants representing displaced casual workers in automating sectors like banking, toll collection, municipal sanitation may well cite this observation as an early judicial acknowledgment that technological displacement deserves distinct legal weight. The judges however have made it clear that this order is based on the facts of this case and they do not intend to make it a binding precedent or a Rule of Parity.

(The legal research team of CJP consists of lawyers and interns; this judgement primer has been worked on by Tanishka Shah)

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Lucknow: Caste hierarchies & contract labour exploitation among sanitation workers

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Despite a sewer, death happening every 45 hours in the country, shameless governments have chosen to remain in criminal silence. Needless to say, Dalit lives don’t matter for government and they have been turned into a new normal. How widespread this practice is can be understood by this simple fact that this year sewer and septic tank deaths have been reported from 16 states across the. Increase in number of deaths in sewers and septic tanks have been alarming over the last decade. While in 2016 only 39 deaths were reported, this figure jumped by 350% next year in 2017 to a staggering 137 deaths.

After various Supreme Court Judgments and the subsequent passage of the ‘Prohibition of Employment as Manual Scavengers and their Rehabilitation Act’, 2013, one would have expected the governments to be proactive. However, SKA has documented 1726 deaths since the new act came into force. Among them 1203 deaths came just from seven states—Tamil Nadu (332), Gujarat (216), Delhi-NCR (157), Maharashtra (155), Uttar Pradesh (148), Haryana (104) and Bihar (91). Despite such high numbers, none of these states have taken even a single step to stop these deaths.

NAMASTE (National Action for Mechanised Sanitation Ecosystem) scheme was launched by the Modi government in July 2023. The scheme had an allocation of Rs. 349.73 Cr though for building toilets. While, under Swachh Bharat scheme, government had already spent Rs 19 thousand Cr for building 12 Cr toilets. However, neither was the sanitation ecosystem mechanised, nor were dry toilets completely eliminated.

Ironically and unfortunately, all these years ministers in the Modi government kept denying these sordid facts in Parliament, stating, shockingly, that there were no deaths in the country due to Manual Scavenging. Clearly, the act meant or means nothing for them. It also shows, how much government values the lives of Safai Karmacharis, who are still considered to be untouchables.

The SKA has demanded that the Prime Minister intervenes immediately to announce a complete full stop to deaths inside sewers and septic tanks. The press release has been issued by Bezwada Wilson, National Convenor, SKA.

Related:

58 reported deaths in Gujarat in last 5 years: Union Govt data reveals deaths due to cleaning of sewers and septic tanks

Continuing deaths of sewer workers reveals a cynical culture of impunity

941 deaths while cleaning sewers, septic tanks: Centre informs Rajya Sabha

The post Though sewer deaths have crossed the 100 mark this year, government is silent: SKA appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Since its launch in early June of 2026 by the newly elected Kerala government, Operation Toofan: The Narco Hunt has received widespread public support and rapidly emerged as Kerala’s most visible anti-drug campaign, with videos of raids, arrests, and drug seizures dominating social media. Presented as a comprehensive response to the growing circulation of narcotics and synthetic drugs, Operation Toofan claims enforcement measures with preventive interventions.

Alongside coordinated operations by the police and excise departments, the campaign expectedly engages schools, parents, and civil society organisations in awareness and prevention efforts. Within a short period, thousands of arrests have been made and large quantities of narcotics and banned tobacco products have been seized in the state.

Few would disagree that substance abuse poses serious challenges and requires intervention. Yet the significance of Operation Toofan extends beyond its official objectives. Like many contemporary policing campaigns, it has developed a parallel life online. Reports of inspections, arrests, and searches circulate across social media platforms and news ecosystems alike, where they are viewed, shared, and commented upon by thousands of users. It is within this digital circulation that a more complex social narrative begins to emerge.

A closer look at hundreds of the images and videos associated with Operation Toofan in digital platform reveals a striking pattern. One place appears repeatedly: Perumbavoor. And within these representations, one group appears with particular frequency: interstate migrant workers.

Perumbavoor occupies a unique position in Kerala’s social landscape. Over the last three decades, this town in Ernakulam district has become one of the state’s most important hub of migrant workers. The presence of workers from Assam, West Bengal, Bihar, Odisha, and several other states have become indispensable to its industries, construction sector, workshops, restaurants, and numerous other economic activities. The studies suggest that the migrant population in and around the town runs into lakhs, earning Perumbavoor the popular label of Kerala’s migrant capital.

Yet Perumbavoor’s significance extends well beyond its economic role. Over time, it has come to occupy a symbolic place in Kerala’s public imagination. Debates surrounding migration, demographic change, public safety, labour, and law and order frequently converge on the town. Perumbavoor has become a site onto which broader anxieties about social transformation are projected.

Long before the launch of Operation Toofan, these anxieties had already found expression on social media. Numerous pages devoted to local news, public affairs, and neighbourhood issues regularly circulated photographs, videos, and reels portraying migrant workers through recurring themes of drug use, alleged criminality, sex work, unhygienic living conditions, and urban disorder. Individually, such posts appeared to document isolated incidents.

Collectively, however, they constructed a recurring visual narrative in which Perumbavoor itself was imagined as a city under threat, with migrant workers positioned as its principal source of decline. These representations often extended beyond the town, inviting viewers to imagine Perumbavoor as a warning about Kerala’s future if migration remained unchecked.

Operation Toofan entered an already established visual landscape and supplied it with a continuous stream of new images. Videos of police inspections in migrant settlements, searches of labour camps, checking of buses occupied significantly by migrant workers, arrests, and drug seizures rapidly circulated across various platforms. Existing accounts intensified their coverage, while new influencer pages also began producing content centered on the campaign. In some instances, the act of filming migrant settlements itself was framed as civic responsibility or courageous reporting, and such content was subsequently circulated and amplified across platforms.

The issue is not whether illegal activities exist. Drug use and trafficking are social problems that cut across communities, classes, and regions. Nor is the issue whether law enforcement should intervene. The more important question is how these interventions are represented and understood once they enter the digital public sphere.

Social media rarely reward complexity. Videos are edited into short, dramatic formats designed to maximise attention, while captions emphasise danger, urgency, and confrontation. Background music, visual effects, and selective framing transform routine enforcement activities into highly emotional spectacles. Within these compressed narratives, the broader realities of migration and the lives of migrant workers disappear. Questions about labour conditions, housing arrangements, wage insecurity, social exclusion, and economic dependence receive little attention. Instead, what remains visible is a simplified image of the migrant worker, repeatedly associated with surveillance, suspicion, and disorder. The comment sections beneath many of these contents reveal how such associations are reinforced. Alongside support for anti-drug measures are comments that directly connect migrant workers with crime, insecurity, and social decline. While these views are far from universal, the constant repetition of similar visual narratives gives them greater credibility. Images begin to function as evidence, and repeated exposure gradually transforms isolated incidents into general assumptions about entire populations.

What is equally important is what remains unseen. As claimed operation Toofan is not structured solely around raids and arrests. Officially, the campaign combines enforcement with awareness programs involving schools, parents, community organisations, and government agencies. The stated objective is not merely to identify offenders, but to address substance abuse as a broader social problem.

Yet the visibility of the campaign appears highly uneven in Perumbavoor. During the period the contents get widespread appreciation is the inspections, raids, and arrests than images of awareness sessions, community engagement, counselling initiatives, or preventive programs. This selective visibility has important consequences. Drug use is a complex social issue that cannot be addressed through punitive measures alone. Long-term responses require education, rehabilitation, public health interventions, and community participation. However, when enforcement becomes the dominant public image of a campaign, the problem itself begins to appear as something that can be solved primarily through surveillance and control.
This dynamic is particularly significant because migrant workers already occupy a vulnerable social position within Kerala. They are essential to the functioning of the state’s economy, yet they often remain socially peripheral. Many live in segregated housing clusters, work in demanding conditions, and have limited access to political representation. Linguistic differences, mobility, and weak institutional support make it difficult for them to challenge narratives constructed about them. As a result, they become highly visible to systems of surveillance while remaining relatively invisible within public debates about their own lives.

The visibility produced by Operation Toofan therefore operates unevenly. While the campaign targets drug-related activities, the public images generated by it often concentrate on particular spaces and populations. Over time, this can produce a feedback loop, as the Kozhikode city and rural police stepped-up surveillance in migrant workers settlements across the district recently. Increased surveillance in migrant-dense areas generates more images. More images generate greater public attention. Greater attention strengthens the perception that these areas are inherently problematic. The result is not simply the policing of crime, but the production of places and populations that become permanently associated with suspicion.

Perumbavoor illustrates this process clearly. The town’s association with migrant labour has increasingly merged with public concerns about law and order. In the digital environment, where visual content travels faster than context, these associations acquire new strength. A police raid becomes a reel. A reel becomes a viral post. A viral post becomes a widely shared narrative about who constitutes a threat. Through repetition, suspicion acquires the appearance of common sense.

There is a broader irony here. Kerala’s economy depends heavily on migrant workers. From construction sites and manufacturing units to hotels and service industries, migrant labour has become indispensable to everyday economic life. Yet the same workers who sustain these sectors frequently appear in public discourse not as contributors, but as subjects of concern. This reveals a deeper contradiction within Kerala’s development model: economic dependence does not automatically translate into social acceptance.

Operation Toofan was launched to address the problem of drugs. But its public afterlife raises larger questions about migration, belonging, and representation. How are particular communities made visible through policing? How does social media shape public perceptions of crime? And why do certain groups become recurring symbols of social anxiety?

Perumbavoor is not merely a geographical location where these questions arise. It has become a symbolic city in Kerala’s imagination, a place where fears about migration, crime, and social order converge. Operation Toofan did not create these anxieties. Yet the campaign has made visible the ways in which they circulate and acquire legitimacy.

The danger lies not only in misrepresentation but in normalisation. When suspicion is repeated often enough, it begins to appear natural. Migrant workers cease to be seen primarily as workers, neighbors, or residents. Instead, they become symbols within a larger narrative about risk and security.

In that sense, the most important story emerging from Operation Toofan may not simply be about drugs. It may be about how certain populations come to be recognised as the most visible suspects in Kerala’s public imagination.

Courtesy: The AIDEM

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According to data presented in Lok Sabha during March, at least 622 sanitation workers died in sewers and septic tank incidents across India since 2017 with Uttar Pradesh recording the highest fatalities at 86. This highlights the structural risks and vulnerabilities faced by sanitation workers.

At a press conference organised by the Dalit Adivasi Shakti Adhikar Manch (DASAM) in New Delhi in May 2026, they revealed that at least 36 sanitation workers died while cleaning sewers, septic tanks, drains and sewage chambers between March and May 2026. Referring to the data presented in Parliament, DASAM said that out of the 622 deaths, 317 occurred between 2021 and 2025. Most of the workers belonged to Valmiki communities, other historically marginalised caste groups, or migrant labour background. [1]

Most sanitation workers in Ward 66 belong to the Balmiki caste, historically associated with sanitation labour and among the most marginalised Dalit communities. Many of these workers live in clustered settlements and are employed, directly or indirectly, by the Lucknow Municipal Corporation (LMC), reflecting the enduring link between caste and sanitation work.

Workers further allege that Rajput used casteist slurs for the workers, even threatening termination for non-compliance. Such allegations also raise questions under the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989, which criminalises caste-based abuse and intimidation.

Altogether, these accusations point to potential violations of legal protections against caste-based discrimination. Despite these allegations, the supervisor continues to remain in his position, raising questions about accountability and enforcement of existing laws.

While sanitation workers employed by the Lucknow Municipal Corporation (LMC) are issued formal joining letters outlining the terms and conditions to their employment, access to these documents is not always guaranteed. A 25-year-old worker, who wished to remain anonymous, said he has been working with the LMC for nearly a year, yet his joining letter has been withheld. He alleges that requests for the document have been met with derogatory remarks about his caste and class, along with threats of termination. “What are we supposed to show when we get into an accident?” questioned one of the workers.

The workers expressed their dissatisfaction by gathering on June 10, 2026 to protest and demand their additional Rs. 2000 and four days of holidays, while giving the authorities 3 days to act. They allege that authorities at Lucknow Swachhata Abhiyan (LSA) had stated they will be firing Avinash, but they are yet to hear back, despite three days already having passed by.

The allegations against Rajput, however, are not isolated incidents but part of a broader pattern within the sanitation system in Lucknow. One where accountability is inconsistent and often remains unchecked.

“The mayor, Sushma Kharakwa, had already fired him once. We are not sure why he came back,” said another worker.

While ward 66 is struggling to call out the corruption and discrimination, workers say that such situations are far from unique. Across all wards, Sweepers working with LMC are expected to also clean the sewers or pick up animal carcasses if asked. Many of these workers, often in their 20s, say they are required to descend up to five feet into sewers to carry out manual cleaning. For deeper drains, the Lucknow Municipal Corporation (LMC) deploys mechanised equipment, though workers allege this is not always consistently implemented.

Cost considerations often shape these decisions, with workers revealing that bringing in machinery to clean the sewer becomes expensive. The cost adds up with fuel, travel and hiring operators.

This is where private contractors come in with the hopes of saving money that would otherwise be spent on the machinery. “thekedaars allegedly take Rs. 5000-6000 and give their workers 500-600. A government employed sanitation worker would get around Rs. 1000.”

While law is framed to safeguard Scheduled castes, sanitation workers in Lucknow are still fighting for lawful existence. On June 6, 2026 Lalaram, a 28-year-old sanitation worker went into a manhole with only a rope as instructed by his supervisor on scene, Akash Kumar. He soon lost consciousness and was rushed to a hospital, his supervisor. Initially being taken to Ram Manohar Lohia Institute of Medical Sciences (RMLIMS), Akash diverted him to a private hospital. Lalaram died before receiving medical care and Akash Kumar fled the scene. The ward’s corporator is Arun Rai, a representative of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). When contacted, he refused to be interviewed on the topic.

The incident drew responses from city authorities. Mayor Sushma Kharakwa and Municipal Commissioner Gaurav Kumar announced action against the contractor, including blacklisting the firm and initiating an FIR. Financial assistance was also promised to the family.

Workers remain sceptical, questioning whether meaningful change will follow. Many say that the response to the incident has been driven largely by media attention and local political support, which may ensure compensation for the family. However, the larger concern around the safety of sanitation workers continues to persist. “Usually, the supervisors of these private contractors run away after such incidents, and then nothing ends up happening,” said one of the workers.

With Lucknow ranking the third cleanest city in 2024-2025. The irony remains, with regular derogatory comments and a clear spatial hostility moving fluidly between the private and government employees for sanitation work. 

(The author is an independent journalist, currently pursuing masters in Convergent Journalism at AJK MCRC, Jamia Millia Islamia)

[1] These statistics presented in Parliament were reported I The Hindu among other publications

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Safai Shramik Union raises demands for a law that safeguards rights of sanitation workers: Maharashtra

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Yet from the start of the protests in April 2026, the state attempted to reduce the protests into something smaller, narrower, and more criminal than they actually were. What was unfolding in Noida was not merely a law-and-order disturbance. It was not an irrational outbreak of mob violence. Nor was it simply a reaction to one wage notification.

It was the culmination of years of accumulated distress inside India’s industrial economy. The protests represented the eruption of long-suppressed anger over stagnant wages, forced overtime, unsafe working conditions, contractual exploitation, rising inflation, arbitrary deductions, labour insecurity, and the collapse of institutional mechanisms through which workers could negotiate with employers.

For perhaps the first time in years, the invisible workforce powering India’s manufacturing economy forced itself into national visibility. In addition, the state responded not with dialogue or labour mediation — but with policing, criminalisation, conspiracy narratives, mass FIRs, detentions, and coercive force.

That response revealed something fundamental about the contemporary Indian political economy: labour unrest is increasingly treated not as a democratic or industrial issue but as a security threat.

The industrial glory of Noida was built on invisible and disposable labour

For more than two decades, Noida and Greater Noida have been projected by governments, investors, and industry bodies as symbols of India’s industrial transformation — sprawling manufacturing corridors representing export growth, technological expansion, and integration into global supply chains. Electronics assembly plants, garment export units, pharmaceutical industries, footwear factories, automobile ancillary hubs, and mobile-phone manufacturing facilities turned the region into one of North India’s most important industrial belts.

Political speeches, investment summits, and corporate campaigns repeatedly celebrated Noida as evidence of India’s emergence as a global manufacturing destination under initiatives such as “Make in India.” But beneath this image of industrial modernity existed a vast labour regime built upon invisibility, insecurity, and disposability.

The industrial economy of Noida depended overwhelmingly on migrant labourers arriving from Bihar, eastern Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand, Bengal, Odisha, Assam, and other economically distressed regions. These workers migrated not because industrial employment guaranteed stability, but because rural economies increasingly offered little possibility of survival amid agrarian distress, shrinking agricultural incomes, indebtedness, and chronic unemployment.

Once inside Noida’s industrial ecosystem, many workers entered conditions defined by insecurity, overcrowding, exhausting work schedules, and near-total absence of bargaining power. As The Times of India reported during the protests, large numbers of workers employed across electronics factories, garment units, footwear industries, and ancillary manufacturing facilities earned roughly between ₹11,000 and ₹13,000 per month despite routinely working extended shifts. Workers and labour organisers told the newspaper that shifts regularly stretched beyond eight hours, often reaching 10–12 hours during periods of intense production demand.

Several workers alleged that overtime had effectively become compulsory. According to accounts cited in The Indian Express, workers frequently began shifts early in the morning and returned late at night after exhausting factory schedules, leaving little time for sleep, recovery, or family life. In many factories, labourers alleged that refusal to comply with overtime expectations risked threats, penalties, or removal from work rosters.

The wage structure itself revealed the depth of economic exploitation. Even before deductions, monthly wages barely sustained survival within NCR’s rapidly rising cost of living. After accounting for rent, transport, food, electricity, and remittances sent back to families in villages, many workers reportedly retained almost nothing by the end of the month.

Contract labour became the central mechanism of industrial control

One of the clearest realities exposed by the Noida protests was that the industrial economy of NCR no longer functions primarily through stable, direct employment. Instead, it increasingly operates through a vast contract labour regime that allows industries to maximise production while minimising accountability.

The modern factory system in Noida is built not merely on low wages, but on deliberately structured insecurity.

Across electronics factories, garment export units, footwear industries, pharmaceutical facilities, automobile ancillary plants, and mobile-phone assembly units, workers repeatedly stated during the protests that they were employed not directly by companies but through contractors, labour suppliers, manpower agencies, and intermediaries who controlled recruitment, attendance, wages, discipline, and dismissals. Reports by Hindustan Times described these intermediaries as effectively functioning as “shop-floor fixers” operating between management and labour.

This structure was not incidental to industrial production. It became central to the organisation of industrial power. The contractor system served several purposes simultaneously:

• insulating companies from direct legal liability,
• fragmenting workers into unstable categories,
• weakening collective bargaining,
• discouraging unionisation,
• and ensuring labour remained permanently replaceable.

Workers repeatedly described how insecurity itself became a mechanism of industrial discipline, as reported by The Wire.

Many alleged they had no written contracts and could be removed from work without explanation. Others stated that labourers were routinely terminated before they became eligible for statutory protections, bonuses, provident fund benefits, or wage increments. Accounts documented in reports by The Indian Express and labour organisers covering the protests suggested that the fear of sudden dismissal had become normalised inside factories.

The figures cited during the protests were staggering:

• 58.2% of workers reportedly had no written employment contract,
• 51.7% lacked social security protections,
• over 47% were not entitled to paid leave.

These numbers revealed something fundamental about Noida’s industrial economy: Insecurity was not exceptional. It had become structural.

Even inside formally organised manufacturing systems linked to major domestic and international supply chains, workers increasingly existed in conditions resembling informal labour.

Reports emerging during the protests, including coverage by Scroll and labour-rights commentators, repeatedly highlighted how contractualisation fragmented workers inside the same factory. Workers performing identical labour often belonged to different employment categories depending on the contractor through whom they were hired. This meant different wage structures, different entitlements, and different levels of vulnerability despite identical work on the same production lines. The contractor system therefore did more than reduce labour costs. It actively prevented worker solidarity.

Workers alleged that attendance systems were manipulated, overtime compensation arbitrarily reduced, and deductions imposed without transparency. Multiple reports documented complaints regarding deductions for aprons, uniforms, slippers, safety equipment, and even questionable “ITI diploma” schemes that workers believed either did not exist or offered no meaningful educational benefit.

Several workers reportedly told journalists and labour organisers that raising complaints about overtime, wage deductions, or conditions could lead to immediate removal from work rosters. This fear was economically devastating for migrant workers. For labourers supporting families in villages while surviving in rented industrial settlements around Noida, losing employment could immediately trigger hunger, debt, or eviction.

As per The Caravan, women workers faced particularly severe vulnerabilities inside this structure. Reports by independent media platforms and labour groups documenting the protests described complaints regarding overcrowded and unhygienic toilets, inadequate sanitation facilities, and dismissive responses from supervisors when concerns were raised. Contractual insecurity also made reporting harassment or abuse significantly more difficult because workers feared retaliation or dismissal.

The Noida protests therefore exposed how contractualisation had fundamentally transformed industrial relations in India. The contractor system was no longer merely a labour arrangement. It had become the primary architecture through which industrial discipline, labour suppression, and economic control were maintained across India’s manufacturing economy.

Inflation turned low wages into a survival crisis

The immediate economic context behind the protests was critical. By early 2026, industrial workers across the NCR region were already under immense financial pressure. The energy crisis triggered by geopolitical tensions in West Asia and disruptions around the Strait of Hormuz sharply increased fuel prices across India. LPG costs surged, transport became more expensive, and food inflation intensified dramatically.

For workers already surviving on stagnant wages, the consequences were devastating. Indian Express and The New Indian Express repeatedly documented workers explaining how monthly wages no longer covered basic survival expenses. Rent alone reportedly consumed one-third to half of monthly income for many migrant labourers living in overcrowded industrial settlements around Noida and Greater Noida.

One worker described returning to cooking on a wood-fired chulha because LPG cylinders had become unaffordable. Others explained that after paying rent and transport expenses, almost nothing remained for food, healthcare, or family support.

The protests therefore emerged from material desperation. This was not abstract labour dissatisfaction. Workers were confronting the collapse of subsistence itself. The erosion of real wages had become impossible to ignore. Even as industrial productivity increased and companies expanded production, workers experienced declining purchasing power and worsening living conditions. The industrial economy demanded more labour from workers while giving them less capacity to survive. That contradiction produced explosive anger.

Haryana’s wage hike triggered an explosion that was already building

The immediate trigger for the Noida uprising came from neighbouring Haryana. After sustained labour unrest and wage-related mobilisation across industrial centres such as Manesar, Gurugram, and Faridabad, the Haryana government announced a substantial increase in minimum wages in April 2026. As per The Hindu, the revised wage rates reportedly increased minimum pay for unskilled workers from roughly ₹11,000–11,300 to more than ₹15,000 per month.

The announcement spread rapidly through worker WhatsApp groups, labour settlements, contractor networks, factory dormitories, and informal worker circles across Noida and Greater Noida. Its political impact was immediate. Workers across industrial belts in Uttar Pradesh began directly comparing their wages with those offered in neighbouring Haryana for nearly identical work.

The question emerging inside factories was devastatingly simple: Why were workers producing for the same industrial economy being paid thousands less simply because they worked across a state border?

This comparison carried enormous political force because Noida, Greater Noida, Gurugram, Manesar, and Faridabad do not function as isolated industrial regions. They form part of an interconnected NCR manufacturing ecosystem where labour, contractors, and production networks constantly move across state boundaries. Workers assembling electronics, garments, automobile components, footwear products, or mobile phones in Noida often performed labour nearly identical to workers employed in factories in Manesar or Gurugram. Yet wage structures differed dramatically.

Coverage by Scroll, and worker testimonies documented by independent labour-rights groups highlighted how workers increasingly viewed this disparity as evidence of deliberate labour suppression rather than economic necessity. The comparison with Haryana transformed workplace dissatisfaction into political anger. Workers and labour organisers reportedly argued that industrial competitiveness in Uttar Pradesh increasingly depended upon keeping labour cheaper, more weakly protected, and less organised than neighbouring states.

This was one of the most important dimensions of the protests. The Noida unrest rapidly became about far more than a single wage revision. It exposed a broader development model in which states compete for industrial investment by suppressing labour costs, expanding contractualisation, weakening collective bargaining structures, and maintaining a permanently insecure workforce.

The collapse of labour institutions left workers with only the streets

One of the deepest structural causes behind the unrest was the collapse of institutional labour negotiation mechanisms. Historically, industrial disputes in India were mediated through trade unions, labour commissioners, conciliation systems, industrial tribunals, and collective bargaining processes. Those systems have steadily weakened.

Reports by Article 14 and others repeatedly noted that workers today possess very few effective institutional avenues through which grievances can be meaningfully addressed. The weakening of trade unions combined with the expansion of contract labour fragmented workers and undermined collective organising.

As a result, workers increasingly felt that no institutional mechanism existed through which employers or the state would seriously engage with their grievances. This is crucial to understanding the escalation in Noida. The unrest did not emerge because workers suddenly became violent or irrational. It emerged because institutional channels for labour negotiation had been systematically hollowed out.

Workers turned to the streets because the structures historically meant to mediate industrial conflict had largely collapsed. The tragedy is that the state itself helped weaken these institutions — and then responded to the resulting unrest through coercion instead of reconstruction.

 Labour Codes deepened worker anxiety and distrust

The protests also unfolded against the backdrop of the implementation of the four Labour Codes in late 2025. The Codes covering wages, industrial relations, occupational safety, and social security were promoted as reforms intended to modernise labour regulation and improve ease of doing business. But workers and labour scholars increasingly viewed them differently.

Many feared that the reforms weakened labour protections while expanding managerial power and flexibility.

Labour economist K.R. Shyam Sundar noted in The Indian Express that the new framework created uncertainty regarding working-hour limits and increased executive discretion in labour regulation. Workers repeatedly alleged that “flexibility” effectively meant longer hours, increased overtime pressure, and weaker enforcement of labour standards.

The old Factories Act imposed clearer restrictions on daily working hours and spread-over limits. Critics argued that the new framework diluted these protections under the language of reform. Importantly, many workers reportedly expected the Labour Codes to improve wages and standardise protections after their implementation in November 2025. When these expectations were not realised, frustration deepened dramatically. Workers increasingly perceived labour reform not as protection but as deregulation in favour of industrial capital.

The critical appraisal of the new labour codes may be read here.

The state reframed a labour crisis as a security threat

Perhaps the most alarming feature of the Noida protests was how rapidly the Uttar Pradesh government transformed what was fundamentally a labour and economic crisis into a security operation. From the very beginning, the state appeared far more willing to investigate conspiracy than exploitation.

Instead of foregrounding the actual grievances driving workers onto the streets — stagnant wages, inflation, contractual exploitation, unpaid overtime, unsafe working conditions, arbitrary dismissals, and collapsing labour protections — the official response increasingly shifted toward the language of destabilisation, subversion, and law-and-order threat.

As reported across The Hindu, senior officials and police authorities repeatedly suggested that “outside forces” and organised conspirators were responsible for the unrest.

Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath publicly suggested that “urban naxalites” and disruptive actors were attempting to provoke industrial instability. Simultaneously, sections of the police and administration alleged that Pakistani social media handles had amplified misinformation surrounding the protests.

This framing was not politically neutral. It fundamentally altered the meaning of the protests themselves. Workers demanding dignified wages and humane working conditions were no longer treated primarily as citizens articulating economic grievances. They were increasingly portrayed as potential instruments of destabilisation.

The implication was deeply dangerous: Large-scale labour mobilisation itself became suspicious. The state effectively suggested that worker anger on such a scale could not emerge organically from economic suffering and structural exploitation. Instead, unrest had to be explained through hidden instigators, ideological infiltration, foreign amplification, or organised conspiracy. This reflected a broader political tendency increasingly visible across India — the securitisation of democratic dissent.

Economic protest was not treated as evidence of policy failure, labour distress, or institutional collapse. It was reframed as a threat to public order and industrial stability. This shift carried enormous consequences.

Once labour unrest was classified as a security problem rather than a social or economic issue, coercive policing became easier to justify while structural questions about wages, labour protections, and exploitation were pushed into the background.

Coverage and commentary emerging during the protests in Scroll.in repeatedly warned that this narrative erased workers’ own political agency. The implication was that workers themselves were incapable of collectively resisting exploitation unless manipulated by hidden actors.

Historically, this has been one of the most common methods used by states to delegitimise labour movements. By converting economic anger into conspiracy, governments avoid confronting the structural conditions that produced the unrest in the first place.

The tragedy of the Noida response was that it prevented any serious political engagement with the actual realities workers were describing: impossible living costs, wage stagnation, contractor exploitation, unsafe workplaces, and the collapse of labour negotiation mechanisms. The more the state emphasised conspiracy, the less it spoke about labour. And that silence revealed the deeper priorities underlying the response.

Detailed report on fact finding on Noida protest may be read here.

Police repression became the state’s primary language

As the protests intensified around April 13, the state moved decisively away from negotiation and toward coercive suppression. What began as labour unrest was increasingly met with the machinery of criminal law, mass policing, surveillance, and punitive force.

Reports emerging from Noida and Greater Noida in Hindustan Times described widespread lathi charges, raids, detentions, arrests, and sweeping FIRs filed against workers and unnamed persons allegedly involved in the protests. Workers and activists repeatedly alleged that police intervention escalated confrontations that had initially been localised and economically driven.

Instead of functioning as mediators attempting to reduce tensions, police operations increasingly appeared designed to demonstrate overwhelming state control. The scale of criminalisation was extraordinary.

According to reports emerging during the crackdown from The Indian Express, police registered cases against thousands of unnamed persons under serious penal provisions including rioting, unlawful assembly, destruction of property, and attempt to murder. Entire working-class neighbourhoods reportedly came under fear and surveillance.

Workers described police raids in labour settlements late at night. Families reportedly searched desperately for detained relatives without clear information regarding where they had been taken. Independent reports and labour-rights accounts alleged that minors and uninvolved persons were also picked up during police operations conducted across industrial localities.

Accounts emerging from detention facilities and Kasna jail raised serious constitutional concerns. Lawyers, labour organisers, and civil-rights activists cited in reports by Scroll.in alleged violations of Articles 21 and 22 of the Constitution, including arbitrary detentions, denial of timely legal access, failures to promptly inform families, and procedural irregularities surrounding arrests.

What was particularly striking was the collective nature of the crackdown. The policing increasingly resembled punitive action directed not only at specific accused individuals but at labour communities themselves. Fear spread rapidly through worker settlements across Noida and Greater Noida. The message being communicated by the state was unmistakable: Collective resistance would invite overwhelming coercive force.

This was especially significant because the protests themselves emerged from the collapse of institutional labour mediation mechanisms. Workers had already reached a point where they felt trade unions, labour departments, and industrial dispute systems no longer meaningfully addressed their grievances. The state’s response to this institutional collapse was not reconstruction of dialogue, rather it was criminalisation.

The criminalisation of labour solidarity was equally significant

The crackdown did not remain confined to workers physically present at protest sites. Very quickly, the focus of police action expanded toward labour organisers, student activists, writers, independent voices, and individuals publicly expressing solidarity with workers. What made this phase of the crackdown especially alarming was that the state increasingly appeared to treat labour organising itself as suspicious political activity.

The shift became particularly visible through the arrests and prosecutions that followed the April 13 protests. As reported by The Indian Express, police repeatedly alleged that the unrest had not emerged organically from worker anger but had instead been orchestrated by an “organised syndicate of outsiders.” Authorities claimed that labour organisers and activists associated with groups such as Mazdoor Bigul Dasta played a “significant role” in provoking violence, disrupting public order, and inciting workers.

This narrative became central to the state’s justification for the crackdown. Among the most prominent cases was that of Aditya Anand, a 28-year-old BTech graduate from National Institute of Technology Jamshedpur and an employee at Genpact, whom police described as a “mastermind” behind the Noida protests. As reported by The Indian Express, Anand was arrested from Tiruchirappalli in Tamil Nadu on April 18 and later linked by Haryana Police to separate labour unrest and violence in Manesar that had occurred four days before the Noida protests.

Police alleged that Anand delivered “provocative speeches,” organised marches, and encouraged workers to block roads. He was booked under multiple serious provisions, including rioting, unlawful assembly, assault on public servants, criminal conspiracy, and attempt to murder. Yet the details emerging about Anand’s background complicated the state’s narrative considerably.

His family described him not as a violent conspirator but as someone deeply engaged with labour issues and social movements. His younger brother told The Indian Express that Anand had rejected job opportunities abroad, including in Sweden, because he wanted to remain in India and work on issues affecting ordinary people. The family stated that he had long been associated with labour concerns and youth activism linked to the Naujawan Bharat Sabha, the organisation historically associated with Bhagat Singh.

The symbolism here was politically significant. A labour activist speaking publicly about workers’ rights was increasingly being framed through the language of criminal conspiracy and organised disorder. The crackdown intensified further in May when authorities invoked the stringent National Security Act against two accused linked to the protests: Aakriti Chaudhary, a 25-year-old history graduate from Delhi University, and former journalist Satyam Verma.

The use of the NSA marked a dramatic escalation. Preventive detention laws of this nature are generally associated with threats to national security or public order of an exceptional nature. Their invocation against individuals associated with labour protests and worker solidarity immediately raised concerns among civil-rights groups and labour organisations.

According to The Indian Express, police alleged that Chaudhary and Verma were active members of Mazdoor Bigul Dasta and had played “significant roles” in violence, arson, and disorder during the protests. But the accounts emerging from families and lawyers sharply challenged this narrative.

Aakriti Chaudhary’s father reportedly stated that she had been picked up from Botanical Garden Metro station on April 11 — two days before the violence on April 13 — raising serious questions about the chronology of the allegations against her. Her family argued that she had merely participated in activities supporting workers’ rights.

Her father, who works with Ganashakti, the CPI mouthpiece, told The Indian Express: “I’m proud that my daughter was raising her voice for workers’ rights. She is the Bhagat Singh of today.”

Similarly, advocates representing other accused argued that students and social workers had merely expressed solidarity with workers through speeches, meetings, and street plays — activities traditionally associated with democratic protest movements.

The case of Satyam Verma was equally revealing. Verma, a journalist and editor associated with writings on Bhagat Singh and anti-colonial political history, was arrested from his residence in Lucknow. Friends and associates described him as a long-time journalist, translator, and intellectual engaged with labour and democratic issues rather than violent mobilisation. Other arrests followed a similar pattern.

Himanshu Thakur, a 24-year-old history postgraduate from Hansraj College and a NET-qualified scholar, was accused of instigating crowds and coordinating violence. His family described him as someone involved in student activism, translation work, and social causes, including protests relating to student deaths during the Delhi flooding crisis.

What became increasingly visible through these arrests was a larger pattern: The state was collapsing the distinction between labour organising, political solidarity, and criminal conspiracy.

This distinction mattered enormously. Instead of recognising collective labour mobilisation as a democratic response emerging from exploitation, inflation, contractual insecurity, and wage stagnation, authorities increasingly personalised the unrest through narratives centred on masterminds, infiltrators, and ideological actors.

This framing effectively erased workers’ own political agency. The implication was that workers themselves could not independently organise resistance after years of economic distress and labour exploitation. Their anger had to be explained through manipulation by “outsiders.” Historically, states confronting labour unrest have often relied upon precisely this strategy.

Worker mobilisation is reframed not as a consequence of material exploitation but as evidence of political contamination or organised subversion. The consequences of such a framework extend far beyond one protest. Once labour solidarity itself becomes suspicious, the democratic space available for workers to organise, negotiate, document abuses, and collectively assert rights begins shrinking dramatically. This was what made the Noida crackdown especially significant. The issue was no longer merely how the state handled one industrial protest.

The deeper question was whether independent labour mobilisation itself was increasingly being treated as illegitimate within India’s contemporary industrial order — particularly when it challenged industrial profitability, disrupted production, or exposed the inequalities hidden beneath the language of economic growth and “Make in India” industrial success.

Detailed report on state crackdown on dissent may be read here.

Noida was one of the most important labour protests in contemporary India

The importance of Noida cannot be overstated. The protests formed part of a broader wave of labour unrest across industrial regions including Manesar, Surat, Panipat, Barauni, Faridabad, and other manufacturing hubs.

Across sectors and geographies, workers raised remarkably similar demands:

• living wages,
• overtime compensation,
• social security,
• dignified working conditions,
• stable employment,
• humane working hours.

This convergence revealed a national labour crisis. Noida exposed the widening contradiction at the centre of India’s economic model: expanding industrial growth and rising productivity alongside deepening worker insecurity and stagnant real wages. Most importantly, the protests revealed the limits of governing labour through precarity, exhaustion, fear, and suppression.

The interim wage hikes announced after the unrest only reinforced this reality. The government responded meaningfully only after workers paralysed industrial movement and disrupted production. That fact alone is a profound indictment of the existing labour regime.

Noida was not merely an industrial disturbance. It was a warning from the workforce sustaining India’s manufacturing economy — a warning that an industrial system built on insecurity, wage suppression, informalisation, and coercion cannot indefinitely maintain social peace.

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The team, formed by civil rights group Jan Hastakshep included Supreme Court senior advocate S.S. Nehra, former Hindu College professor Ish Mishra, retired IFS officer Ashok Sharma, senior journalist Anil Dubey, and senior advocate M.Z. Ali.

The team visited Noida on April 24 and spoke to workers across multiple industrial units, shopkeepers and other affected residents on the issue.

According to the statement released by the team, investigators have found no evidence to support allegations circulated by sections of the administration and media that foreign elements were behind the protests.

Instead, the team reported how, the anger among the workers had been building for years over low wages, rising inflation and comparisons with higher minimum wages in neighbouring Delhi and Haryana. The agitating workers told the team that factories relocating from Delhi and Gurugram to Noida continued paying lower wages after shifting operations, despite higher pay scales prevailing in those regions.

The fact-finding group said that this dissatisfaction intensified after workers learned that wages at units in Haryana –barely 170 kilometres away–had increased significantly following a hike in minimum wages there. This comparison, combined with stagnant wages in Noida for 10 years, reportedly triggered the initial sit-in protest at a garment-manufacturing unit in Sector 83 earlier this month. According to the Fact-finding team’s statement, protests spread across industrial clusters in Sectors 59, 60, 62, 83 and 84, eventually drawing tens of thousands of workers onto the streets. The team also alleged that police action escalated tensions and that more than 1,000 workers were detained, with some families not informed of their whereabouts for several days.

The team of investigators noted that the state government’s subsequent actions, including issuing notices to 43 contractors, cancelling licences of 10 contractors and announcing a 21 per cent wage increase, indicated acknowledgement of the irregularities in wage practices rather than evidence of any external conspiracy.

Significantly, a trade union leader who had worked in a multinational company, also told the team that two decades ago, wages were not an issue in NOIDA and Greater NOIDA because wages here were higher than in other states. However, conditions have changed over the past 20 years.

Disparate wages: While wages increased in Delhi and Haryana, they did not increase in Uttar Pradesh, and companies arbitrarily set their own minimum wages. This difference also significantly increased exploitation. He added that most of NOIDA industries operate with only contract labour, with companies hiring workers through contractors who provide no security or other benefits.

The team concluded that the unrest reflected long-standing labour grievances rooted in wage stagnation and rising living costs, and called for implementation of revised minimum wages, linking wages to inflation, and withdrawal of cases against workers involved in the protests.

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The post No ‘Pakistan conspiracy’ in Noida labour unrest: Fact-finding report appeared first on SabrangIndia.

According to the police statement, both Verma and Choudhary were allegedly associated with “Mazdoor Bigul Dasta” and had played a “significant role” in the violence, arson and disruption that accompanied the workers’ protest. Police further claimed that the two attempted to disturb public order by “provoking” workers in different areas and circulating inflammatory material. Senior police officers, quoted in report by The Times of India, cited CCTV footage, electronic evidence, intelligence inputs and social media activity as the basis for invoking the NSA, a preventive detention law that permits incarceration for up to one year without trial on grounds related to national security or maintenance of public order.

The use of the NSA against the two has, however, triggered strong criticism from lawyers, labour rights groups, civil liberties organisations and campaigners associated with the Campaign for the Release of Workers and Activists of Noida (CaRWAN), who have termed the move an attempt to indefinitely prolong incarceration after the prosecution allegedly failed to establish concrete evidence during bail proceedings. Supreme Court advocate Ali Zia Kabir Choudhary, representing several accused in the matter, told The Wire that neither the accused nor their legal teams had been formally provided documents explaining the grounds on which the NSA was invoked. He pointed out that under constitutional safeguards, including Article 22 concerning protection against arrest and detention; the arrested persons are entitled to be informed of the grounds of detention.

“The only detail we have is the police press release. No papers have been supplied. In court we argued that there is not a single piece of evidence showing that Satyam or others called for violence,” Choudhary said while speaking to The Wire, adding that in Verma’s case, police had allegedly failed to show that he was even part of any WhatsApp groups cited during arguments. He further alleged that the prosecution relied largely on unrelated photographs and chats involving persons who were not arrested.

Timing of NSA invocation raises concerns

CaRWAN, in a statement issued on May 13 and cited by The Wire, questioned the timing of the NSA charges, noting that the law was invoked only after the prosecution faced difficulty during bail hearings. The collective stated that during the hearing, defence counsel highlighted the “emptiness of the charges” and the “illegality of the arrests,” while prosecutors allegedly failed to present substantial incriminating material against either Verma or Choudhary. The group argued that the accused had already spent over a month in judicial custody and that the sudden invocation of the NSA appeared designed solely to ensure continued detention.

The police crackdown follows weeks of unrest linked to industrial workers’ protests in Noida and Greater Noida. As reported by Hindustan Times, the demonstrations began on April 10 after the Haryana government announced a substantial increase in minimum wages for workers, prompting labourers in Noida’s industrial belt to demand similar hikes, better overtime compensation and improved working conditions. While protests remained largely peaceful in the initial days, violence broke out on April 13 across several industrial sectors, during which factories were allegedly vandalised, vehicles torched and police personnel injured in incidents of stone pelting.

Following the violence, the Uttar Pradesh Police launched a sweeping crackdown. Multiple FIRs, various reports place the number between seven and fifteen, were registered across police stations including Phase II and Sector 63. According to The Indian Express, hundreds of people were detained in the aftermath, while at least 60 individuals remain incarcerated on charges ranging from rioting and criminal conspiracy to attempt to murder. Police have consistently maintained, including in statements carried by The Hindu and Hindustan Times, that the violence was not spontaneous but orchestrated by an “organised syndicate of outsiders.”

Activists, students and scholars among those arrested

The arrests have drawn particular attention because many of those booked are students, researchers, labour organisers and activists rather than industrial workers themselves.

Satyam Verma, a 60-year-old journalist based in Lucknow, was arrested on April 17. According to The Indian Express, Verma previously worked with the news agency Univarta and has been associated with Janchetna Books and Jagaruk Nagrik Manch. He has also written for the labour publication Mazdoor Bigul, after which the organisation “Mazdoor Bigul Dasta” is allegedly named. Friends and supporters quoted in The Indian Express described him as a writer, translator and editor deeply engaged with labour rights and progressive literature. He is also the son of noted historian and academic Lal Bahadur Verma.

Civil rights groups have strongly disputed police claims portraying Verma as a “main conspirator.” CaRWAN stated in comments carried by The Times of India and The Wire that Verma was not present in Noida during the protests and had reportedly not visited the city in over a decade. His associates argue that the prosecution has attempted to criminalise ideological affiliations rather than establish any direct role in violence.

Aakriti Choudhary, 25, a postgraduate in history from Delhi University’s Daulat Ram College and an aspiring PhD scholar, was detained by plainclothes officers at Noida’s Botanical Garden Metro Station on April 11 — two days before the violence erupted. The Hindu reported that police initially claimed she was detained for disturbing public order, but later alleged that subsequent investigation uncovered evidence linking her to organising the protests.

Her father, Arun Choudhary, associated with the CPI(M) mouthpiece Ganashakti, questioned in comments to The Indian Express how someone detained before April 13 could be charged with orchestrating violence that occurred later. He defended his daughter’s participation in labour solidarity campaigns and criticised attempts to equate Left political beliefs with criminality. Defence lawyers similarly noted, according to Hindustan Times, that during proceedings prosecutors allegedly presented a book recovered from her residence as evidence of “Left-wing ideology.”

Concerns over criminalisation of ideology and dissent

It has been argued that the prosecution’s case increasingly appears to rely on political profiling rather than direct evidence of criminal conduct. Rajnish Yadav, counsel for Choudhary and other accused, told The Indian Express that the activists had merely participated in solidarity efforts, including speeches and street plays supporting workers demanding fair wages. He compared their participation to broader solidarity movements seen during the farmers’ protests.

The police have also arrested several other young activists and students. Among them is Aditya Anand, a 28-year-old NIT Jamshedpur graduate employed at Genpact, arrested from Tiruchirappalli on April 18. According to The Indian Express, police allege he delivered “provocative” speeches and organised marches during the protests. His family, however, portrayed him as a socially conscious engineer deeply engaged in labour rights issues and associated with the Naujawan Bharat Sabha.

Another accused, Himanshu Thakur, a 24-year-old history postgraduate from Hansraj College and a NET-qualified PhD aspirant, was arrested from Delhi’s Shalimar Bagh on allegations of coordinating protests and instigating crowds. His family told The Indian Express that he was the sole earning member of the household who supplemented family income through freelance translation work while advocating for students’ and women’s rights.

Families of working-class accused have also described devastating economic consequences following the arrests. The Indian Express reported that Amit Kumar, a 19-year-old worker from Prayagraj earning ₹8,000 a month in Noida, and Pankaj Kumar, a mason from New Ashok Nagar, are among those whose detention has reportedly pushed already vulnerable families into debt and unemployment.

Questions over misuse of the NSA

The use of the NSA in Uttar Pradesh has long been controversial. In April 2021, an investigation by The Indian Express reported that the Allahabad High Court had raised concerns over the apparent misuse of the law after red-flagging 94 out of 120 habeas corpus petitions involving NSA detentions. Similarly, Newslaundry reported in 2022 that police proposals seeking NSA sanctions in communal violence cases had invoked conspiracy narratives such as “land jihad.”

It must be pointed out that the NSA, unlike ordinary criminal law, allows preventive detention through executive orders without the procedural protections of a regular criminal trial. Human rights advocates have repeatedly warned that the law is frequently deployed to circumvent bail and prolong incarceration where ordinary criminal charges may not withstand judicial scrutiny. The invocation of the NSA in the Noida workers’ protest case has therefore intensified concerns regarding the shrinking space for labour organising, student activism and political dissent.

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The opening paras of the article says it all, “It was waiting to happen. Only the “when” was not clear. The buildings in the industrial areas of the National Capital Region (NCR), with their glitzy interiors, could not camouflage the simmering anger of workers inside any longer. When what started as a small bubble of frustration took on the force of a volcanic eruption, fuelled by the oppressive conditions imposed by hostile employers and abetted by compliant governments, nothing could put a lid on it…Thus, in mid-April, workers poured out of their factories, striking work in the industrial area of the New Okhla Industrial Development Authority (Noida) in Uttar Pradesh, fully conscious of the reprisals and the heavy hand of the state that would come into play as the official reaction to their action. But it was a moment that the workers truly owned, and there was no factory that was unaffected…. There was no coordinated action, no direct union involvement. Yet, it seemed like magic. As per some official reports, workers across 82 factories struck work protesting against the 12-hour, 7-day working week and the harsh and unsafe working conditions within the factories, all for a measly monthly wage of Rs. 11,000 to Rs. 12,000.”

On November 21, 2025, the Government began implementing the four Labour Codes (on Wages, Industrial Relations, Social Security, and Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions). Concerned citizens, trade unions and opposition parties label them ‘anti-worker.’ Most regard these codes as favouring the corporate sector. Their ‘anti-worker’ dimensions include ‘the hire and fire policy’; ‘curtailing right to strike’; ‘expansion of Fixed-Term Employment (FTE); ‘diluted safety & welfare’

The way the NOIDA workers came out in droves to protest their grim reality is a case in point! The Uttar Pradesh government announced a 21% wage hike, but many workers and unions deemed this insufficient. The police have taken legal action against those (apparently several thousands) involved in the violence. On expected lines, the godified media did not highlight the plight and the protest of the NOIDA workers. The situation of the ordinary worker (particularly casual labourers and migrant workers) in India leaves much to be desired: most of them are at the mercy of employers who are exploitative and corrupt. Workers are often denied just wages and have long hours of work. Many do not get appointment letters nor are there the mandatory ‘Service Conditions.’ Trade Unions in India have become almost non-existent. The COVID period revealed the miserable conditions of the working class.

The month of May begins with the ‘International Workers’ Day’. This Day normally focuses on honouring the global workforce, promoting labour rights, and fighting exploitation. The Catholic Church has consistently championed the cause and the rights of workers. On 15 May 1891, Pope Leo XIII gave the world his path-breaking encyclical, ‘Rerum Novarum’ (‘Of New Things’), regarded as the foundational document of modern Catholic Social Teaching. The encyclical addressed the plight of the working class during the Industrial Revolution. It advocates for worker dignity, the right to form unions, and a just wage, while defending private property and rejecting both socialism and unrestrained capitalism.

In his Encyclical ‘Laborem Exercens’ (On human work), dtd. 14 September 1981, Pope John Paul writes, “the Church considers it her task always to call attention to the dignity and rights of those who work, to condemn situations in which that dignity and those rights are violated, and to help to guide [social] changes so as to ensure authentic progress by man and society.” Later, on 1 May 1991, he promulgated another Encyclical ‘Centesimus Annus’ (‘The Hundredth Year’) to commemorate the historic anniversary of ‘Rerum Novarum’. It reiterated the fundamental vision, of ‘Rerum Novarum’ and   expounded issues of social and economic justice, including a defense of private property rights and the right to form private associations, including labour unions

In keeping with the significance of the day, the Catholic Church celebrates it as the Feast of St. Joseph the Worker. Pope Pius XII established it in 1955, to honour Joseph as the patron of workers and to celebrate the dignity of human labour.

A year ago, on May 8, 2025, Pope Leo XIV was elected to succeed Pope Francis; he assumed office on 18 May. When asked to explain his choice of name, Pope Leo said, “I chose to take the name Leo XIV. There are different reasons for this, but mainly because Pope Leo XIII in his historic Encyclical ‘Rerum Novarum’ addressed the social question in the context of the first great industrial revolution. In our own day, the Church offers to everyone the treasury of her social teaching in response to another industrial revolution and to developments in the field of artificial intelligence that pose new challenges for the defence of human dignity, justice and labour.”

The Catholic Church has been consistent in defending the rights of workers for a more dignified, just and humane life. Cardinal Joseph Cardijn (1882-1967),  founder of the Young Christian Workers , left no stone unturned to focus on the plight of workers and ensure that the teachings of ‘Rerum Novarum’ are mainstreamed in the life and mission of the Church.

Pope Leo XIII says it very strongly in his ‘Rerum Novarum’, “(We must) save unfortunate working people from the cruelty of men of greed, who use human beings as mere instruments for money-making. It is neither just nor human to grind men down with excessive labour.”

The point is:  is anyone listening? Workers must unite! We must heed their cry for justice! We are all called to be in solidarity with workers, to ensure that they have better working conditions, with just wages, normal working hours and above all, to live in dignity!

 April 30, 2026

(The author is a human rights, reconciliation and peace activist)

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The post Workers Cry for Justice! appeared first on SabrangIndia.

But what if we pause and think about the thousands of modern day slaves in India who continue to work under almost the same conditions? 

As India marks 50 years of the Bonded Labour System (Abolition) Act, 1976, cases of bonded labour still surface in states like Telangana. Many workers in sectors such as agriculture, brick kilns, fishing and construction remain trapped in debt and coercion. The only thing that has changed is that it is no longer the 3rd century BCE, but the 21st century. 

Pursala Lingamma’s story emerges from this reality. Once a bonded labourer, she later entered public life and today serves her village as its Sarpanch.

Pursala Lingamma, Sarpanch of Amaragiri village

“At night, our seth(master) locked our children in a separate room so that we would not run away. If we tried to escape, we would have to leave our children behind. That is how we remained trapped in slavery for nearly three decades.” – says Pursala Lingamma 

P Lingamma, once trapped in conditions of forced slavery, went on to become the Sarpanch of a village with hundreds of rescued individuals. Lingamma hails from Amaragiri village in Nagarkurnool district, Telangana. For over three decades, her family, along with 44 other families from the Chenchu tribe (an aboriginal community listed among the Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups in India) was trapped in bonded labour. 

“The community’s complete rescue was a miracle. We had to suffice in the given boat and equipment for fishery and had never imagined that we could ever be free. My parents and the whole community had lost all hope. ” – she adds. 

They were trapped by three local businesspersons who controlled most of the fishing trade in the area. Through debt and coercion, Lingamma’s family, along with many other families, were forced to sell the fish they caught at extremely low prices. While the market price was around Rs 60, they were made to sell it for just Rs5. They were denied access to fair markets and were even subjected to physical abuse, leaving constitutional guarantees only on paper.

Rescued from Bonded Labour 

However, the turning point came when a civil society organisation, the Foundation for Sustainable Development (FSD), stepped in. Established in 2004, FSD works to eradicate bonded labour across several Indian states, including Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Odisha and West Bengal. 

“Due to migration and the search for a stable livelihood, these tribal groups, most of them illiterate, get trapped by local businessmen. They are often threatened and abused so that they do not speak against them.” – Dr. Kandasamy Krishnan, Executive Director of FSD and Convenor of the National Adivasi Solidarity Council (NASC)

Krishnan speaks about the deep fear among the survivors of Chenchu tribe in Amaragiri village. For generations, these families had been catching fish from the Krishna River and selling it locally for around Rs. 100 per kilogram. The same fish could earn up to Rs. 1,000 per kilogram in markets in West Bengal. In other words, they were getting barely one-tenth of its real value. Yet most of them were afraid to complain to officials, fearing they might lose even this small income, if they engage with officers. Krishnan adds that among the 106 people who were rescued, only two could read and write, which made it even harder for them to understand their constitutional rights and speak up against them in front of officers.

Lingamma’s Leadership Journey

Lingamma attended several leadership sessions conducted by the Foundation for Sustainable Development and waited for the right opportunity to show her abilities. She is one of the 2,900 rescued survivors by FSD, who has received leadership training. Today, many of them are leading participants in different fields such as local politics, markets, working at handicrafts and self-help groups. However, their journey, even after the rescue, is not easy. It is only their first step. 

For the first time, the position of Sarpanch in Amargiri village was reserved for a woman from a Scheduled Tribe. It was then that a cousin of Lingamma encouraged her to contest the election, thinking that the position could later be taken over by him. She hesitated at first, but eventually decided to step in and make use of the opportunity. However, she faced heavy criticism for contesting, especially because she was a woman and that too from the Chenchu tribe.

Lingamma says, “The village was already divided among different tribes. When I got nominated, it soon turned into a gender conflict as well. The toughest time for me was not the haunting decades of slavery, but the months before the election, when the men of my own community stood against me.” 

The villagers were deeply divided in their opinions about a woman’s capability to hold such a significant position in the political arena. They doubted a woman’s ability to conduct meetings with bureaucrats, negotiating and bargaining the interest of the community wisely. Many were sceptical, but she was confident. She went ahead and mobilised male voters by taking up their daily issues and also assured the women that she would be a strong and accountable leader. After conducting numerous local Sabhas to engage with opposing forces, the tribe slowly consolidated and she won the first election of her political journey. Later, despite being offered monetary bait of Rs10 lakh to transfer the real authority to her cousin, Lingamma declined to sell the trust of her own people. Today, she stands as an epitome of women’s empowerment for the whole of Amaragiri.

Developmental Road Ahead after Winning

Lingamma’s leadership as Sarpanch has played an important role in establishing the economic independence of Amaragiri. 

Lingamma is currently focusing on education and has been working to lay the foundation for school buildings in the village. She is also pushing for the establishment of a community hall for her community, which is still awaiting sanction. Along with this, she hopes to soon ensure access to drinking water and improve road infrastructure, as the village remains largely isolated from the outside world.

She says, “Amaragiri should not be known as a village of bondage, but for its progress and for the leadership of a tribal woman.”

Post-rescue, survivors have organised themselves into the Amaragiri Released Bonded Labourers Association (RBLA) in effort to secure government benefits, and launched initiatives like a fish-processing unit to ensure economic independence in their age-old profession. The Chenchu community of Amaragiri were able to obtain government funds as well, of approximately 40 lakh rupees, to start a Fishing Cooperative and purchase vehicles to take the fish to city markets. 

Her victory is historic, not just for her but for the entire community. It symbolises a complete reversal of decades of oppression and a beacon of hope for other marginalized communities. 

At the heart of this transformation stands Sarpanch P. Lingamma. 

Her journey is recently recognised in a feature by Eenadu, a Telugu newspaper, on March 18, 2026 titled “From Struggle to Recognition: An Inspiring Journey of Resilience.”

On the occasion of International Women’s Day, Lingamma was also among nine Elected Women Representatives from across the country who were felicitated by the Indian School of Democracy at the Constitution Club of India. ISD is a non-partisan organisation that works to nurture principled grassroots political leaders committed to strengthening Indian democracy.

(The author is a Political Science student at Lady Shri Ram College for Women, Delhi University, and an independent journalist writing on polity, governance, and social issues.)

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Signatories to the Appeal include: senior activists, academics, scientists of Telangana such as Prof. Haragopal, Dr. K Babu Rao, Prof K. Laxminarayana; human rights activists Jeevan Kumar, Dr. Tirupathaiah, Vasantha Lakshmi; feminist activists V. Sandhya, V Rukmini Rao, S. Ashalatha, K. Sajaya, Bhanumathi, Meera Sanghamitra; social activists Venkat Reddy, Kanneganti Ravi, P. Shankar, Saraswati Kavula, Maria Tabassum, Shaikh Salauddin, Sreeharsha, Lateef Khan, Sowmya Kidambi; climate justice activists Ruchit Asha Kamal, Nikita Naidu, Deeksha; law researchers Akhil Surya, Raja Chandra etc.

The Abhaya Hastam Assembly Elections Manifesto (2023) of TPCC made multiple assurances including establishment of a welfare board and provision of social security for unorganised workers, a specific welfare board for Hamali workers, health cards to Hamali workers, establishment of a ‘Hamali Nagar’ in every mandal centre, where houses would be allocated to the workers. The letter describes the many challenges and exploitation faced by Hamali workers, across different godowns and markets. The activists said that State is bound to protect rights, dignity and livelihoods of all workers – whether belonging to Telangana or coming from other states, in search of livelihoods.

The communication also pointed out that 2026 marks 50 years of enactment of the Telangana Mutta, Jattu, Hamal and Other Manual Workers (Regulation of Employment and Welfare) Act, 1976 and Rules, 1977 which provide the legal framework for setting up institutional mechanisms and upholding rights of the Hamali workers. The said Act and Rules mandate the state government to establish a Board (Section 6) as well as an Advisory Committee (Section 14) representing employers, unprotected workers, members of the legislature and the Government.  Effective implementation of the Act would be the least that can be done to secure the rights and interests of Hamali workers.

The signatories also appreciated that last week, Minister Dr. Dansari Anasuya (Seethakka), has assured them that the issue will be taken up with the Chief Minister, for establishment of Hamali Welfare Board when she addressed the Hamali Maha Garjana at Hanmakonda, a historic gathering of 7,000 Hamali workers from 30 districts of the state.

The signatories hoped the CM would immediately issue directions for constitution of a Statutory Welfare Board and Advisory Committee for Hamali Workers, along with necessary budgetary allocations and ensure fair wages and payments, PF, ESI, health rights and housing. The activists also pointed out statutory welfare boards and schemes in Kerala and Maharashtra for Hamali workers and urged that Telangana also must consider such measures at the state and district level.

The letter petition was jointly initiated by the National Alliance of People’s Movements (NAPM) and Telangana People’s Joint Action Committee (TP-JAC), in solidarity with the Telangana Hamali Workers Union (THWU).

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