Redefining citizenship: Lessons from the redeployment of construction workers’ welfare funds in India

This paper examines the re-deployment of the Building and Construction Workers (BOCW) welfare funds for pandemic relief in India. Through this, I highlight the specific disenfranchisement of unorganised sector workers from full citizenship despite the constitutional guarantee of equality. Connecting this to the fiscal architecture and administrative practices upon which the postcolonial welfare state is reliant, I argue that the unorganised – organised sector divide has critical implications for the citizenship experience of workers in India. Pre-pandemic, funds running into billions of Indian rupees lay unspent with special-purpose social welfare boards such as the Building and Other Construction Workers (BOCW) welfare boards in India. The BOCW boards are Special Purpose Vehicles (SPVs) meant to address the specific vulnerabilities of building and construction workers through the BOCW Act 1996. Funds collected through a 1% cess is ring-fenced and non-lapsable. Their persistent un(der)spending on the welfare of these workers indicated a dysfunctional welfare system and unmet social citizenship rights. However, right after the COVID-19-induced lockdown in India in March 2020, the central government instructed the states to mobilise the BOCW funds for pandemic relief. A few states also used BOCW funds for vaccination drives. In addition to emergency cash and food distribution, several states used these funds for vaccination of the beneficiaries. Approximately ₹310 billion of the ₹1.7 trillion mobilised towards pandemic relief were reallocated from the BOCW boards. In doing so, the state appears benevolent, providing vaccinations to not just registered, but also unregistered construction workers and their families. Thus, it appeared to be a significant expansion of the state’s welfare system. However, a closer look clarifies that falling back on the unspent funds lying with the BOCW boards effectively translates to the vulnerable workers subsidising the state’s public health expenditure. A legal challenge to this was mounted along these lines in the Indian state of Punjab. Labourers moved court on the grounds that making the BOCW workers pay for their vaccination when it is free for the rest of the population is a breach of Article 14 of the Constitution of India which guarantees equality for all – a principle central to citizenship within a nation-state. This intervention led to the state government of Punjab being asked to refund the money taken from the BOCW board. Through interviews with registered workers and activists, bureaucrats and administrators working with the BOCW boards in India, this paper examines the working of the BOCW boards in select Indian states. I argue that the specific vulnerabilities of unorganised sector workers, specifically the migrant building and construction workers relegate them to second-class citizenship. This is as much a legacy of the postcolonial fiscal architecture that makes funds for the welfare of these populations available for misappropriation as of the lack of robust accountability mechanisms. Such misappropriation of funds compromises the integrity of both the welfare boards and fiscal state and arguably, has long-term impact on restructuring the state-society relationship in ways that erode the citizenship rights of the vulnerable.