ABSTRACT
This chapter is based on the findings from an empirical study conducted during 2014–2015 in the nearby districts of Kolkata, particularly South and North 24 Paraganas in West Bengal which are the hotspots for brick making and other materials needed for construction industries. The migrants from Chhattisgarh, Odisha, Bihar and Eastern Uttar Pradesh entered into brick kiln work primarily to escape from unemployment and agrarian distress. However, it is important to understand three interrelated factors here: one, how the entry of workers into urban informal sector was facilitated by the sardars or middlemen by providing cash advances who are in desperate need. Second, various layers of middlemen operate from the village level to the city work sites and that the recruitment of workers is done based on social networks and kin relations. Third, there is no written contract between migrants and the employers as middlemen persuade the workers through informal or oral promises, and therefore it becomes difficult for the migrants to wriggle out of the subordinate relations that they are forced to enter into. The study findings indicated that these three interrelated factors in fact lead the migrants to end up often in acute financial crisis and sometimes even become the victims of physical violence; either of the sardars or the brick kiln owners. In brief, the study attempts to explain how the agrarian distress induced migration, the conditions of vulnerability in the growing urban informal sector, how the role of sardars or middlemen result in new forms of bondage, exploitation and violence.
