By Matters India Reporter
Mumbai, Aug 10, 2020: India’s leading philanthropists have come together to introduce a collaborative to ensure safety, security, and mobility for vulnerable migrant families across the country.
The Migrants Resilience Collaborative (MRC) aims to reach out to more than 10 million migrant workers and their families in 100 districts in India over the next five years.
It was launched by Ashif Shaikh, cofounder of Jan Sahas (People’s Courage), a 20-year-old NGO that tries to ensure social protection and safe migration of migrant communities. It works in more than 14,000 villages and urban areas of 57 districts in nine states.
Shaikh says the collaborative has brought together the civil society, philanthropies, private and government sector to provide immediate relief to migrant community.
“There is a crying need to transition from relief to focusing on core needs of migrant workers to build medium to long-term resilience as the country prepares for the long road to economic recovery and the possibility of multiple waves of COVID,” he explained.
MRC is India’s largest grassroots-led multi-stakeholder collaborative of nonprofit, philanthropic, and private sector actors, says press release from the Jan Sahas.
It has pledged to deliver social security entitlement to the migrants, provide them access to recruitment and strengthening tracking, worker protections, welfare and redressal.
Besides Ashif Shaikh, the steering committee of the collaborative comprises philanthropists such Vidya Shah, CEO, EdelGive Foundation, Anu Aga, former chairperson, Thermax Limited, Rati Forbes, director, Forbes Marshall Group, Arun Maira, former member, Planning Commission of India, Kumar Gera, chairman, Gera Developments Pvt. Ltd, Lalita Vadia, a former migrant worker.
Jan Sahas, along with strategic partners Global Development Incubator and EdelGive Foundation, strives to strengthen MRC strategies. The strategic partners will provide support to the collaborative’s strategy, design and governance; program strategy and design; fundraising, external stakeholder engagement and partner management.
Shah of EdelGive Foundation says the ongoing pandemic has forced NGOs and others to address the long road of recovery and resilience, particularly for communities such as migrant workers who are the most vulnerable to such calamities.
She says through the new collaborative, they hope to enable migrant workers access entitlements and responsible recruitment. It will also strengthen initiatives towards their welfare and protection.
Maira, a former member of the federal Planning Commission, regretted that economists consider workers as commodities in ‘labor markets’—to be bought and sold for a price.
“And employers sadly treat them only as resources—to be used and discarded when not required. This must change because workers are human beings with citizens’ rights in society,” he asserted.
Meanwhile Jan Sahas has collaborated with others to reached out to more than 1 million families across 19 states with relief during the lockdown caused by the coronavirus pandemic.