Update from our Team out in India.

Back with the builders...

 

On my first SoapBox trip here in March 2012, we visited a group of migrant contruction workers living and working for around £1.20 a day in Mumbai. They've been on my heart since our first brief encounter with them. I wrote an account of their plight and our encounter in an earlier entry on the Life Association blog (www.lifeassociation.wordpress.com). When the planning for this trip was being discussed, I really wanted to come back and visit them again.

 

Unfortunately their plight has not improved in the intervening 12 months. They have moved from the high rise apartment block they were constructing 12 months ago into an area on the edge of Mumbai that is being developed into a new high class residential area. This is another development by the same Mr Hiranandani that they were under the employment of last year. The profits of his company, Hiranandani Construction, has made him the 10th richest man in India. In spite of his massive wealth, he still pays desperate migrant workers 100 rupees a day (about £1.20) to work from dusk til dawn in sweltering heat doing back breaking labour.

 

They are living in conditions probably not unlike the shanties that the navvies that built the Victorian railways lived in. We entered the building site through big steel gates and bounced across the terrain through tracks strewn with waste and filled with crater sized potholes. We entered an expansive village on corrugated tin huts with tarpaulin roofs. There are mosquitos and rats, no running water and no sanitation. These are the worst of the worst conditions, from which there is no respite.

 

After speaking with a group of the builders who are Christians, they tell us there is not even any time for meeting together in fellowship and worship because of the hours they must work to keep the project on track. We worshipped with them, tried to encourage them and prayed with them. At the end they all shook our hands. Men, women and children all with palms as course as sandpaper and as tough as leather. A very telling sign of what is going on here. This is exploitative harsh labour taking place in the worlds 10th richest country, it's fastest growing economy and its biggest democracy.

 

This is not an isoltated case. This is happening across this nation. In every corner some of the worlds poorest and most vulnerable people are being exploited because if they do not work they will die. This is the cold truth of life amidst the 'economic miracle' that is India. But it is not just India that is at fault. The whole society of the world is set up against these people. They are at the absolute bottom of the worldwide pecking order.

 

Thankfully we have been able to do at least something to help. Some of the SoapBox project money will be used to host a celebration feast for the Christian builders this easter weekend. The beautiful thing about this is that, in true Gospel nature, they did not want to keep this blessing to themselves. They will be inviting their Hindu colleagues to share the celebration of the resurrection.

 

 Please pray for the builders of Mumbai, they need our prayers. Please also consider joining a future SoapBox India trip to see for yourselves what is really going on here.