Campaign at Malanpur

Malanpur is an industrial town in Madhya Pradesh with a population of over thirty thousand. It reels with community leaders and a population adamant to fight for its rights.

With a promise of better jobs and public infrastructure, thousands of migrant workers moved to the town. While factories and companies provide jobs and daily-wage work to these workers, a lack of government-assured social security places them in a vulnerable position. The surplus of workers in Malanpur also means many of them don’t have the luxury of demanding better working conditions; they become easily replaceable if they do so.

A lack of identity documents creates barriers to accessing social security. For over a year, Zenith has been supporting these workers to access government entitlements such as Aadhaar, e-Shram and Ayushman cards through our Samudayik Adhikar Kendra (community centre).

We are thrilled to report our findings from our most recent campaign from 25–27 November:

• We saw an overwhelming number of over 600 people wishing to get their claims done.

• Many of them are women who make an active effort to shelter their family with social security schemes.

• These numbers have been mobilised by community leaders who work tirelessly for the town’s development. Our community leaders reach out to government authorities, write applications and follow up on various government schemes.

• They’re supported by sub-centres run by young volunteers, who are trained by the leaders themselves.

• What’s more is that for these leaders the personal is political 💪: they are passionate about social justice and actively participate in government affairs.

• More importantly, it tells us that social justice isn’t always about big nationwide movements, but about “little places” and not-so-little things.

The subaltern can speak, it’s time we listen to them.