Three months since journeying more than 700 miles (1,130km) from his village in central India to take a job in this bustling city near the capital, New Delhi, Charan is already looking forward to a 10 per cent pay rise. He isn't an engineer or programmer. He hauls bricks and sand at a local construction site for less than $100 a month.
India's biggest cities face a worsening shortage of migrant manual labourers like 26-year-old Charan, who goes by only one name. While India has long suffered from a dearth of workers with vocational skills like plumbers and electricians, efforts to alleviate poverty in poor, rural areas have helped stifle what was once a flood of cheap, unskilled labour from India's poorest states.
Struggling to cope with soaring food prices, this dwindling supply of migrant workers are demanding - and increasingly getting - rapid increases in pay and benefits.
"After paying for food we are left with almost nothing. We need a wage hike," said Charan, who sends a part of whatever he and his wife, who works at the same site, manage to save to their parents back home in Chhattisgarh state.
If their employer refuses to give them an adequate raise, they are confident they'll find better-paying jobs at one of the hundreds of other sites dotted around Gurgaon.
India's biggest cities face a worsening shortage of migrant manual labourers like 26-year-old Charan, who goes by only one name. While India has long suffered from a dearth of workers with vocational skills like plumbers and electricians, efforts to alleviate poverty in poor, rural areas have helped stifle what was once a flood of cheap, unskilled labour from India's poorest states.
Struggling to cope with soaring food prices, this dwindling supply of migrant workers are demanding - and increasingly getting - rapid increases in pay and benefits.
"After paying for food we are left with almost nothing. We need a wage hike," said Charan, who sends a part of whatever he and his wife, who works at the same site, manage to save to their parents back home in Chhattisgarh state.
If their employer refuses to give them an adequate raise, they are confident they'll find better-paying jobs at one of the hundreds of other sites dotted around Gurgaon.
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