Migrant construction workers make almost 10% of India’s population and workforce.The migrant construction workers suffer from poor quality of life due to systemic exclusion from government welfare schemes, hence, social security policies never reach the migrant workers when they need it.
This is a system design problem.
Reconstruction, the product, brings the construction labourer ID card registration system within a kilometer of every construction labourer in India. The registration product can be accessed at any vendor point such as grocery shops, mobile phone shops similar to the Paytm POS (Point of Sale) registration business model.
Extensive primary and secondary research was conducted in close contact with migrant labourers in Bangalore, India for over three months.
System mapping as a method of research was explored to identify systemic loopholes and entry points.
Research took place across 15 construction sites with over 25 in-depth interviews conducted.
Every day, many of us walk past construction sites where construction workers hang by a thread on the edge of a building. Operation of the construction labour industry in the informal sector poses complex socio-economic challenges in various domains of the labourers’ life.
The Ministry of Labour and Employment has 29 labour laws and 4 labour codes, considering the Construction Workers Act(BOCWA) enacted in 1996.
Labour Boards in every state provide labour ID cards to labourers which help them avail the benefits of social welfare schemes and aid from the government.
According to the study done by HID in Bangalore 98% of workers were not registered under the BoCW board in Bangalore (ISEC,
2016), without which labourers cannot avail various monetary benefits such as money for skill development, pregnancy, education etc.
Although the laws and welfare schemes are all mandated and exist on paper and in office, the true implementation is still unobservable.
Introducing a new touchpoint to the existing system.
"सरकार हमें कुछ नहीं देती, वे केवल कानून बनाती है लेकिन ये चीजें पहुंच से बहुत दूर हैं और कभी पहुंच में नहीं आतीं।"
"the government does not give us anything, they only create laws but these laws are far to reach and never accessible."
User Testing
6 - 8 users
Guerrilla testing
5 - 8 general public users
Session Recording
The device is a portable and modular data collection and registration product. It allows photography, fingerprint scanning, text and numeric based input, navigational buttons.
The pre-requisite for the success of this product is the presence of another person to register and collect data of the labourer. Hence, this is where the systemic POS business model inspired by Paytm comes to play.
Exhibited in Dutch Design Week 2022 - 12 weeks- 2022