Mumbai: On December 27, 2019, Raman Garase, along with Dadarao Ingale and Tanaji Lad, was served with a “retirement letter” by the administration at IIT Bombay. As contractual workers, they knew retirement meant both loss of pay and post-retirement benefits available only to permanent employees. Despite being 60 years old, they were fit and had hoped, like most other contractual workers in the past, they too would get to continue working for a few more years.
Upon retirement, the IIT administration denied them the gratuity amount accumulated over three decades of work. The trio decided to fight for their rights. They moved the labour commission and twice managed favourable orders, directing the IIT Bombay administration to pay up. However, as the administration prepared to once again appeal in the higher court, Garase finally lost hope. On May 2, Garase died by suicide at his residence, very close to the IIT campus, where he had worked for 39 years. Garase died waiting to receive Rs 4,28,805, the gratuity amount he had hoped to use for multiple health complications, including paralysis, that he had developed in the four years since his retirement.
The IIT Bombay spokesperson claimed that the institute pays gratuity to eligible employees strictly as per the provisions of the prevailing Acts. The police too were quick to conclude that the institute had no role to play in Garase’s death.
Though he did not leave a suicide note, Ingale and Lad, who had worked with him for decades and fought the case, had seen him lose hope each day. “This gratuity amount is all he had. It was his life’s savings,” said Ingale, standing outside the IIT campus, where empathetic students and teaching staff had organised a memorial meeting on May 3. However, the administration has maintained a complete silence on Garase’s death by suicide.
Like Garase, there are 1,800 more working as contractual workers, who will soon be forced to “retire”. These contractual workers, employed to do a range of work from cleaning to gardening to carrying out construction work on the campus, earn nothing beyond the monthly pay, regardless of how long each of them has spent on the job. According to Ingale, Garase belonged to a Adivasi community from Gujarat.
Ingale recalls that they were among the first few batches of contractual workers who joined in the 1980s and early 1990s. “Throughout our service, we were told that we would soon become permanent employees and would retrospectively be given all benefits at par with those working as permanent employees.” However, Ingale says, these promises were made only to dissuade them from leaving their jobs. “And once you spend your 20s and 30s working as a manual labourer, finding another job is nearly impossible,” he adds.
It was only a decade ago that the contractual workers at IIT Bombay finally unionised themselves. This, like in any other big institution, was treated with a lot of contempt, and those joining the union became easy targets.
One member of the Ambedkar Periyar Phule Study Circle (APPSC), a student collective at IITB, recalls a recent instance. In 2018, the food in the institute’s mess got contaminated, causing food poisoning among students who consumed it. “The institute was quick to declare that the contractual workers working in the college canteen were responsible and sacked 58 of them,” one of the APPSC members says.
“It didn’t matter if those removed from the job were on duty that evening,” the member adds, “but they were all part of the union.” Eventually, a few of them were reinstated, but this arbitrary action by the administration acted as a deterrent for others joining the union.
Garase, Ingale and Lad were perhaps the only three who decided to fight for their rights legally. The student group and labour rights lawyer Sudha Bharadwaj have been handling their case since the very start.
Raman Garase, Dadarao Ingale and Tanaji Lad with their lawyer Sudha Bharadwaj and others. Photo: Special arrangement
When the trio moved a complaint before the labour commission, their courage was applauded. They were supported by other workers on contract too. But slowly, fearing that Garase’s case would act as a precedent for other workers, the administration began to allegedly spread rumours that they wanted to help the workers but these three were hell-bent on suing the institute in court. “Many workers who were on the verge of retiring began approaching us to withdraw and claimed that our case would make it impossible for them to get retirement benefits, if at all,” Ingale says. Garase, he says, would feel “very hurt” by such words coming from “our very own”.
Even though the case was filed in 2020, owing to the COVID-19 pandemic, the first order in the case came only in January 2022. The order passed by the Central Assistant Labour Commissioner, who is also the controlling authority under the Payment of Gratuity Act, stated that Garase was entitled to receive Rs 4.28 lakh from the institute. Similarly, Lad and Ingale, who had spent a few years less than Garase working at IIT Bombay, were entitled to a gratuity amount under Rs 3 lakh. Later, the Chief Deputy Labour Commissioner, who is the appellate authority in the matter, also issued a favourable order in April this year. “Garase was elated after the recent order and felt the institute would finally pay up. But then IIT decided to appeal this order too, and he was crestfallen after that,” Ingale says.
In the last few phone calls to Ingale and Lad, Garase kept talking about IIT’s cruelty against elderly people like him. “He kept saying that the IIT is waiting for him to die to pay his dues,” Ingale adds.
The amount that the three applicants have demanded might be all they have, but for the institute, it is barely anything. In fact, the legal cost to fight the workers in court would be many times higher than the claims made so far. “But the institute knows if they pay Garase, Ingale and Lad today, there would be thousands of others who would rise up for their rights. And IIT surely didn’t want the workers to claim their collective rights in the future,” an APPSC member summed up the reason for IIT’s adamant stand.
