Editorial: A BLO to worker safety

It is deeply ironic that at least a score of booth-level officers (BLOs) carrying out the Election Commission’s Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of voter rolls have died of stress-related issues across 12 states and union territories, just at a time when the Union Government has brought the Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions Code into force. The code is intended to modernise workplace safety in India. It purports to shield workers from occupational risk and pins responsibility on employers.

In the context of the BLO fatalities, the government of India itself comes out as an appalling employer on all those counts. The fact that the OSHWC Code does not apply to its workers does not diminish the irony. It makes it sharper, in fact. How can the government hold private employers to a high standard if it is itself imposing a heinous burden on its own workers?

Given the political nature of the SIR exercise, the number of BLOs who have died during the SIR exercise is hotly debated. The Trinamool Congress government of West Bengal claims 40 have died in its state alone. The non-profit research organisation SPECT Foundation reckons at least 33 BLOs have committed suicide or died from stress-triggered medical issues in six SIR states. The distribution is nationwide — Madhya Pradesh (9), Uttar Pradesh (8), Gujarat (4), Rajasthan (3), West Bengal (3), Tamil Nadu (1), and Kerala (1) — and the attributed causes universal. BLOs are being made to shoulder a mountainous burden, work exceedingly long hours, cope with erratic data entry systems and meet impossible deadlines — all under coercive supervisory pressure — while continuing to do their regular work. Some of the BLOs who died by suicide made heartrending videos saying how they’ve been driven to it by SIR work. A few have spoken of political pressure to exclude a certain class of voter from the process.

Most of these workers belong to the bottom of the government employment pyramid — schoolteachers, anganwadi workers, auxiliary staff, temps — who just cannot afford to say no or question why they have to accomplish in one month a task that was last done in 2003 over six months. The Election Commission’s response to a nationwide outcry was initially to dismiss it as alarmist, then mock it on social media by posting a video of happy BLOs dancing in Kerala, and then, under duress, deign to extend the SIR schedule by a week to December 11. But such is the monumental task of scrutinising the claims of millions of voters, there is not even a remote possibility of hapless BLOs completing the task while keeping mind and body together. But such is the wicked nature of our polity today that in Uttar Pradesh, higher-ups filed cases against workers for SIR negligence and brandished threats of job loss.

So far, the Supreme Court’s response to BLOs’ desperate plaints has been to join the ECI’s chorus that SIR is the nation’s work, that it must be approached as a sacred duty. The judges have said in obiter dicta that if one BLO was not equal to the task, then surely it is the respective state government’s responsibility to replace him or her with another more able. This is tone-deafness of Marie Antoinette proportions.

If state-employed BLOs cannot get their plight heard, what chance do private workers stand against their employers?