R Kaleemullah’s recent Lifetime Achievement Award recognises more than three decades of work with migrant workers, women, Dalits, Adivasis and families affected by demolitions in Bengaluru. His story also reveals a persistent feature of the city’s labour economy: when workers face unpaid wages, eviction, police complaints, hospital emergencies or workplace violence, access to formal institutions can be as difficult as the original crisis.
For many migrant workers, the first response to a problem is not necessarily a labour office, police station or legal services authority. It may be a call to a trusted intermediary who knows how to navigate those institutions. At 51, Kaleemullah, the national vice-president of the All India Shramik Swaraj Kendra, has built a network of lawyers, trade unionists, social workers and grassroots volunteers that connects vulnerable families to assistance.
His work takes place across the points where urban vulnerability becomes visible: police stations, hospital corridors, government offices, labour commission hearings and informal settlements. The cases described in the profile include employers refusing to pay wages for months, eviction notices issued without warning, unaffordable medical emergencies and complaints that workers feel are not taken seriously. These are not separate problems. Together, they show how employment, housing, health, policing and documentation can overlap in the everyday life of a migrant household.
Kaleemullah’s own experience helps explain why workers approach him. He arrived in Bengaluru in 1991 after leaving his village in Andhra Pradesh and working in Hyderabad and Mumbai. He had hoped to pursue a technical diploma, but survival took priority. He cleaned domestic refrigerators for Rs 5 a day, struggled to afford food and sometimes walked to work after buying a bus ticket only once to learn the route.
He later found work at a garment shop in Shivajinagar, beginning at Rs 60 a day and eventually earning Rs 100. There, he says, he saw workers from outside Karnataka face extortion, unexplained detention by beat constables and the loss of wages without effective recourse. Dalit and minority workers were often less able to speak up because they did not know the local language or how to navigate government procedures.
His involvement began by accompanying workers who needed help. Over time, he sat in on legal consultations and learnt how complaints and documents moved through government offices. That experience became an informal form of institutional knowledge. For workers unfamiliar with the city, the problem is often not only that a right has been violated, but also that they do not know which office has authority, what document is required or how to follow up after a complaint.
The profile places this work within a wider network of social and rights-based activity. After the 2002 Gujarat violence, Kaleemullah volunteered at relief camps. He later joined Dalit rights campaigns across Karnataka and efforts opposing the demolition of slum settlements. Through Vimochana, a Bengaluru-based women’s rights organisation, he assisted women in cases involving domestic violence, sexual assault and offences under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act.
The range of cases matters because migrant workers are not defined only by their employment. A family living in an informal settlement may simultaneously face insecure tenure, wage dependence, limited access to healthcare, language barriers and exposure to policing or eviction. When a worker’s income stops, the consequences can extend immediately to rent, food, school attendance and medical treatment.
The Covid-19 pandemic expanded Kaleemullah’s network as volunteers and helpers responded to people seeking assistance across Karnataka. Many callers were migrant workers from Assam, Manipur, West Bengal, Mumbai, Tamil Nadu and other parts of the country. The profile does not provide a numerical estimate of the people assisted, but the geography of those calls reflects Bengaluru’s dependence on labour drawn from across India.
The city’s migrant workforce is visible in several essential but insecure occupations. Kaleemullah specifically refers to sanitation workers, ragpickers and construction workers, including Bengali Muslims among these groups. His account also shows how questions of labour rights can become entangled with religious identity. He says that when he challenges arbitrary detention or advocates for Muslim migrant workers, his interventions are sometimes given a communal colour, even though he treats the underlying issue as the same regardless of whether the person seeking help is Muslim, Hindu or from another community.
This tension is particularly important in urban governance because access to services and protection is often mediated by identity, residence and documentation. The source material does not establish how frequently such discrimination occurs across Bengaluru, nor does it provide official data on complaints, evictions or wage disputes. It does, however, document the practical consequence described by workers and their advocates: people who are economically and socially vulnerable may require personal networks before they can reach formal systems.
Kaleemullah’s work with women has also exposed the risks of intervening in disputes inside communities. He says men have threatened him for helping women find jobs, pursue education or open bank accounts. In one case involving a young woman from Hubballi who alleged prolonged sexual abuse by an Islamic scholar, he says his team worked with the police and the scholar was arrested. In another case, involving the alleged sexual assault of a 10-year-old girl by a temple priest in Devanahalli in 2020, the priest was arrested under the POCSO Act and has since been convicted, according to the profile.
These cases show the difference between formal legal protection and practical access to it. The existence of a law does not by itself ensure that a survivor can file a complaint, reach a police station, obtain medical assistance, find legal representation or withstand community pressure. Kaleemullah’s role, as described, is to help bridge those steps. His account should not be treated as a substitute for official records, but it provides a ground-level view of how the system is experienced by people with limited money, mobility or institutional familiarity.
The same pattern is visible in his work with children of migrant waste-pickers and construction workers. Volunteers identify children who have dropped out of school in informal settlements and help them learn so they can enrol in government schools. Kaleemullah describes school access as a way to prevent children from repeating the struggles faced by their parents. The profile does not establish how many children have been enrolled, but it identifies education as another point at which labour insecurity can reproduce itself across generations.
His approach also depends on training people to understand administrative processes. Over the past decade, students of social work, sociology and journalism have interned with him, accompanying him to settlements, police stations and labour commission hearings. He teaches them how to follow up on complaints and understand the difficulties faced by workers and victims. This is a form of civic capacity built outside the formal state, but directed towards making state institutions more accessible.
The institutional question raised by the profile is not whether individual activists can replace government departments. They cannot. Rather, it is why workers facing routine urban risks need intermediaries to make basic protections usable. Labour enforcement, housing security, police accountability, public healthcare and school access sit with different institutions. A worker facing unpaid wages and eviction may have to deal with several of them at once, while lacking the time and resources to pursue each case.
Kaleemullah’s own history also illustrates the cumulative effect of administrative decisions on vulnerable households. He recalls that his family’s dispute over a Rs 700 municipal tax on a computer continued for nearly 12 years. During that period, he says, municipal authorities repeatedly cut the family’s water and power connections, affecting their small poultry business. He also left formal education after an illness and a dispute over an unauthorised Rs 500 re-admission fee demanded by a school headmaster.
These experiences are personal accounts, not a citywide statistical assessment. Their significance lies in showing how small charges, interrupted utilities, unclear procedures and administrative power can shape a person’s life over many years. For a low-income household, a modest payment or a disconnected service can have consequences far beyond the immediate amount involved.
Kaleemullah says his work has brought death threats, family pressure and personal health risks, including after major cardiac surgery. He continues to take calls from workers who seek assistance. His recently announced Lifetime Achievement Award from The Khazi India Foundation recognises work with migrant labourers, Adivasis and Dalits, victims of injustice and families affected by demolitions, as well as pandemic relief, legal aid, peace-building and youth education.
The award therefore marks an individual achievement, but the evidence in the profile points to a larger urban reality. Bengaluru’s migrant workers contribute to construction, sanitation, waste collection, domestic services and other parts of the city’s economy while often navigating fragmented systems without stable support. Where formal access is difficult, trusted intermediaries become essential. The unresolved question is whether institutions can become sufficiently accessible that workers do not need personal connections to secure wages, safety, housing, healthcare, education and legal protection.
