Copyright © 2026 Authors retain the copyright of this article. This article is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

@article{199812,
        author = {RINA.S.KUMAR and Deborshi Biswas},
        title = {INVISIBLE BUILDERS OF DEVELOPMENT: MEDIA, STATE AND THE MARGINALISATION OF CONSTRUCTION WORKERS IN THE UNORGANISED SECTOR},
        journal = {International Journal of Innovative Research in Technology},
        year = {2026},
        volume = {12},
        number = {11},
        pages = {16065-16073},
        issn = {2349-6002},
        url = {https://ijirt.org/article?manuscript=199812},
        abstract = {Employing the second largest workforce after agriculture, the construction industry in India perpetuates its workforce in a condition of precarity. The roughly fifty million construction workers who are completing our nation's construction acutely, and concurrently, become its invisible constituency in both the legislative and media landscapes. This paper addresses the structural exclusion of unorganised sector construction workers in India from a doctrinal standpoint, considering the intersection of law, jurisprudence, state institutional mechanisms and media representation. Citing the Building and Other Construction Workers (Regulation of Employment and Conditions of Service) Act, 1996, and other welfare legislations, along with landmark judgements of the Supreme Court of India, the paper argues that the simultaneous failure of media and state creates a permanent state of exclusion. It also suggests that to reframe construction workers as citizens, rather than a stand-in labour force, requires not only institutional reform but also a moral reform in the representation of workers through the media. An eclectic doctrinal and qualitative approach has been adopted.},
        keywords = {Journalism, Construction, Informal sector, BOCW Act, Labour rights, Supreme Court of India, Social security.},
        month = {April},
        }