Himachal Pradesh -- home to popular mountain getaways such as the former British summer capital Shimla and the one-time hippy haven Manali -- has only six million official residents and the dirty work is generally reserved for migrants from poorer areas of India or Nepal.

About 200 migrant workers were sleeping in shanty homes in the state's Kulu valley Wednesday when the skies opened up and poured down on the Parvati hydropower project where many of them were employed, according to witnesses.

Twenty-one bodies have been recovered, while police say 35 died. Rescuers put the death toll at 100.

The exact death toll may never be known as little documentation is kept on migrant labourers. And the lack of paperwork also means compensation for the victims will be slow in coming if it arrives at all.

The tragedy has prompted the labourers to reflect on whether their precarious existence here is much better than jobless lives where they came from.

Noor Mohammad worked at the hydroelectric plant as a way to escape the bloodshed in his home province of Indian Kashmir, where tens of thousands have died in a 14-year separatist uprising that has devastated the economy.

He fled the Parvati plant just as the rains submerged both his source of employment and his friends.

"I chose a shovel instead of a gun and look what I got," said Mohammad, clad in an undershirt.

"More than 20 people in my group are still missing and I've lost all of my belongings."

Himachal Pradesh's leader, Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh, has visited victims in the hospital and released five million rupees (106,400 dollars) for relief and rescue operations.

But labour activists were sceptical about whether the flood victims or their families would see any of the cash.

Sanjay Chauhan, a Himachal Pradesh leader of the Centre of Indian Trade Unions, said workers were intentionally kept off the books for the sake of the bottom line.

"These poor and illiterate folk do the toughest work but remain entirely in the unorganised sector," he said.

"The state's largest employer is the Public Works Department, which has a large number of Nepalis on its rolls but they're mostly employed as daily wage earners without security and benefits," he said.

"The problem arises when construction companies sublet to subcontractors and the exploitation of the labour force becomes rampant."

He said that under Indian law, dead workers' families should be entitled to between 350,000 and 400,000 rupees (7,600 and 8,700 dollars) in compensation.

But the provincial legislator representing the area of the disaster admitted there were few records of the victims.

"The problem is that contractors are not revealing the details of the people employed by them to avoid paying compensation," said Khemi Ram.

And activists expected few changes to make work safer for migrants. In August 1997, 223 people, most of them from Nepal, were killed in a similar flash-flood in the Himachal Pradesh village of Chiragaon.

"Often the workers' shanties are put right next to the river banks," Chauhan said. "This makes them vulnerable to being washed away by sudden floods."

TERRA.WIRE