What if the migrant labour really want "ghar wapasi"?
By Vijaya Pushkarna
Five hours after Prime
Minister Narendra Modi announced the extension of the 21-day nationwide lockout, police manning
the Mehrauli -Badarpur Road near Saket in south Delhi, caught 55 migrant
labourers trying to leave the city.
The police however had
learned from what happened on March 27 and 28 , at East Delhi’s Anand Vihar integrated transport depot.
Thousands of migrants had converged following rumours that buses and trains
would take them back to Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, eventually forcing the
government to do that – in total violation of the lockdown.
So on April 14, the police
summoned a couple of buses and dropped the migrants trying to escape out of the
sealed borders, at their homes in Saidulajab. These were not without a roof over
their head or cash or food. In fact they were trying to take back bags of rice
and atta!
Atul Kumar Thakur,
theDCP(South) revealed that as the police were talking them into staying put
and abide by the lockdown, many said they wanted to go back to their villages,
their families, and most notably, find a job there!
The Delhi location where they lived was not home.
As MSMEs express their
inability to pay migrant labour their wages
for the lockdown period , farmers and procurement agencies wonder how they will
manage without the migrant labour who
rushed back to their villages soon after the lockdown was clamped.
Finally the value of the uncounted and unaccounted migrant labour has become
boldly visible to everyone – from families whose dependable domestic helps have
gone, to industry bodies and government.
About four decades ago,
frustrated members with small and shared land holdings in Bihar and Eastern
Uttar Pradesh went to the prosperous state of Punjab and Haryana, offered to
work for a fraction of the going rate. Soon they became indispensable, and for
some operations-- like paddy transplantation—they remain so in spite of
mechanization.
The two years before the
Common Wealth Games 2010, in Delhi, huge machinery and very few men marked the
construction sites as sports and other infrastructure came up in preparation
for the event. There was a design behind it. Experience of the Asiad 1982
projects showed that the labour that had been brought in –construction was not
so mechanized then – to the capital stayed put, to earn a living wherever
possible, however possible! They were seen as scum in the capital. When they went back to the villages – to cast their
vote or for harvesting or a wedding – they generally brought back more
villagers to work in the city. They
found jobs , primarily in the
construction sector. Big projects like the expanding Delhi
Metro, the Expressways and National Highways that have made Delhi a world-class
city are however largely the work of powerful, monstrous looking machines.
In difficult times as now, the call of the village is all that these migrants can hear.And contrary to the way they were viewed post the Asiad
1982, now their urge to go back home has rattled urban India.
If the migrant labour manage to
go back in large numbers will they be
missed? Will they return? Should they return?What will be the impact of their
decision on the Indian economy, on development?
These and many other tough
and yet relevant questions are what policy makers
have to ask and answer as they work
to make India’s migrant labour count, for their contribution to the economy.
The time for doing that has come, and it is now.
Policy analyst Devinder
Sharma believes that agriculture was
“deliberately killed” and farmers were by design “moved out of agriculture to
participate in the building of the economy” by making farm incomes non remunerative
. The NITI Aayog, he says, points
to real income growth in agriculture
being less than half a per cent annually between 2011-12 and 2015-16, and in
the next two years, it was near zero. Citing reports of the OECD (Organisation
for Economic Co-operation and Development) Sharma says that between 2000 and
2016, farmers suffered losses of Rs 45 lakh crores. “If that had gone to them, why would they have
run to the cities to work as migrant labour?” he asks.
The OECD’s
July 2018 “Review of Agriculture in India” looks, among other things, at
what role will the small land holder have in agriculture.
And in this context, the
report calls for structural adjustments involving the transition of significant
amounts of labour to other activities. It also
points out that with many of the current generation of agricultural workers
having relatively low levels of education ,they will only be able to transition
out of agriculture if low skilled manufacturing, construction or services jobs
become available.
But even ahead of this report, the
migrant labour have done that—left villages, agriculture and families to work
in construction and other small areas in
urban India.
But as a new truth of life dawns on them in the cities with
sealed borders and factories locked down, that is exactly the kind of jobs the migrants around the national capital
are trying to run away from.
The impact of the lockdown on account of the
novel corona virus seems to suggest that farmers-turned-migrant labour, also
want to work from home ---where they
will breathe fresh air instead of a dozen of them being cooped in tiny urban
jhuggis. And feel the warmth and assurance that comes from the family.Even
if Prime Minister Modi’s promise of
doubling farm incomes by 2022 does not come true.
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