On Sundays, Gandhi Bazaar in Perumbavoor, a small
town in Kerala, is thick with crowd upon crowd of migrant workers from India's east. It’s a kind of meeting place for migrants employed in different parts
of Kerala and they congregate here with a week’s wages bulging in their
pockets. The small make-shift stalls of the bazaar spill out on to the road as
the people throng to buy clothes, Bengali beedis and other stuff from way back
home or simply hang out. An Oriyan bhajan in a CD shop competes with Assamese
singer Akashdeep in another store, creating the exciting cacophony of a fair. Tucked
away in a corner, Rihaj from Orissa runs a tailoring shop offering special
designs while City Hotel serves hot bhai biriyani, samosas and Bengali sweets. As
for the postal name Gandhi Bazaar–it has slowly withered away in references and
has been replaced by Bhai bazaar or Bengali bazaar.
22-year-old Ajis Khan, a mechanic from Assam turns
entrepreneur on Sundays. He does a brisk business by selling watermelon juice
and makes around Rs 1000 just on this day. Ajis, who stays in a single room,
sends home Rs 8000 to 10,000 every month. Not everyone is as lucky as Ajis,
many share a room with six or seven others and use the community toilet. We
meet Noor, a school dropout, who tells a sordid tale. In 2004, when Noor was
hardly 14, he decided to abruptly terminate his hungry childhood and go in
search of a dream. He and four other friends boarded a train to Kerala-the
veritable worker’s paradise- from the remote village in West Bengal, Jalangi,
bordering Bangladesh. Noor roamed around till he found a job in a paper mill. Today,
Noor sends at least Rs 5000 home to his parents and his two siblings. “I love
it here. Everyone in my village says Kerala is the best place in India,” says
Noor in faultless Malayalam.
It seems like the entire youth in the district of
Murshidabad, West Bengal, the villages of Orissa, Assam, Jharkhand had the same
dream as Noor and decided to collectively move down to Kerala. They work in the
plywood industry in Perumbavoor, construction industry, hotels, brick kilns in
Trissur, plastic companies in Palakkad, road construction-the bhai is in every
nook and corner of both urban and rural Kerala.
Kerala has become the Gulf to
these poor workers from the north east. Says N. Ajith Kumar, director of Centre
for Socio-economic & Environmental Studies, who did a study on them in
November 2011, “Traditionally we have had large number of Tamil labour but they
have declined because of jobs and better wages back home. The migration from
these areas are akin to international migration because they travel more than
2000 kilometers to come here. Another interesting feature you see is rural to
rural migration. They are not going to the big cities.” In the last few years there
has seen a massive explosion in their numbers- researchers like Ajith Kumar say
10 lakh or more migrants are working in Kerala but there are no official
statistics to prove this.
Kerala has been an exporter of man power for many
years-20 lakh Malayalees work in the Gulf and other foreign countries and 10
lakh in other parts of India. In an ironical reversal of roles, today, the
state is desperately seeking people in every industry. The shortage of manpower
is so acute that a small industrial town like Perumbavoor is totally dependent
on migrant workers. State Bank of India has a single branch in Perumbavoor and
on Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays there is a heavy rush to send money home. Says
C.M.Vijayan, bank manager, “On these three days alone migrant workers deposit 50
lakhs.” Banking service is only one way they send money home, these workers also
use postal services and the hawala route.
Sister Merin, co-ordinator of the Migrant Worker’s
Movement, says that there are at least 2 lakh migrants in Perumbavoor. “It is
hard to give an accurate figure. We call them the floating community. Today
they work here but tomorrow they will be in Wayanad - wherever they are offered
higher wages. There is no permanency in their nature. Initially they were
brought down by contractors but now people just come on their own.”
The migrants are usually male and in the age group
of 18 to 24 and though they are often paid less than the locals they earn
double or triple of what they would earn back home. The older skilled worker
like a mason or carpenter can command nearly the same wages as the locals who
is paid anywhere between Rs 500 to 700 per day (much higher than the minimum
wages). The construction industry is perhaps the largest employer of the
migrant labour. There are approximately 350 builders in the state of which 120
are part of the Kerala Builders association. T. Padmajan, president of the
Kerala Builders Association, says that at least 4 lakh migrant workers are
employed in this sector. “99 per cent of the workers are from outside the
state. There is a shortage of masons, carpenters, electricians, painters. Our
people are either employed in the Gulf or educated and are not interested in
these jobs.”
Though the migrants are found in every sector the trade unions are
not resisting their entry. Says P.S. Mohanan, CITU Ernakulam district committee
secretary, “It is extremely difficult to get workers here that is why the
migrants have come in.”The hotel industry is facing the same crisis. Says
general manager of Casino Hotel, CGH Earth, “In the last decade 10 to 12 five-star
hotels have sprung up in Kochi alone. We are not getting quality man power for front
office, waiters and back area service. The Malayalee looks at local employment
only as training period before he sets off abroad.” Says G. Gopinath, president
of AACHK, “People from Manipur and Assam seek work in hotels on their own but
we insist our members only employ workers with identity cards.”
Under the Inter-state Migrant Workmen Act 1979,
accommodation and medical facilities have to be provided to workers if they
have been brought by a contractor. Though sometimes accommodation is provided
the conditions are extremely squalid and unhygienic. Says Sister Merin, “In
Kakkanad, Ernakulam we found 500 people were sharing one toilet. The workers
are also often denied any medical benefits if there is an accident. Since most
don’t have identity cards they avoid going to the police and cannot claim compensation.
Here we step in and negotiate with the employers so they get fair
compensation.” Mohanan agrees, “These workers are being paid much less and they
are not getting medical benefits or accommodation. We tried to form an
organization but the contractors who supply the labour removed them from the
scene immediately.”
The state initiated the Kerala Migrant Workers’
Welfare Fund under which the worker can claim medical benefits if he/she is
registered. Says additional Labour Commissioner V L Anil Kumar, “23,500 workers
have registered so far. They need to have some sort of identity card to
register. The government is also planning a common shelter for these workers to
better their living conditions.”
Economist Dr Martin Patrick says, “In spite of all this exploitation,
Kerala’s working environment is far better than other states. While studying
this group we found many migrants are from Bangladesh with a criminal
background posing as Bengalis.” Police sources too agree that theft and crime
have been on the rise because there is no check on the numbers coming into the
state. “We now send back people who do not have identity cards.”
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