Gujarat migrant exodus: Industries press panic button

The Gujarat Chamber of Commerce and Industries has expressed grave concern at the mass exodus of migrant workers following violent attacks and threats from the locals on Hindi-speaking people.

The fleeing of over 50,000 people under panic has severely affected production of small and medium scale industries just when they were all set to meet the deadline for Dussehra and Diwali festivities.

Industries in Gujarat, especially small and medium scale enterprises, are heavily dependent on contract migrant labourers from the Hindi-speaking states of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan. There are an estimated 700,000 migrant workers from Hindi-speaking states in Gujarat besides over 200,000 each from Odisha and Andhra Pradesh.

According to industry sources, the owners of small and medium scale enterprises prefer to employ contract workers from the Hindi heartland over the local Gujaratis because the former are available at lower wages and put in extra hours of work as against the latter who insist on higher wages and fixed working hours.

The rape of a toddler by a migrant worker from Bihar employed by a ceramic tiles unit in Sabarkantha district provided the spark that triggered off the recent spate of attacks on the Hindi-speaking migrant workers. The attacks, mostly in the form of causing damage to the property, were ostensibly to take revenge on the rape accused.

Notably, the attacks on Hindi-speaking migrant workers began three days after the arrest of the rape accused and not as an immediate reaction. These, as a matter of fact, coincided with the announcement of dates by the election commission for the state assemblies of Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh.

The first to organize a protest demonstration, however, was local Congress MLA Alpesh Thakor, who heads the Thakor Sena, a youth body of the Thakor community which has over 100,000 members. The demonstration was completely peaceful and had no violent fallout.

But, Alpesh Thakor’s protest against rape of the 14-month-old girl came in handy for the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party to blame him for orchestrating violence against the migrant workers. Two state ministers Pradipsinh Jadeja and I K Jadeja accused Alpesh of master-minding the violence. Bihar deputy chief minister Sushil Modi and UP chief minister Yogi Adityanath joined the charade by accusing the Congress of organizing attacks on the migrant workers from UP and Bihar.

Stung by such wild accusation, Alpesh Thakor held a press conference in which he said his Thakor Sena was not involved in these attacks saying, “We believe in peace and non-violence.” Nevertheless, he pointed out that there prevailed a widespread discontent among the unemployed youth of Gujarat because the industries had denied them employment despite the assurance by the BJP government of recruiting 80 per cent of the manpower from amongst the locals.

Meanwhile sporadic incidents of attacks on Hindi-speaking migrants in scattered pockets around industrial estates in North and Central Gujarat continued despite deployment of armed police around industrial units and its nearby villages.

In an obvious attempt to play down the general feeling of insecurity among the migrant workers from UP and Bihar, state’s Director General of Police Shivanand Jha said they were leaving for their home states to be with their families during the coming Dussehra and Diwali festivals.

That this was clearly a hogwash is evident from the fact that the migrant workers visit their families in UP and Bihar only during and after Diwali every year. This year, Diwali is on November 7 followed by Chhath on November 13.

The exodus of migrant workers a month in advance has severely affected the manufacturing schedule of industries as more than 60 per cent of their work force comprises of contract labourers.