Tales of woe from ground zero

India is a country of migrants. Many people refuse to acknowledge it and think of it as a part of life, but how many of us are living in the same place that we were born in? According to the Census 2011, released in 2016, 45.36 crore Indians in India are migrants. This means that every third Indian is a migrant. It is 2018 now and the number could have only grown with distressing news from hinterlands and farm hands.

As a part of an ethnographic research titled ‘Fragmented Transitions’ on migrant labourers, I documented stories, ordeals and lives of many labourers who had migrated from Sargana in north Bihar to mostly Amritsar, Ludhiana, Jalandhar and Patiala in Punjab in the hope of better lives.

Akash Mehta was one of the first persons to migrate from Sargana to Ludhiana.

Akash Mehta: In the 80s, there was no respect for workers from Bihar – they were often teased and abused. Sometimes, they were even paid lesser wages and even killed by employers. Once, an acquaintance was working with a zamindar Santji who had promised him ₹25 a month, instead of ₹15. The acquaintance worked for Santji for two months and yet he wasn’t paid. But after the third month, he needed to send money home. He requested Santji to clear his dues. Santji ignored his pleas for a few days and finally promised to pay him his salary. On the day when his salary was to be paid, Santji told the man that he would come to his house to pay the dues. When Santji went to the man’s house, he pointed a rifle at the man’s chest and demanded to know the due amount. All the man could do is beg for his life. Santji asked him to leave the town before dawn and warned him against speaking about it. As soon as Santji left his house, he came running to me requesting for help. I was much healthier and muscular during my younger days and was known as Lambudar Fauji. He pleaded, “fauji ji, mujhe bacha lijiye”. I had to help him; there was nothing else I could have done. Santji came to my house looking for him and when he came, we beat Santji up. Later, we reported it to the police, who helped us in getting the money from Santji and the policeman demanded ₹75,000 from Santji to refrain from filing the case.

It was not unusual for the policeman to have demanded money from the zamindar because he had to risk his life to help us. This continues, but the way of operation has changed. Labourers are still assaulted and paid less.

The migrants come to bigger cities after leaving their families in the hope of earning some money. Instead of compassion, love and tolerance, they are robbed, beaten up and some even lose their lives. Instead of residents in a city learning to share space, the migrants have learnt how to deal with these difficult scenarios.

Satya Nath Rishi: We had decided to leave for Punjab as there was no work or less pay here. We went as a group of ten people, if I remember correctly. There were two people from another village and eight were from our village. Two of them were brothers and there were new to migrating. They hadn’t travelled elsewhere in search of jobs. We didn’t have any jobs in our village. After three days of travelling, we reached Haryana. It wasn’t so easy to travel in the 90s as it is now. When we reached Haryana, we sat down to relax. We were interrupted by a man, who informed us that a woman was looking for a labourer. On enquiring, we found out that she was looking for a person to look after the cattle on her farm. One of the two brothers volunteered. She had promised ₹7,000, food and modest accommodation. He went to their house to understand the work involved. He had left us around 8 am in the morning and hadn’t come back until 8 pm. We didn’t have that other person’s details or even the employers address. We went to the police station, but it was of no use as we had no details – neither the man’s photo or the employer’s contact. We grew worried for him, but there was nothing else we could do. We have never seen him since that day.

We were constantly enquiring about our mate’s brother, and soon we heard about the woman and her group. She was one of the members of a group who would lure migrant labourers in the name of work and then would take the person to a hospital to extract his kidney or any other organ. We saw her again on the platform, a month later, looking for suspects like us.

This is just one of the stories. We are so accustomed to such stories that they don’t even surprise or shock us anymore. In 2001, one of my roommates used to earn by ferrying people on his cycle rickshaw. He was someone who would keep all his hard-earned money in his wallet. One day a woman, who appeared stricken, got on his rickshaw with a heavy carton. While they were on their way to her destination, she narrated the tale of how ill her father was and that she needed to buy more medicines for him. She said she had bought medicines worth ₹3,000 for him and that was what was in the carton and needed at least ₹3,000 for more medicines. She asked him if he had some money and that she would return it to him tomorrow. She took down his address too. Moved by her pleas, my friend gave her ₹2,000. She left the carton on the cycle rickshaw and went to buy medicines. To his surprise, she didn’t return for more than an hour. He went to all the shops nearby, but still couldn’t find her. He went back to his rickshaw and waited for some more time.

He then thought that he could sell the medicines and make some money. But, when he opened the box, it was full of paper and small boxes. It drove him to tears. Not only was he robbed of his hard-earned money, but he could not lodge any complaint, because he did not posses any identity card. And yet, migrant labourers are seen with a suspicious eye.

There are about 100 million circular migrants in India. Some travel between 1,000 to 2,500 kilometres to earn money or to clear debts accrued after their daughter’s wedding or their father’s funeral. They sometimes don’t even have a bed to sleep on or clothes to wear. Such incidents erode their lives and tear them apart. These 100 million people contribute up to 10 per cent of the national GDP. This number far exceeds the official numbers given by NSSO (2007-08), who limit the figures at 15 million. The government needs to safeguard them and provide them basic necessities. If not, it will give rise to more incidents such as the one faced by Ravi Yadav.

Ravi Yadav: I was asked by one of our relatives to come to Sasaram, Bihar, from my village, as he said he had a job for my older son Suraj. I’m glad that I went with my son, otherwise I would have been fooled. I felt something suspicious as soon as I reached my brother-in-law’s house in Sasaram. He told us about a vacancy for a security guard for a construction company in Sasaram. We went over to meet his contact soon. The man told us that he was the manager for a company named Gladeur. He informed us that there would be an interview the next day, but that he didn’t know yet about the place or location of the venue. I found this rather strange.

The next morning, the man called us and informed us that the interview would happen in a few hours and that it would be at a location close to where we were staying. On reaching the location, we found it to be a decrepit two-storeyed building, but we went in nevertheless. Inside the room, there were about fifty young men and the person who had called himself a manager making a presentation. He was showing his audience a film about selling soaps, detergents and other cleaning materials. There was no interview! Suraj and I waited for a few minutes. The man had finished his presentation and others were talking. We began to walk away.

That was when things took a strange turn. The man came running after us and asked us why we were leaving. We told him that Suraj had come to interview for the position of a security guard, not to sell soaps and detergents. I said that I would not mind if he was willing to hire me, but Suraj flatly refused to become a salesman. The man told me that I could have the job if I wanted. I stood there perplexed. But it was what he said next that allowed me to understand what was going on.

The man said I would have to pay him ₹16,000, if I wanted the job. He said it was a security deposit for all the items that they would entrust me to sell. That was when I realised this was a huge scam. I told him I didn’t have the money. He had a solution for that too: he asked me to leave Suraj with him, return home and pay him the money through a bank transaction. Did he think we were fools? Suraj and I walked away. I know how these things work. I’ve been scammed once before, so I’m not stupid. I am just very angry with everyone. Most of all, my own relative. How could he have done this to us?

Migrant labourers are also preferred for a lot of jobs because they tend to absorb the most immediate shocks that industries create, without any protest. With their life constantly on the move, many internal migrants do not even have proper identity documents. Since they frequently cross over state boundaries, they lack the required proof to lodge complaints. Lack of any legislative protocol that governs their movement and acknowledges their contribution to generating urban revenues also add to their woes.

(The study on labour migration, economic growth and political democracy is funded by the Economic and Social Research Council of the UK. The research is hosted at the University of Oxford. Dr Indrajit Roy is Principal Investigator.)