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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Bengal’s migrant underbelly: Delhi tragedy rips a veil by Devadeep Purohit, Imran Ahmed Siddiqui amd Rith Basu

Bengal’s migrant underbelly: Delhi tragedy rips a veil by Devadeep Purohit, Imran Ahmed Siddiqui amd Rith Basu

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published Published on Nov 16, 2010   modified Modified on Nov 16, 2010

At least 29 of the 66 migrants crushed to death in east Delhi when a building collapsed on Monday night hailed from Bengal. The figure signposts the exodus of an abandoned generation and the inability of a state to retain its young or equip them for a better life elsewhere.

The death of so many Bengalis has brought out in the open troubling issues that policymakers — both in the state and at the Centre —politicians and civil society choose to sweep under the carpet but are certain to become talking points in the Assembly elections round the corner.

It also brings into sharp focus the wrenching, weekly sight of wagons chugging out of a ghostly station — not in some remote village but on the doorstep of Calcutta — carrying men and women to labour camps in Kerala, many of whose people are, ironically, sweating it out in the Gulf.

Many of those who died near the banks of the Yamuna on Monday chose to live in that hellhole because life was still better than what their home —Bengal — had to offer.

Bhim Halder, employed as a driver in Delhi, lost his cousin Swapan, 15, who used to live in a pigeonhole along with his five siblings and parents Jiten Halder and Deepali.

The family left their Murshidabad village as the income from farming was not enough to sustain his family.

“Most of us live in such inhuman conditions, but we cannot go back to our villages as we will starve to death,” said Bhim, who earns around Rs 10,000 a month in Delhi.

His earnings from cultivating the three-cottah plot in Nimtita in Murshidabad was never more than Rs 2,000 a month. “I came to Delhi because of the difference in income,” said the school dropout, confirming what textbooks on economic development have to say on rural-urban migration.

Among the several factors that determine migration in an economy, wage differential is one of the main reasons why people leave their roots in villages and land up in urban slums across the country, from Delhi to Kerala.

According to economist Abhirup Sarkar, Bengal has had a long history of “in-migration” and “out-migration”, but there used to be a difference between the quality of people coming to the state and those leaving Bengal.

“The in-migrants were primarily semi-skilled or low-skilled people from neighbouring states while bright people from Bengal used to go to other places in search of better academic and professional opportunities…. Now, it seems, people are leaving Bengal even in search of blue-collar jobs,” said Sarkar, ruing the inability of the state’s informal sector in employing these people.

The state government does not maintain any migration data but a National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO) report — published in June 2010 — on the basis of a study done between July 2007 and June 2008 puts the number of out-migrants from Bengal at 13,12,300.

Although the number does not reflect the nature of work the migrant workforce is engaged in, the average remittance figure in rural areas suggests the majority of migrants is engaged in low-skill jobs.

But even low-skill jobs outside the state generate higher earnings for the migrants in comparison to what they earn in their villages or urban areas in Bengal.

“A semi-skilled worker can earn around Rs 300 a day in Kerala and a large number of migrant workers from Bengal come here. Earlier, a majority of the migrant workforce was from Tamil Nadu, but the trend is changing,” said Irudaya Rajan S., an expert on migration and a professor of economics at the Centre for Development Studies in Thiruvananthapuram.

From Calcutta, you just need to look at Shalimar station, off Vidyasagar Setu, where trains to Kerala chug out thrice a week to see for yourself the enormity of the outflow. Thousands from rural Bengal board the unreserved compartments of these trains to travel cheap to Kerala and in a crude reminder of Stephen Spielberg’s Schindler’s List, RPF constables shove — and sometimes cane-herd — people into the packed compartments.

“Even if they get 20 days’ work, they can earn up to Rs 6,000 and send money back home. They save on expenses as they pool in and live under one roof,” said Rajan, adding that migrant workers from Bengal were working in jewellery, plywood and construction industries.

“I go to Kerala because I can’t make ends meet here,” said Khokon Halder, 38, a Diamond Harbour resident who binds broomsticks in Kerala’s Kollam and saves at least Rs 3,000 to send back home.

According to him, he would not have thought about migrating to Kerala had the promise of “eksho diner kaaj (100 days’ work)” been fulfilled.

Not even 1 per cent households in Bengal got the promised 100 days’ work under the rural job guarantee scheme in 2009.

Poor returns in farming in Bengal — characterised by small land holdings — is another reason behind the large-scale out-migration from the state, said economist S. Mahendra Dev of the Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research in Mumbai.

“Rice is the main cultivable crop in Bengal but cost of production of rice for farmers in Bengal has increased sharply while realisations have lagged behind in comparison to other states as farmers in Bengal do not get the benefits of support price,” said Dev, whose research shows the disadvantage.

For long, the ruling CPM has raised this issue of how Bengal’s poor farmers lose out to the rich landed gentry in Andhra Pradesh, Punjab and Uttar Pradesh as they benefit from the Centre’s rice procurement programme.

The Centre offers a minimum support price to protect the farmers’ interests but most of the procurement is confined to these states, leaving farmers in Bengal at the mercy of the market controlled by moneylenders.

“The Centre’s discriminatory approach to farmers in Bengal is a valid criticism…. But the state government should also have made efforts to improve the condition of farmers by giving them the benefit of better technology and better irrigation facilities,” said a city-based economist.


The Telegraph, 17 November, 2010, http://www.telegraphindia.com/1101117/jsp/frontpage/story_13187352.jsp


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