Migrants…don’t lose that number

It was the third Friday in June this year when the labour helpline rang.

“Can you help us? We have not been paid.”  

It was a group of 80 labourers from Kushalgarh who had gone to work on sites in neighbouring tehsils within Rajasthan. For two months they dug trenches two feet wide and six feet deep to lay telecom fibre cables. Wages are paid per metre of trench that has been dug.

After two months when they asked for their full dues, the contractor cited poor work, played with the numbers and then tried to fob them off saying, “deta hoon, deta hoon [I’ll pay up, I’ll pay up].” But he didn’t, and after another week of waiting for their dues of Rs. 7-8 lakhs, they went to the police who told them to call the labour helpline.

When the workers called, “we asked them if they had any proof. If they could give us names and phone numbers of the contractor, and any photos of an attendance register,” said Kamlesh Sharma, a social worker in Banswara, district headquarters.

Luckily some of the younger mobile-savvy labourers were able to furnish all this as well as send photos of their workplace sites by phone to build their case.

The irony is not lost on them – the trenches they had dug were for one of the country’s biggest telecom providers who wants to ‘connect people’.

Kamlesh – a project manager with Aajeevika Bureau a non-profit working on labour issues – and others, helped build their case. All their outreach material carries both the Aajeevika helpline – 1800 1800 999, and the phone numbers of officials at the bureau.

The workers from Banswara are among the lakhs migrating in search of work. “Kushalgarh has many pravasi [migrants],” says Joga Pitta, sarpanch of Churada village in the district. “We are not able to sustain ourselves with farming.”

Small landholdings, lack of irrigation, absence of jobs and overall poverty have made this district a hub for distress migration among Bhil tribals, who make up 90 per cent of the population here. An International Institute for Environment and Development Working Paper  observes that migration rises sharply after climate extreme events like drought, flood and heatwaves.

At the busy Kushalgarh bus stands, around 40 state buses leave every day through the year carrying 50-100 people in one journey. Then there are the private buses of roughly the same number. A ticket to Surat costs 500 rupees and the conductor says they don’t charge for children.

Suresh Maida arrives early to find space, and settle his wife and three small children into the bus to Surat. He gets off to put their luggage – a big sack with five kilos of flour, some utensils and clothes into the storage area behind the bus, and clambers back in.

“I will earn around 350 [rupees] a day,” the Bhil Adivasi daily wage worker tells PARI; his wife will earn 250-300 rupees. Suresh expects they will stay a month or two before returning, spend roughly 10 days at home and set off again. “I’ve been doing this for more than 10 years,” adds the 28-year-old. Migrants like Suresh usually come home for big festivals like Holi, Diwali and Raksha Bandhan.

Rajasthan is a net out-migration state – more people leave than enter as migrants; only Uttar Pradesh and Bihar see greater numbers leaving for wage work. “Not only is agriculture the only option, but it also only one-time – after the rains,” points out V.S. Rathod, an official in the Kushalgarh tehsil office.

All workers are hoping for kayam work where they are attached to one contractor for the entire period. It offers more stability as against rokdi or dehadi – standing at the mazdoor mandi (labour market) every morning.

Jogaji has educated all his children but even so “yahan berojgaari zyaada hain. Padhe likhe logon ke liye bhi naukri nahin [There is a lot of unemployment here, even those who are educated have no jobs].”

Migration is the only foreseeable option.

When Maria Paaru leaves home, she takes a mitti ka tawa (clay pan) with her. It’s a critical part of her packing. Corn rotis are best made on the clay pans which can handle the heat of wood fires without burning the roti she says, while showing me how it’s done.

Maria and her husband Paaru Damor are among the lakhs of Bhil Adivasis who move out of their homes in Banswara district of Rajasthan in search of daily wage work in Surat, Ahmedabad, Vapi and cities in Gujarat, as well as other neighbouring states. “MNREGA takes too long and is not enough,” says Paaru, speaking of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee scheme that gives 100 days of work.

The 30-year-old Maria also carries 10-15 kilograms of makai (corn) flour. “We prefer to eat these,” she says, sharing the food habits of her family who are away for up to nine months in a year. Familiar food is a comfort when away from home in Dungra Chhota.

The couple have six children whose ages range from 3-12 years, and they own two acres of land on which they grow wheat, channa and corn for their own consumption. “We can’t manage [finances] without migrating for work. I have to send money home to my parents, pay for irrigation water, buy fodder for cattle, food for the family…,” Paaru reels off his expenses. “So, we have to migrate.”

He first migrated when he was eight years old, travelling with his older brother and sister after the family incurred a debt of 80,000 rupees on medical expenses. “It was winter,” he recalls, “I went to Ahmedabad and would earn 60 rupees a day.” The siblings stayed for four months and managed to pay off the debt. “I enjoyed the fact that I had helped out,” he adds. Two months later he went again. It’s been 25 years of a migrant’s life for Paaru, now in his early thirties.

Migrants dream of a pot of ‘gold’ at the end that will pay off debts, keep children in school and hunger at bay. But things often go wrong. The state labour helpline run by Aajeevika receives up to 5,000 calls a month from migrant workers seeking legal redress for non-payment of dues.

“For wage labour, agreements are never formal, they are verbal. Labourers are passed from one contractor to another,” says Kamlesh who estimates that the denial of wages for just the migrants out of Banswara district adds up to crores of rupees.  

“They never get to know who their principal contractor is, who they are working for, so redressal of dues is a frustrating and longwinded process,” he adds. His job gives him a ringside view of how migrants are exploited.

On June 20, 2024, Rajesh Damor, a 45-year-old Bhil Adivasi and two other workers walked into his office in Banswara seeking help. Temperatures in the state were at an all-time high, but that was not the reason why the beleaguered workers were hot and bothered. Collectively due Rs. 226,000 from the labour contractor who had hired them, they had approached the Patan Police Station in Kushalgarh tehsil to lodge a complaint. The cops redirected them to Aajeevika’s Shramik Sahayata Evam Sandarb Kendra, a resource centre for migrant labour in the area.

In April, Rajesh and 55 workers from Sukhwara panchayat had left for Morbi in Gujarat, 600 kilometres away. They had been hired to do labour and masonry work at a construction site in a tile factory there. A daily wage of Rs. 700 was promised to the 10 skilled workers and the rest would get Rs. 400.

After a month of working, “we asked the thekedar [contractor] to pay us all our dues and he kept pushing the dates,” says Rajesh speaking on the phone to PARI. It helped that Rajesh, who was at the forefront of negotiations, speaks five languages – Bhili, Wagdi, Mewari, Hindi and Gujarati. The contractor dealing with their dues was from Jhabua in Madhya Pradesh and spoke Hindi. Often labour is unable to communicate with the final contractor sometimes because of a language barrier, but often because it means wading through a hierarchy of sub-contractors below him. Sometimes contractors get physically violent when the labourers demand their dues.

The 56 workers waited weeks to be paid their hefty dues. They were running out of food from home and purchases in the open market were eating away at their earnings.

“He kept pushing the date – 20, then 24 May, 4 June…” recalls a distressed Rajesh. “We asked him ‘what will we eat? We are so far from home.’ Finally, we stopped working the last 10 days, hoping that would force him to pay up.” They were promised June 20 as the final date.

Unsure but unable to stay, on June 9, the party of 56 took the bus home to Kushalgarh. On June 20 when Rajesh called him, “he was rude and started haggling and cursing us.” That’s when Rajesh and the others walked into a police station near their home.

Rajesh has 10 bighas of land on which his family grow soybean, cotton and wheat, the latter for their own consumption. His four children have all received an education, and are enrolled in schools and colleges. Yet, this summer they joined their parents in wage work. “It was the holidays, so I said they can come along and earn some money,” says Rajesh. He is hopeful his family will see the earnings now that the contractor has been threatened with a case in the labour court.

The mention of labour court does force erring contractors to make good their promises. But to get there, labourers need help with filing the case. A group of 12 wage workers who had gone from this district to work on roads in Alirajpur, in neighbouring Madhya Pradesh were denied full payment after three months of working. The contractor cited poor work and refused to pay the Rs. 4-5 lakh due to them.

“We got a call saying we are stuck in Madhya Pradesh, and we have not been paid,” recalls Teena Garasia who often gets such calls on her personal phone. “Our numbers get circulated among workers,” explains the head of Aajeevika’s Livelihood Bureau in Banswara district.

This time the workers were able to give details of the work site, photos of the attendance register, and the name and mobile number of the contractor for the case to be filed.

Six months later the contractor paid up in two instalments. “He came here [Kushalgarh] to give the money,” say the relieved workers who received the wages, but not the interest due on late payment.

“We try negotiation first,” says Kamlesh Sharma. “But that is only possible if the details of the contractor are there.

The 25 labourers who migrated for Surat to work in a textile factory had no proof. “They were passed on from one contractor to another and have no phone number or name to pin the person down,” says Teena. “They couldn’t identity the factory in the sea of similar looking ones.”

Harassed and denied their full wages of Rs. 6 lakhs, they returned home to their villages in Banswara’s Kushalgarh and Sajjangarh.

It’s for such cases that social worker Kamlesh places a lot of faith in kanoon shiksha (legal literacy). Banswara district lies on the state border and is the scene of maximum migration. Eighty per cent of families in Kushalgarh, Sajjangarh, Ambapara, Ghatol and Gangar Talai have at least one migrant, if not more, says Aajeevika’s survey data.

Kamlesh is hopeful that since “the younger generation have phones, can store numbers, take photos and therefore nailing defaulting contractors will become easier in the future.”

The union government’s Samadhan Portal was launched pan-India on September 17, 2020 for filing industrial disputes, and in 2022 it was rejigged to allow workers to file claims. But there is no office in Banswara despite it being an obvious choice.

Women migrants don’t find a voice in wage conversations. They rarely have their own phone and both work and wages are directed through the men around them. There has been serious resistance to women getting their own phones. The last government of the state, led by Ashok Gehlot of the Congress, launched a programme for distribution of over 13 crore free phones to women in the state. Close to 25 lakh phones were distributed to poor women till the Gehlot government lost power. In the first phase, the phones were given to widows and girls in Class 12 who were from migrant families.

The incoming government of Bhajan Lal Sharma of the Bhartiya Janata Party has put the programme on hold “till the scheme’s benefits are examined.”  It was among the first decisions he made barely a month after being sworn in. Locals says the scheme is unlikely to be revived.

For most women the lack of agency over their earnings contributes to the routine gender, sexual abuse and abandonment they face. Read: In Banswara: domestic ties that bind and gag.

“I cleaned the wheat and he took it along with some corn flour, 5-6 kilos. He took it and left,” recalls Sangeeta, a Bhil Adivasi now living with her parents in their home in Churada, Kushalgarh block. She had migrated with her husband when he went to Surat after they were married.

“I helped in construction work,” she recalls, and her earnings were handed to her husband. “I didn’t like it there.” Once the couple’s children were born – they have three boys ages aged seven, five and four – she stopped going. “I was taking care of the children and the house.”

For more than a year now, she has not seen her husband, or received any money from him. “I have come to my parent’s house as there is nothing to feed my children there [at her married home].”

In January this year (2024), she went to the police station in Kushalgarh to file a case. Rajasthan accounts for almost 10 per cent of India’s abandoned women, says the National Crimes Records Bureau (NCRB) 2020 report. But real data is hard to find as figures for abandoned women are clubbed with miscarriage, infanticide, foeticide.

At the Kushalgarh Police Station, officers admit that the number of women seeking redressal is only rising. But they also admit that most cases don’t reach them as the banjadia – an all-men group in the village who take decisions – prefer to settle without the cops. “The banjadia take money from both sides,” says a resident. “Justice is an eye wash, and women never get their due.”

Sangeeta’s distress is worsening as relatives are telling her that her husband is with another woman who he wants to marry. “I feel bad that the man has hurt my children, not come to see them for over a year. They ask me ‘is he dead?’ My eldest one abuses him and tells me, ‘Mummy when the police catch him you also beat him up!’” she says, a small smile on her face.

On a Saturday afternoon in the deserted panchayat office in Kherpur, 27-year-old social worker Menka Damor is speaking to young girls of five panchayats here in Kushalgarh block.

“What is your sapna [dream]?” she asks the 20 odd girls sitting in a circle around her. All of them are daughters of migrants, all have travelled with their parents and are likely to again. “They tell me even if we get to school, we will only have the migration at the end,” says Menka who manages the Kishori Shramik Programme for young girls.

She wants them to see a future beyond migration. Switching between Wagdi and Hindi, she flashes cards showing people from different professions – cameraperson, weightlifter, dress designer, skateboarder, teacher and engineer. “You can be anything you want, and you have to work towards it,” she tells the bright faces.

“Migration is not the only option.”