Connecting education, health and livelihoods...

   

      A migrated community is always an outsider in a foreign setting. Migration occurs for various reasons. Sometimes it is forced and sometimes people choose to migrate if better opportunities are available somewhere else compared to their "home".  But the notion of ‘choice’ is debatable in this scenario as the options available to them are not equally appealing ones and that’s why they prefer to migrate. Trafficking is a major source of migration and unlike the popular understanding, it’s not just women who are trafficked but men and children are also trafficked on a large scale. Migration is a widely discussed issue these days because of the migration from politically unrest countries in the Middle East to Western European countries. But media neglects the issues in South East Asian countries like Bangladesh and Myanmar for political reasons. Kerala model of development and the heavy migration of its people to Gulf countries is famous across the world. State’s HDI values are comparable with the Scandinavian countries but at the same time, the development model of the state is unsustainable and the economic status of the state is like a bubble. (1)(2) It is fully dependent on the Middle East countries and the NRI money. The state recruited its labor to the gulf countries and the people became ready to do any kind of work there in order to find a living. The plight of Malayalee’s who worked in the Arabian deserts are efficiently pictured in the novel “goat days” written by Benyamin. (3) But after 2000, Kerala started facing the issue of lack of unskilled laborers because of this migration and the Bengali workers started coming to Kerala in order to fill this vacuum.

     I live in a town called Thiruvalla which is in the Southern part of Kerala. It is one of the fastest growing, highest consuming, most aware town in the whole country and it ranks first in the per capita bank deposit according to a study conducted by India Today and The Hindu. (4) (5) Teachers, Doctors, Nurses, Management professionals and Semi-skilled laborers comprise the majority of the population. The economy is highly supported by the Nurses and other Semi-skilled laborers who work in gulf countries as well as in countries like UK, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand. But now this small town lacks unskilled laborers and it depends heavily on Bengali migrant workers for this purpose. In Thiruvalla Taluk, Bengali language is being talked at a rate of 10.63/1000. (6) The average daily wage of an unskilled worker in Thiruvalla is from ₹750-₹850. But when they work under a contractor, they will get only around ₹500-600. A system of labor supply also exists in this locality. If some individual wants to hire these Bengalis for work, they need to approach the middleman and they will take ₹100-200 as fees out of the workers wage. Now people tend to call Kerala as a “gulf” of migrant Bengali workers. Even though they are generally called as Bengali workers, this migrant community consists of workers from Bangladesh, West Bengal and few from Bihar, Jharkhand, Odisha and other North Eastern states. There are Hindus and Muslims in this community but predominantly Muslims are seen as the Muslim contractors in Thiruvalla hired them initially using their contacts in Bengal.*

     Paippad is a nearby village and most of these workers stay in this village. Buses plying between Paippad and Thiruvalla have place names written in Bengali and Hindi. Most of them are illiterate and they prefer to ask someone instead of reading these boards. Very few have basic education and proofs of citizenship. Kerala which boasts about its literacy rate with 100% primary education is not concerned about these workers. The argument is that they are from other states and it is not the duty of Kerala to provide them with education or basic amenities to live in. They were not part of the education programs which was carried out as part of the state’s attempt to achieve basic primary education. Some workers stays here illegally as they are Bangladeshi citizens but from the last election onwards, political parties are trying their best to ensure voting rights for these Bangladeshi migrant workers. Not because they want to empower the migrant workers but because they found a new vote bank among these workers. Their voting rights are easily manipulated by the political parties, providing them with money or liquor. The vehicles owned by political parties will go to their settlements and will drop them in the voting booth. This trend which is very common in other parts of India was not seen in Kerala before. Education can empower the ignorant people and because of lack of education, they are not aware that they are selling their voting rights. Sarcastically, people used to say that if some political party gives money to a Malayali in order to vote in favor of them, it is sure that he will vote for someone else other than the party who paid them.

     Bengali migrant workers don’t have a ration card even though they deserve a BPL card. These are not permanent migration and no political parties or governments either in local level or state level are interested to provide them with these basic rights. They buy food items for rates which are higher than normal as it is easy for the local shopkeepers to cheat them. Most shopkeepers in Paippad market now talks in Hindi and fishes like Rohu, Barb etc. and some vegetables which are not commonly eaten in Kerala are available in Paippad now. They gets “off” only for one day which is on Sunday and it is difficult to find Malayalee’s in Paippad market on Sunday. Sometimes they may have to work without Sunday off in seasons when the construction works are at the peak. But even in off seasons, they will get work in other sectors like hotels, garbage collection, cleaning and as helpers in agricultural activities. They are not getting time to visit home not even once in a year and that is one reason for the issues they create. They are engaging in a lot of criminal activities like murder (while attempting theft), sexual molestation and rape out of this frustration.* Jisha case is a perfect example for this but the accused is an Assamese. As most of them does not have enough identity proofs or documents, the state police is finding it difficult to trace them once they leave after committing a crime. There are incidents in which the state police was attacked by their criminal gangs when the police visits their home village as part of the investigation. Other aspect of this issue is that the criminal gangs in Bengal are recruiting their members to these labor camps and when someone in this community engages in a criminal activity, it affects the image of the whole migrant community.

     Last year, fed up with all these, the villagers in Paippad took arms along with the support of police and elected representatives and evacuated the Bengali migrant settlements. (7) The Bengali workers were in a rush to book tickets in the Trivandrum-Guwahati Express train but most of them came back again after one month. The Chinese built handsets and the high volume songs are the only enjoyment for them. They won’t get proper treatment in government hospitals as they are not aware about the proceedings or formalities. In government hospitals, documentary evidences like ration card is required to avail the free treatment and private hospitals always discriminate them. Neither the Health dept. of Panchayat nor any civil society organization tries to give vaccination to these people even though their settlements are origins of different kinds of contagious diseases. They live in unhealthy, filthy barracks without proper ventilation made using tin sheets. In one room, there will be 20-30 people without proper facilities for sanitation. Proper septic tanks are absent and they dump waste in the same tank which they use for sanitation. Free medical camps are a trend everywhere in Kerala but none of those organizations try to setup one in this camp. There are HIV/AIDS patients in this camp and they lacks sexual education or basic knowledge to avoid the spreading of diseases. Their settlements are inaccessible mainly because of the lack of hygiene. They will work even when they are ill without taking enough precautions and a lot of new diseases are found in this locality now which was not common earlier.

     Apart from the men manual laborers, a lot of children including young girls are trafficked from Bangladesh and West Bengal. (8) This is not seen in Paippad or parts of Central Travancore but in districts like Ernakulam, Kozhikkode and Malappuram. They are not trafficked exclusively for sex work. If I talk based on the trend seen in newspapers, some of them are recruited by orphanages, some of them comes along with their boyfriends and some of them along with their male relatives in search of job. But most of them are facing sexual harassment and are exploited in immoral traffic without their consensus or will. As sex work and prostitution is illegal according to the Indian penal code, when the police conducts raids or rescue operations, most of them being minor girls, will end up in protection homes. And in protection homes, they are treated like criminals even though they are victims. First of all, they have to arrange the necessary documents as most of them comes to India without a visa. Second, as they are minors, courts need to be convinced that their guardians or parents are fit to look after them and it is safe to send them back to their homes. Third, in most cases, the criminals will escape from the law. Sometimes even the culprits might be staying in the country without proper documents. They will escape and the question before the court of law becomes whether to give justice to the victim girls by sending them back to their country or else to make them stay in protection homes until the culprits are caught by the police. Sad to say that the courts most often won’t allow these girls to go back to their country as if they are the accused. The courts’ only priority is to bring the culprits before the rule of law and in that attempt they are neglecting the rights of these victims’ girls. These girls are ready to sign and give assurances to come whenever they are called upon for the trial but still our system re-victimizes them.

 

     The Bengali migrant community comes to Kerala in search of livelihood. They don't have education facilities or they can't afford education in their home state. Coming to Kerala, they are forced to neglect their health in the workplaces and settlements. Because they don't have education they are discriminated even in hospitals and shops. They are getting exploited right from the first point of contact. The auto rickshaw drivers and taxi drivers will charge 3-4 folds of normal charge from these Bengali workers. They are a ‘nuisance’ even to the railway officials as they don’t know how to fill the ticket reservation forms etc. No government tries to take the responsibility of protecting their rights as they are not vote banks or contributors of GDP. The governments or the police does not have a database with details like how many migrant workers are there? how many people work in each sector etc. They are asked to work in areas where the Malayalee’s prefer not to work like septic tank cleaning, manhole cleaning etc. which can’t be considered even as an informal job. They don’t have any livelihood pattern and they will do any kind of work to earn their living. They can’t take care of their health and nobody cares even if they dies and it won't get the same media attention like the hype when a ‘citizen’ dies. In the case of these workers, more than any other contextual factors like caste, class etc. that we discuss usually, it is their vulnerability as a migrant worker which affects their progress in other domains. Also, they don’t have any bargaining power as they don’t have any trade unions or even the labor officer or health officers doesn’t exist for their welfare. The officers instead exist for the welfare of the local citizens.

     Education or health is not a priority for these migrant workers and the only purpose of existence of this community is their livelihood. The activities of civil society organizations like NGOs are very minimal in Kerala as “everything is right here” compared to other states. At the same time, there are several other reasons behind the booming of societies and trusts. When it comes to the education, health and livelihoods of these Bengali workers, as I already mentioned, neither government nor NGOs are interested in making interventions. The migrant workers had benefitted from some State Government programs but at the same time, they got badly affected by some interventions made by the government for “its people”. Health authorities tried to intervene and evacuate the workers whenever there were issues related to hygiene. But it is the duty of the job owner or the contractor to provide these basic facilities and that is not enforced. Apart from these, few Christian missionaries and gospel teams work very closely with these communities. But honestly speaking, their attempt is not to make any contribution for the direct benefit of this community even though some of them takes Malayalam language classes. These gospel teams have translated Malayalam tracts into Bengali, Assamese and Hindi and they use it for the propagation of religion.

REFERENCES

1. Oommen, M.A. "Reforms and the Kerala model". Economic and Political Weekly (Mar 2016):22-25 Economic and Political Weekly, Vol 43. No. 2

2. Korakandy, Ramakrishnan. "State of the Environment in Kerala: What price the Development Model?" Economic and Political Weekly (Mar2016):1801-1804. Economic and Political Weekly, Vol.35. No.21/22.

3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goat_Days (Last accessed: 06-05-2016)

4. http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/kerala/in-dollarrupee-yoyo-an-island-of-riches/article4999041.ece (Last accessed: 06-05-2016)

5. http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/top-10-wealthiest-most-aware-highest-consumption-towns-in-india/1/196479.html (Last accessed: 06-05-2016)

6. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Kerala (Last accessed: 06-05-2016)

7. http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/kerala/migrant-workers-fleeing-paipad/article4081249.ece (Last accessed: 06-05-2016)

8. http://www.newindianexpress.com/nation/NIA-Begins-Probe-in-Bengal-on-Child-Trafficking-to-Kerala/2014/07/27/article2350648.ece (Last accessed: 06-05-2016)

(Some details are written based on direct lived experiences and newspaper articles. Academic data is not available to support them*)