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Bangalore: On a warm Wednesday afternoon, spirits rose to the gates of a sprawling construction site in southern Bengaluru. In the context of five residential towers under construction, which will house more than 2,500 families in 31-story buildings, hundreds of workers shouted a demand: Let’s go home, even if it’s on foot.
The bags had been packed and lay stacked by doors that had been closed by construction contractor guards. “They tell us that there are no trains to go home. So let’s walk home. We can no longer be here, “says Bihari Sa, a 30-year-old worker who had migrated from the village of Pande Chapra in the Saran district of Bihar in February.
Many workers at a construction site at Konankunte Cross demand that they be allowed to leave the construction fields to return to their homes. Image courtesy of Mohit M Rao
The relaxation of the confinement on May 3 to allow for a limited movement of migrants between the states had raised hopes that many in the city would want to return to their villages with their families. However, on Tuesday night, the state government canceled all indefinitely scheduled interstate trains. The migrants were instead order refrain from going home and resuming construction work.
But the workers had already spent 1.5 months locked in small tin sheds with little ration and the pungent stench of open drains. Interest in resuming work gradually faded.
For Bihari Sa, her desperation to return comes from her deep concerns for her four children and his wife. He is the only provider and has not sent them money in two months. “He had come to Bangalore hoping to earn 10,000 rupees a month that he would send back home. I haven’t been paid since the lockout started. Now, I am forced to spend my savings on my food. My family tells me they are starving. How am I supposed to sit idle here when I know they are suffering? “, He says.
As workers gathered in an impromptu protest, construction managers resort to threats: Those who do not return to work will be denied the ration and the supply of clean water.
Tabreez Ansari, who has not visited his family in over a year since immigrating to Bangalore from Palamu in Jharkhand, is in no mood to carry out the threat. “Can it take a month to walk home to Jharkhand? I will seize the opportunity. Walking will give us some hope of reaching our homes, but here, I have lost all hope, ”he says.
This anger is palpable in the Bengaluru labor camps. On Wednesday, police resorted to lathicharge after hundreds of workers arrived at the Marathahalli police station, where the interstate train journey was being recorded. At a technology park in Garudacharpalya, civic officials had to be called after 1,600 workers were locked up in their camps after they demanded outstanding wages to return home. In Madavara, outside Bangalore, there were physical clashes between the police and migrant workers.
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In these fields, the faint hope of return was quickly dissipating.
At Whitefield, a sprawling tech hub that is India’s home to some of the world’s largest tech companies and arguably also home to some of the largest job populations, a senior police official had a dire forecast. : “There is considerable resentment. We can convince them to stay a couple of days. But we fear it will boil in a couple of days. “
A migrant city
Bengaluru’s rapid growth, which is among the fastest growing cities in the country, has been supported by hundreds of thousands of migrants. 2011 census figures estimate that 8.9 percent of the city, or nearly 7.5 lakh of Bengaluru’s 85-lakh population, had recently migrated to the city for work (less than nine years). This can be a considerable understatement.
Migrant workers make a desperate journey to the Bangalore main train station in hopes of finding their way home. Image courtesy of Mohit M Rao
His desperation to return is seen in train ticket requests, which are done through an online form developed by the state government. While more than 2.13 lakh of migrant workers in the state had registered to return home, just 9,600 workers had boarded interstate trains between May 3 and 5.
On May 5, members of the real estate agency Confederation of Associations of Real Estate Developers of India (CREDAI) met with Karnataka Prime Minister BS Yediyurappa. Along with their demands, which included the restart of construction work, as well as the free movement of workers between construction sites, they expressed fear of an exodus of migrant labor.
“Workers must understand that if they go home they will be quarantined and will not be able to work. Here, they will get stable jobs and income now that construction can begin, “says Suresh Hari, president of the Bengaluru chapter of CREDAI, who says more must be done to” advise “the workers.
While BJP leaders have called the cancellation of migrant movements as a “bold move“More than 500 unions, organizations and individuals criticized him as a capitulation of the state government to” appease “the building’s lobby.
“By not giving the option to take the trains back home, the state government has effectively reduced the fundamental rights of workers, including their freedom of movement and work. This is forced labor, ”says Clifton Rosario, an advocate for Manthan Law Chambers who filed an application against state government orders in the Karnataka High Court. “The Interior Ministry allows the movement of workers between states. Karnataka’s decision to keep them against their will here only to have cheap labor available on construction sites is very illegal, “he says.
Looking for a way home
Far from the machinations of political decisions, there are thousands of migrants who spend their days going back and forth from the police station to the railway station to their temporary homes in hopes of leaving Bengaluru.
At KSR Bengaluru Railway Station, workers continue to cling to hope and arrive in groups. They stop to watch an event where volunteers bathe roses as a gesture of thanks to bus drivers who were transporting people traveling home to other districts in the state.
But for interstate migrants, they are greeted with police barricades that have closed the entrances to Bengaluru’s central train station.
Bipul Gamago, a Saora tribal community in the Gajapati district of Odisha, had paid Rs 550 to travel here from its dry cleaning center on the outskirts of the city to the station. “I saw on an Odiya news channel that trains ran between states. We came here thinking that we can return, “says Bipul. “There is no job, there is no money. We have to go back somehow. “
Shabab Ali, 28, had already spent the day traveling from his home to a police station where he expected to register for a train ticket, and then to the central train station. He had emigrated from the Amroha district in Uttar Pradesh in February to work on the construction of a large hospital. He had already spent 500 rupees traveling. “I am very concerned about my family. I have to go back now, even if that means I will end up spending all my earnings,” says Ali.
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