The Hindu Business Line : In search of India Shining

They are the master builders; their hands mould the bricks that make our homes. But the immigrant workers of Orissa are a homeless, hapless lot, with little more than drudgery and squalor for company.

They strive. They build. They stretch themselves to the limits of human endurance. ... and they search for that elusive India shining. They are the migrant labourers working in unorganised sectors at Hyderabad. A large number of them will not attend the `poll festival', which starts from April 20 onwards. A huge workforce will be either sitting aside or busy finding ways to earn their daily bread. Nearly 30,000 migrant labourers from western Orissa work in and around Hyderabad. They are engaged mostly in brick kilns. Western Orissa is one of the most backward regions in India that is constantly reeling undersevere drought conditions rendering the land infertile and resulting in unemployment and severe poverty. As a result, each year, people migrate in huge numbers to other parts of the country in a desperate search for livelihood.

A good number of the people who work in the brick kilns in and around Hyderabad belong to this group of migrant labour who have to sweat it out for long hours at work, with the workplace being devoid of even basic amenities. The contractors trap them with a minimum advance of Rs 5,000 to Rs 8,000 for a group of three persons, which is known as patari. This labour force of three is is engaged in work from dawn to dusk and sometimes beyond that, to make 1,000-1,200 bricks per day. The tiresome task fetches them around Rs 60 to Rs 110 a day, depending on the quality of the bricks made. The patari gets a weekly payment of Rs 300 to Rs 400 from the owner, and the rest of their salary goes into the repayment of the advance.

The conditions under which these people live are far from satisfactory. Makeshift huts constructed in the kilns are so small that one has to crawl to enter them. Needless to say basic sanitation is absent. . The worst affected are the children, for whom there is neither any amusement nor any form of recreation. They too help their parents in making bricks. The workers are never allowed to even take a day off, not till the end of their term.

When asked about the election, Satrughan Bhoi, Chandramani Majhi, Jal Singh and labourers have only a deep sigh to offer in terms of response. It looked as thought the word `election' did not make any sense to them. Recently, with the help of Actionaid, an NGO working with the migrant labourers and Governments of Orissa and Andhra Pradesh, nearly 750 under-privileged children were admitted to a bridge school. Both the governments have come forward to share the cost of opening schools at the brick kilns by paying the salary of the teachers and the cost of supporting infrastructure.

The

sight of the children praying in the makeshift bridge school — hands joined in reverence and their eyes tired — raise many questions for civil society. The men look spellbound and disoriented and a depressing gloom fills the air. Their fate is best described in the words of a poem by Rabindrantah Tagore:

Ora kaaj karey Deshe deshantarey, Anga banga kalinger samudra-nadeer ghatey ghatey, Punjabey Bombai-Gujratey. Ora kaaj karey.

(They work. They work in the country and overseas. They work in all the seashores and riversides of the country. They work in Punjab, Bombay and Gujarat). This poem was written by Tagore in 1941 to describe the lot of migrant labourers. Six decades later... has anything changed?)

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