Labour Migration

Labour Migration: A Shadow of Poverty in Orissa
By Devi Prasad Mahapatra

One Sunday evening, we were enjoying the evening coffee at the ETV canteen. The live telecast of world famous Lord Jagannath Rath Yatra had pulled us there. Suddenly we heard someone softly humming Jagannath Bhajan. Such a beautiful coincidence! We tried to locate the source and discovered some people from Orissa were busy with ‘Trinath Mela’, a typical devotional Oriya get-together, in an under-construction ETV corporate building. The ambience was typically Oriyan, for a moment, we forget that we were in the capital city of Andhra Pradesh, far away from the epicenter, yet feeling the Orissa fragrance. After the completion of Trinath Mela, we were curious to know the reason of their presence in Hyderabad. Unfortunately under the façade of celebration of joy and ribaldry there lay a sad story, which is known to all of us but forgotten by all of us.

Rather than the soul of India, Orissa is more known for many wrong reasons. Whether it is starvation death or selling of small kids, Orissa has always sited at the front page of any regional, national or international newspaper. This needy state becomes a laboratory for the international organizations to experiment with poverty, hunger and deprivations. When we are rich in our resources, minerals and manpower, then why are we pointed out only for shameful reasons? Again winter season entered the state with the migration storm. Every newspaper and electronic channel got an issue to arise. Again the major headline in the primetime news of every electronic channel is covered from Orissa with this sensational issue. Do you think only Oriya people are migrated from their state to other state for job? If not, why do we get so much unwanted publicity. What are the main reasons of migration? We have made an effort to carve some facts about labour migration in Orissa.

How can we define migration? Migration denotes any movement of groups of people from one locality to another. But there is considerable conceptual difficulty in defining a migrant. Migration of labourer takes different forms. In one end, the place of working and residence of the labourer may be different, and the distance covered by daily commuting. At the other end, the worker’s may move permanently from their places of birth or usual place of residence, maintaining little or no contact with their places of origin. Between these two ends, people move away for differing periods of time. Based on how long they are away from their place of origin, the migrants are distinguished as ‘permanent’, ‘semi-permanent’ and ‘temporary’. Labour migration belongs to temporary migration, which is likely to stay away from their places of origin for more than a few months in a year. The temporary migrants are also known as ‘short duration’ migrants, ‘seasonal’ migrants or ‘circulatory’ migrants.

Face of Orissa