As tens of thousands of migrant workers from Assam and West Bengal are packing up to get back home in time for the Assembly elections in their States starting April 4, Kerala’s factories, plantations and shops are in for big trouble.
Labour crunch and work disruption are staring in the face of the firms and worksites that rely on Bengali and Assamese manpower, as the workers are expected to be away for extended periods.
“Hundreds of plywood units in the Perumbavoor region will have to sharply cut down on production as these units mostly employ Assamese migrant labour,” pointed out Mujeeb Rahman, president of the All-Kerala Block Board and Plywood Manufacturers Association.
“Some of these units will have to be shut down temporarily as the workers will stay back home for weeks after the elections.”
“Our concern now is how to keep the plywood units going while the workers are away voting,” he added.
Largest concentrationPerumbavoor, some 40 km from here, has the largest concentration in Kerala of migrant workers from North and North-East India.
The town and its surrounding villages are home to around 1,000 plywood furniture units which together employ upwards of 50,000 workers from Assam, West Bengal and Orissa.
The Assembly election in Assam will be held on April 4 and 11 while a six-phase election in West Bengal will begin on April 4 and end on May 5. Already, the trains bound for Kolkata and Guwahati are jam-packed and second-class tickets for April and May are sold out.
A similar situation had occurred during the 2014 Lok Sabha election, too. Southern Railway authorities are planning to run special trains to meet the heavy demand.
Employers pointed out that Assamese and Bengali workers are particularly keen to exercise their franchise in every election, and this means leave of absence for four weeks or more.
The Assamese make up the largest chunk of the workforce in the plywood furniture units in Perumbavoor.
The electoral ID card is their main identification document and they believe they need to vote in every election to get their identification revalidated. This is particularly so for Assamese Muslim workers, who fear their citizenship will be challenged if they do not vote.
During election time, village-level leaders of various political parties in West Bengal and Assam travel to Kerala to encourage the migrant workers to go back to vote. They often use the electoral ID card as the motivating factor.
However, Sister Roselyn, a Catholic nun working for the welfare of migrant labour, pointed out that the workers could be clubbing the election with their seasonal vacation.
Voting and vacation
“A large number of workers quit their work to go back home as they can get seasonal farm work in their own villages during March-June,” she said. Many migrants consider voting very important and take pains to be back in their village during election time, she noted.
Baby John, a pineapple farmer at Vazhakkulam who employs migrant workers on his farms, agreed that this time the Assamese and Bengalis are clubbing voting with vacation. This would mean their return would be delayed, he said.
There are roughly three million migrant workers in Kerala and the majority are from East and North-East States.
They are known by the generic terms ‘ bhais ’ and ‘Bengalis’. Initially, they were employed in construction, but now they are found in all kinds of manual work as the local workers increasingly prefer white-collar jobs.
There is hardly any village in Kerala without its share of migrant workers. More than 95 per cent are male and most of them are in the 18-35 age group, according to surveys.