Podcast | Editor’s pick of the day - Gujarat migrant exodus: What is happening?

The times we live in – our big story today is the migrant exodus in Gujarat. But the genesis of that story lies, yet again, unfortunately, in an alleged rape. Even as there has been an outpouring of women recounting their harrowing experiences of sexual harassment and assault at the hands of powerful, abusive men, there comes another story with another kind of outpouring – Hindi-speaking people in many parts of Gujarat are leaving the state in droves. The latest reports (per Scroll) indicate that at least 50,000 people have left the state in the past week.

The alleged rape of a 14-month-old girl, belonging to the Thakor community, in Sabarkantha district of North Gujarat on the 28^th of September, by a migrant labourer named Ravindra Sahu from Bihar has set the state of Gujarat on edge.

As hate messages on WhatsApp and other social media spread about the incident, there has been a spate of violence against the Hindi-speaking migrant population reported from various districts of Gujarat, causing many to leave the state in fear of retaliatory violence, with some vowing never to return. As per the latest reports on The Times of India, 431 people involved in the violence have been arrested even as the Gujarat government has been appealing the fleeing migrants to return. The rape accused, meanwhile, has also been arrested.

The events leading up to the exodus; the violence seen across various districts of Gujarat; the inevitable mudslinging by opposing political parties; and the effect the exodus has had on Gujarat’s industrial workforce, will be among the chief topics we will discuss on this edition of our Pick of the Day.

What happened?

The alleged brutal incident took place on the 28^th of September at the ceramic factory the accused worked at, in Dhundhar village near Himmatnagar in Sabarkantha district. The toddler, who was under treatment at the Ahmedabad Civil Hospital, has been discharged after her condition was found to be satisfactory. The trauma, though, remains. “She understands everything,” said the girl’s grandmother to The Indian Express. “She is a very brave child. After going through that hell, she is trying to be a normal kid,” said the survivor’s mother to the daily.

Soon after the alleged incident, there was unrest in the community. But it would take about a week for the violence to amplify. Hate messages about Hindi-speaking migrant labourers sexually harassing women started doing the rounds on WhatsApp and other social media platforms, and that set off violence across northern Gujarat.

“A provocative message had been doing rounds on a social media messaging app to instigate the mob against migrant workers. These messages were based on the recent rape case in Sabarkantha and exploited the sentiment that workers from outside were taking away job opportunities,” said H.D. Mewada, the deputy superintendent in Waghodia district, where 17 persons attacked several migrants with sticks and stones on Sunday. Eight contractual workers were allegedly attacked at the ‘Bal Amul’ plant near Anand on Sunday.

Mehsana, Sabarkantha, Patan, Ahmedabad, Gandhinagar, Aravalli, and Surendranagar were the most affected regions, with 89 arrests made (as of 8^th October) in Mehsana alone. Attacks were primarily aimed against migrants from the states of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan, and Madhya Pradesh.

In an instance in the Ghatlodia area of Ahmedabad, Santosh Gangaram Yadav of Jaunpur district, Uttar Pradesh, who has been living in Gujarat for 15 years now, said to The Times of India, “At around 9.30 pm on Saturday, around 25 men came on bikes and rickshaws and started abusing me. They were shouting, ‘kill this UP man’. Some of them started beating me. I hid in an office whose owner I know.” He said the attackers ransacked his cart in which he used to sell dabelis and took around Rs 3000.

Ramraj Yadav, resident of JP Chawl on the banks of the Sabarmati in Ahmedabad, said to the Quint, “They came at night with their faces covered shouting ‘Bhaiyalog ko bahar nikalo’.” The Quint also reported that around 17 families fled from their homes in the chawl last week after an angry mob, allegedly from the Thakor community, threatened them with dire consequences.

Krishnachandra Sharma, a 42-year-old building construction contractor, speaking to The Indian Express said he had lived in Ahmedabad for the last 22 years, but could not recall having witnessed a situation like this earlier. “There have been Hindu-Muslim riots, but never something like this. The news spread like wildfire on Facebook and WhatsApp, which everyone has on their phones,” he said.

Those are merely a couple of examples out of the hundreds of testimonies from people who had made Gujarat their home for decades and are now being forced to leave on a deadline. Urmila Devi, another of the thousands affected, said, “Some 50-60 people stormed our settlement, shouting, ‘Sab bhaiyya log nikal jao nahin toh mar-peet karenge’.” She, and several of her neighbours, were on their way back to Uttar Pradesh, where they hail from. Mahadev Nagar, a colony of migrants in Ahmedabad’s Chandlodiya area, has seen at least 1500 people from UP and Bihar leave over the past few days, according to another report.

The Quint reported Satendra Singh, who is a resident of Bihar, as saying, “They gave us our salary and asked us to leave. We were threatened by the mob as well. I have only lived in Gujarat for a year but now I will not return.” A few who have not fled but are afraid to return home are currently lodged in a camp set up by the volunteers of Uttar Bharatiya Vikas Parishad in Vastral, reported The Wire.

The Director General of Police Shivanand Jha told reporters, “Security of areas inhabited by non-Gujaratis and the factories where they work has been increased. Police have also increased patrolling in these areas,” he said. He did however have his own take on why so many migrants were leaving: “If people are leaving for home for the Chhath, Diwali, and Navratri festivals, it should not be seen otherwise.” It seems he is not alone in that opinion – he is joined by Alpesh Thakor, a Congress legislator from Gujarat. A video with Alpesh appearing to incite violence against the migrant community has also surfaced. His outfit Kshatriya Thakor Sena has been implicated in the violence and several of its members arrested.

Which brings us to the inevitable mudslinging.

Politics as usual

The Congress blamed Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chief Minister Vijay Rupani for the attacks and violence on migrant workers in Gujarat and said they should quit if they are unable to carry out their responsibilities.

The opposition party also trained its guns on Modi, saying how he would go to Varanasi and face the people of the state who made him the Prime Minister, after attacks on migrant labour from UP in Gujarat, a state of which he was the chief minister for long.

Congress President Rahul Gandhi held the targeting of migrant workers in Gujarat as "completely wrong". Taking to Twitter, he claimed the root cause of violence in Gujarat was the closure of factories and unemployment in the state.

"There is nothing more frightening than poverty. The root cause of the violence in Gujarat is the closed down factories and unemployment there. Both the system and that economy are reeling.

"Making migrant labour their target is completely wrong. I stand totally against it," he said in Hindi on Twitter.

Congress spokesperson Priyanka Chaturvedi alleged the "politics of exclusion" continues in Gujarat, while the concerned BJP chief ministers have done nothing to protect the interests of their constituents.

"I directly hold Chief Minister Vijay Rupani and prime minister Narendra Modi responsible for this kind of violence and incidents on migrant labour and the kind of pressure being put on them.

"If they do not take responsibility for this and provide the 'Ram Rajya' that they claimed, then they should quit their posts as they have no moral right to continue and hold such important positions and undertake responsibilities," she told reporters.

Assuring security to the migrants, the Gujarat government said 431 people were arrested and 56 FIRs registered in connection with the attacks, as Chief Minister Vijay Rupani appealed to people not to engage in violence.

Claiming that no untoward incident had taken place during the last 48 hours, Rupani said the situation has been brought under control by the police.

"We are committed to maintaining law and order, and people can call the police in case of trouble. We will provide them security." he told reporters in Rajkot.

Chief Ministers of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar--Yogi Adityanath and Nitish Kumar - and Union minister and BJP ally Ram Vilas Paswan, who hails from Bihar, spoke to Rupani to voice their concern over the attacks. Nitish was quoted as saying by PTI, “If somebody has committed a crime, he must be punished severely. But on account of one incident, people should not generalise and hold a grouse against an entire state.”

Meanwhile, in Gandhinagar on Monday, cops arrested Congress leader Mahot Thakor, a member of Thakor Sena, an outfit floated by Congress MLA Alpesh Thakor. He along with four others were nabbed after a video of Mahot threatening migrants to leave Uvarsad village “in next 24 hours” went viral.

JD(U) leader Neeraj Kumar, in a two-page open letter to Congress president Rahul Gandhi, blamed Gujarat MLAs recent speeches for the violence. “You appointed your Gujarat MLA Alpesh Thakor as one of the national secretaries in-charge of Bihar and his outfit Gujarat Kshatriya Thakor Sena is driving out migrant Biharis,” the JD(U) MLC and spokesman alleged.

Alpesh Thakor announced that he will go on a ‘sadbhavna‘ (goodwill) fast from October 11 if the government does not withdraw “false cases” registered against his supporters in the wake of the attacks.

The subtext

Anand Kochukudy, writing for Moneycontrol, says, “The massive dependence on migrant labour in urbanised states like Kerala and industrial states like Maharashtra and Gujarat has grown exponentially in the last decade and a half. The shrinking of agricultural land and the seasonal nature of work has traditionally driven such migration. The lack of a formal economy, slack implementation of labour laws and massive corruption has often led to the exploitation of migrant workers. The migration also robs many of them from claiming sops provided by provincial governments, including food rations and other benefits due them.”

Rajeev Khanna, veteran journalist who has been covering Gujarat for over three decades now, writing for The Wire, claims this is a failure of the ‘Gujarat Model’. He quotes social scientist and author Achyut Yagnik, “This is clearly the result of the failure of the economic policy of the government. It has failed to address the jobless youth. Even for the powerful Other Backward Castes (OBC) like the Thakors of which Alpesh is a leader there has been large scale joblessness.”

Yagnik goes on to say that this sort of hatemongering has been of recent vintage in Gujarat, and attributes the recent skirmishes to the politics of hate. “It is the politics of hate that is coming back in new shape. The fomenting of such politics began from early 1980s when an agitation for reservation was successfully converted into a communal conflict by 1985. Thereafter, between 1986-87 and 1990-92 there was a communal strife emerging from the Ram Janambhoomi-Babri Mosque issue. Thereafter, it was the 2002 riots,” explains Yagnik.

Impact on industry

Infrastructure and construction companies in Gujarat could face manpower shortage in the short-term after thousands of migrant labourers left the state fearing retaliatory attacks, writes M Saraswathy on Moneycontrol.

The impact will be in the form of production losses since companies will have to rely on existing workers to complete the work. Depending on the type of industry, absence of labour leads to production loss of 300-400 units of any product on a single day.

“Several workers migrated to Gujarat because such talent was either unavailable locally, or the locals were uninterested in taking up these positions. Hopefully, this situation will ease away quickly,” said Rituparna Chakraborty, senior vice president of TeamLease Services.

The exodus of migrant workers has industrial units worried as they are heavily dependent on labourers from outside Gujarat. This has resulted in production losses of 20% ahead of the festive season. “Over 12,000 labourers from states such as Bihar and UP, employed in North Gujarat, have left for their home states,” said Ajit Shah, president, Sanand Industries Association (SIA), speaking to The Economic Times. Just Sanand has seen 4,000 migrant workers leave the state in the past few days.

A quick resolution will be the key as this is the festive season, and production will be in full swing across the manufacturing sector. Human resource officials said that companies will have to quickly look for replacements while trying to dissuade other workers from leaving the state.

Typically, the core shop-floor jobs are done by migrant workers from other states, predominantly from north India. In sectors like construction, a sudden absence of workers would mean a delay in projects that would impact all other allied sectors.

Aditya Narayan Mishra, CEO, CIEL HR Services said that the sense of panic spread across workers may have led to a large number of workers rushing out. "While this is a temporary issue, since production is at its peak in October, companies will face an impact," he added.

Mishra said that companies will also try to assuage concerns of the migrant workers to ensure that the remaining workers do not leave. He said that usually the supervisors at the large manufacturing companies are from the same region as the workers, so that they are comfortable on the shopfloor.

Vishwanath Pilla, reporting for Moneycontrol, spoke about the potential impact on the pharma sector for which Gujarat is a huge hub. Gujarat is the manufacturing hub for pharmaceuticals, housing over 3,300 manufacturing units, including some of the large drug makers such as Sun Pharma, Torrent Pharmaceuticals, Cadila Healthcare, and Intas, contributing around 28 percent of India's pharmaceutical exports.

Pharma companies in Gujarat hire migrant workers from North India in large numbers through labour contractors on a temporary basis, especially for semi-skilled jobs like fitters, electricians, helpers, cleaners and security guards, among others. Pharmaceuticals companies Moneycontrol spoke to said there isn't any impact on production at their plants, as the unrest is confined to certain pockets of the state. Ahmedabad-based Torrent Pharmaceuticals, one of India's largest drugmakers said it is business as usual at its plants in Gujarat.

Sadly enough, this is not the first time, and Gujarat is not the first place, where the borders we draw for ourselves have become more visible. Perhaps even more sadly, this won’t be the last either. As we hurtle into the 2019 general elections, identity will be weaponised to fuel the politics of hate.

If we recall, in 2008, thousands of migrants from Uttar Pradesh and Bihar fled from Maharashtra after Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS), a splinter political outfit born out of Shiv Sena, headed by Raj Thackeray launched an assault on North Indians. The widespread attacks were sparked off by a clash between the MNS and the Samajwadi Party workers in Mumbai.

Thackeray also made inciting speeches in which he derided Biharis for celebrating their regional Chhath Puja and called it a "drama" and "show of arrogance". He even questioned actor and Uttar Pradesh native Amitabh Bachchan over his loyalty to Maharashtra, accusing him of sympathising with Uttar Pradesh while earning his living in Mumbai. Thackeray and Abu Azmi, an SP leader, were arrested for causing communal disturbance. Fearing for their safety, about 25,000 North Indian workers fled Pune and about 15,000 left Nashik.

Here is hoping that the violence subsides and the migrants who have fled may return home soon, because Gujarat is as much home to them as it is to the Gujaratis.