Jobless migrants return, villages despair

In different times, the Farakka Express going from Malda to Delhi sometimes carried 3,000 passengers in its six general bogies, against a capacity of 600. 8220;Now the general bogies run empty,8221; says Station Manager Dilip Chouhan. Sale of tickets is down from Rs 10 lakh per day to Rs 3 lakh.

About 400 km from Kolkata, migrants streaming back from across the country have brought the pain of the global economic meltdown to the district of Malda.

More than 60 per cent of the populace of the district migrates to states like Haryana, Rajasthan and Andhra Pradesh every year, feeding largely the real estate sector with skilled as well as raw labour. In the Chanchol sub-division, 2.5 lakh of its population of 9 lakh used to leave homes for work. Now as construction grinds to a halt, their worlds are falling apart.

8220;Last year I worked for eight months, this year only for four. I had a contract for 90 days with the thikadar, I left after Eid, and was sent back after 10 days. They said there is no work. When I ask the local thikadar here, he says that the market is bad. But I have five mouths to feed,8221; says a despondent Mannan.

His wife Soharbanu sits in a corner, wrapping up bidis in empty packets of skin ointments.8221;The skin on my husband8217;s hands is peeling off. The doctor says it8217;s due to working with cement and other chemicals,8221; says Soharbanu. 8220;Right now I don8217;t have the money to buy the medicines prescribed.8221;

Fifty out of the 90-odd families of the village of Jotegobindo, a Muslim-dominated area 10 km from Malda town, have seen labour layoffs.

Mannan was one among the group of 50 people who left for Hyderabad and Secunderabad in the first week of October for work, with contracts of 60 days and advance payments ranging between Rs 5,000-Rs 6,000. Most came back within 20 days.

The project managers of construction companies like Shapoorji Pallonji, B L Kashyap and Aparna Construction generally get in touch with subcontractors in Malda to arrange for bulk labour from villages through middlemen termed as dafadars. They too are counting losses.

8220;In the small area of Kaliachowk alone, there are more than 1,000 subcontractors who send out about 5,000 labourers per day. We pay about Rs 6,000 to each labourer for a period of 60 days and we quote the price as Rs 6,500 to the contractor, giving us a profit of Rs 500 per labourer. Obviously, more the number of people we send, greater the profit,8221; says Mohammed Imrail Haq, who has been in the business for more than a decade now.

Haq says his Rs 27 lakh are stuck with Shapoorji Pallonji alone. 8220;We pay the labourers in advance. But when they are sent back, the company does not pay us and the poor labourers also cannot return the money. I have debts over Rs 70 lakh in the market from banks and sahukars, who we call public banks.8221;

Banks too are treading with caution, with many carrying bad loans. 8220;There is no scheme for loans for the labour business. We are aware that local subcontractors get loans sanctioned under businesses like dealerships, manure plants and silk reeling and use them in the labour business,8221; says Amrito Sarkar, field officer of United Bank of India, Jalalpur branch.

8220;We currently need to recover Rs 7 crore from the market. Thirty per cent of the amount has already gone bad and a big chunk of the remaining 70 per cent is under question,8221; said a source.

Like Mannan8217;s wife, many women have taken up bidi making and silkworm cultivation to supplement their incomes. 8220;We get Rs 4 for making 100 bidis. If we all work together, we can make upto 500 bidis and earn Rs 20,8221; says Sufiya Bibi, whose husband has just come back from a Greater Noida project of Parasnath Developers.

The picture of gloom continues through every village, in every household. In Uttardariyapur Nayabasti, 25-year-old Abdul Alim, the only breadwinner of a family of eight, has returned from a Ludhiana residential complex site. 8220;My contract was for 50 days. I took an advance of Rs 5,000, but was sent back after 20 days,8221; says Alim.

From 2.5 kg rice and 1 kg vegetables every day, the family8217;s diet is down to 1.5 kg of rice and no vegetables. Alim8217;s 41-year-old mother Manjura Bibi made a decision recently to ensure their situation doesn8217;t get worse. She visited the local health centre and got contraceptive pills. 8220;I have six children and cannot afford to have any more,8221; she says.