At Jharkhand migrant crisis Ground Zero, amid Soren vs Soren, a refrain: ‘Workers fall through cracks in polls’

This contest is said to be more than an electoral tussle – it is a fight for dominance between the JMM and the BJP over a seat known as a traditional JMM stronghold from where Shibu Soren has won multiple times. In the 2019 polls, however, the BJP’s Sunil Soren defeated Shibu by 47,590 votes.

In the midst of the high-voltage face-off, several migrant workers’ families feel that the parties and contenders in the fray have turned a blind eye to their concerns and issues.

“There is a disconnect between political debates and the urgent issues affecting the most vulnerable. Leader ko sirf vote chahiye (Leaders only need votes). Both Mahatab and Salamat would have voted for the first time if they had been alive,” said their uncle Halauddin Ansari. They were cousins and residents of Barmasia area of Shikaripara block in Dumka.

Their case is not an isolated one. Since March 2020, the State Migrant Control Room under the Jharkhand government’s labour ministry has been collecting data on the state’s migrant workers who have gone to various states for their livelihoods. In Dumka district alone, it has so far helped in bringing back dead bodies of 52 migrant labourers, who died working in several states, including Himachal Pradesh and Ladakh, under tough conditions, facing workplace hazards and illnesses. Many of them were said to have voted in the 2019 state and parliamentary elections. Some of them would have been first- time voters this time.

According to the State Migrant Control Room, the Ansari cousins died in a blast in Tangtse area of Ladakh on August 16, 2023 while they were working for a Border Roads Organisation (BRO) project.

“One of them accidentally stepped on a bomb, about which even officials were clueless. The blast was so sudden that we are still in shock. We are devastated,” said Halauddin, who also worked with them in Ladakh. “Although I need to go for work to run my family, it is painful for me to go to Ladakh again.”

Halauddin said they made bricks in Ladakh and got paid Rs 16,900 per month. “The state government gave us a compensation of Rs 1.5 lakh each for the deaths of Mahatab and Salamat, but the BRO is yet to give us any money,” he added.

The JMM-led Jharkhand government had signed a Terms of Reference with the BRO in 2020 to ensure better working conditions for the state’s migrant workers, proposing to sign an MoU at a later stage. The then JMM chief minister Hemant Soren, Shibu’s younger son, even flagged off two special trains full of labourers to work sites in Ladakh and Uttarakhand in June 2020. However, the MoU did not fructify.

Another Dumka resident, Bhairo Mirdha, 25, worked in Himachal for the BRO in 2022 when he was crushed to death after coming under a boulder. His family members received a compensation of Rs 16.6 lakh. His wife Yashoda Devi shifted to her mother’s village along with their three-year-old son. She said she will use the compensation money to build her house and set up a small grocery store. “We know that workplaces could be hazardous, but due to lack of jobs many people are forced to migrate. My husband died in a very dangerous place, but no one talks about the rights of the migrant labourers. My husband voted in the previous polls, but why should I vote,” she asked.

Bhairo Mirdha’s wife Yashoda Devi with her mother and three year old son. (Express photo by Abhishek Angad)

About 20 km away is Narganj, whose resident Ravinder Ray died in an accident on September 29, 2022 in Manipur’s Churachandpur. He was employed as a truck driver by a private company. His wife had passed away earlier.

Ravinder Ray’s mother Kalawati Devi told The Indian Express: “More than 250 drivers contributed their day’s wages and collected money to help us with around Rs 1.5 lakh. However, the company did not pay us any compensation.”

Ravinder Ray’s mother Kalawati Devi with grandson. (Express photo by Abhishek Angad)

Kalawati, who is in her sixties, said it is getting difficult for her to take care of her son’s children. “The political parties could not even get us our compensation from the private company, which is based in Dumka. Whom should we trust? My son used to come for voting always, but our votes or our voices do not seem to matter in the grand scheme of politics.”

Hemant Soren had been vocal on the rights of migrant labourers. In 2021, his government had launched the Safe and Responsible Migration Initiative (SRMI) for data-driven policy making on issues faced by migrant workers. With Hemant coming under a cloud of cases being probed by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) and sent to jail, the issue has been put to the back burner by the JMM government.

In Bada Chapadia Panchayat’s Chhota Chapdia village, which is home to Santal and Pahariya tribes, the family of Maikil Marandi is still grieving his death due to “brain haemorrhage” in Goa in December 2022. Maikil, 55, worked as a wielder and had been there for a month.

His son Charles Marandi, a 21-year-old graduate, said, “In 2022 there was no rainfall, and our lands were dry. My father had taken some loans and wanted to repay the debt, so he went to Goa for work. One day he slept, and never woke up,” he said, adding that his shocked family was asked to come to Goa to collect Maikil’s body.

“If we had money to come to Goa and get the body, what was the need for my father to go? I begged in front of the administration and later the MLA and the mukhiya. The matter escalated and we got the body, but I was devastated by the approach of the contractors and the companies,” Charles said. Unable to find a job in Dumka, he, too, works as a labourer.

He doubts that this election will change anything in the lives of people like them. “I will be voting for the first time, but I am angered by empty promises made by politicians – and neglect shown towards us,” he said.

It is going to be a tight contest in the Scheduled Tribes (ST)-reserved Dumka parliamentary constituency. The three-time JMM MLA from the Jama Assembly segment in the Dumka seat, Sita Soren, 48, turned rebel and switched to the BJP barely two months go, alleging that she had been “isolated by the party and the family members”. She is the wife of late Durga Soren, Shibu’s elder son.

Nalin Soren, 76, has been a popular JMM leader in the belt. He has been a seven-term JMM MLA from Dumka’s Shikaripara seat.