In search of livelihood - mirages beckon

Migrants have always been numbers for urbanites - in school as a lesson, for sociologists as a research subject, for politicians as a convenient manipulation for attention getting, for NGOs the reason for existence, for the genteel folks a nuisance, a suspicion of lurking danger and what not.

You see them in construction doing hard labour, as waiters in restaurants/resorts/canteens trying to look 'butlery' and trying very hard to speak in English, in beauty parlours trying to pass off their looks as Chinese, in entertainment/amusement parks as dancers and stuntmen, as carpenters, marble workers, painters, glass workers and so on and so forth. Living at workplaces in cramped quarters and muddied surroundings, packed together, earning, earning and earning, even if they are pittances. They save all year, and once a year go home to their families. Only to come back and start at the lowest rung of the ladder once again in the same old cramped hells. How come we don't seem to give them more than a passing glance? How do we take their existence as pieces of furniture? We have no time. We have no energy to take rest from our own rat race. We simply think of it is their bad luck - or more callously - their own doing because they are illiterate or poorly literate. We also 'generously' pride ourselves as a land of opportunities as the South is more progressive than the regressive north and that people have no language problem here in Hyderabad and it is somehow to our credit that people come all the way here to look for job opportunities!

And of course, we don't mind them working on Sundays and holidays (excepting if they are working in malls and they are forcibly closed down by authorities - this definitely affects our convenience!). Why have become like this? Why have I become like this? Though I do think of them, and I also tried to help one or two people - sometimes without much success for helping them with transfer of an account or safe keeping some papers, or guiding them to doctors after my initial OTC drugs do not alleviate their symptoms, I have actually not gone beyond that. Then one day it hits you in the face in full force in seemingly innocuous situations.

Like when I met Nepali cooks (young boys really) in the deep hinterland of the South in Trivandrum! The guest house happily had these two boys, who lived behind the kitchen, which fortunately was decent even if quite small and cooked good food, both North Indian and South Indian! You are of course delighted that you can eat roti that tastes like roti and speak in Hindi, specially after a day of hearing Mallu accented English. Then it strikes you - how did they ever think of coming 2000+ miles away from their homeland, to another country? How did they come? How did they know about this place called Trivandrum in their little village in Nepal. How are they managing to buy groceries and vegetables - how did they manage to learn the language which we never seem to learn beyond a few words and which are usually used to amuse your hosts? They came because one of their village friends landed up a job here, having answered as advertisement, by a stroke of luck really because clerical jobs do not come for people from so far away. After that, there has been a steady stream of his people from the village and he and his brother also came over. They know that they have to work hard for something that would not be enough compensation anyway. And to think of it - they spend nearly Rs 4-5000 in travel fares after depriving themselves of any luxuries!

Even NGOs to a certain extent with a miniscule number of migrant labour on health issues, there is nobody for the rest of the multitude of migrant labour. Will Nandan Nilekani's project help them in any way? It would be worthy of a Nobel Prize if the identification system can help them access PDS, gas, health and other critical and basic citizen facilities.

There are non-migrants too amongst other professions like drivers, mall workers, who do not get a day off and work log shifts. The swank and efficient airport cab services where the cab driver pays a deposit of Rs 10,000, gets trained and then pays Rs 1000 flat every single day of the month irrespective of business, buys his fuel, carries out his repairs and dreams of the car ownership after four years! A car that has run heavy mileage with not a single day's holiday for him. Where is our collective conscience? What can I do? What should I do?