Patna: Indian states such as Punjab and Haryana are sending special buses to Bihar to bring back farm labourers for the paddy transplantation work to be started soon in these states. With most of the migrant labourers having returned to their native towns and villages in view of the nationwide lockdown over the coronavirus pandemic, the agricultural sector in many states across India is staring at an acute shortage of labourers. In Bihar alone, close to two million migrants have returned home by train since the Railways started running Shramik Special (Labourer Special) trains from various locations across the country from May 1.
Villagers and officials said around 100 labourers have boarded special buses sent by affluent farmers from Punjab and Haryana over the past two days while many more buses are scheduled to arrive soon. The labourers who have already returned by these buses to Punjab and Haryana are from Muzaffarpur and Sheohar districts of Bihar.
Offering good wages
Village Council chief Umesh Paswan said the labourers were returning to the northern Indian states as better employment opportunities are available there. Secondly, they are being offered good wages. He claimed that he had tried to convince the farm labourers to stay back, but they didn’t show much interest.
Efforts by the local police team to stop the group of farm labourers from leaving were futile, too.
“Soon after getting the information, we sent our staff [members] to the villages and tried to stop the labourers, but they refused,” local police official Munna Kumar Gupta said. According to him, two buses carrying farm workers have already left the areas while two more are set to arrive soon.
Another village council official from Muzaffarpur said around 30 migrant workers have left for Rohtak in Haryana by a bus that had been sent especially for them. “We were informed that a special bus had reached our area from Haryana, two days ago, and returned with some 30 migrant workers on board,” Village Council chief from Turki Panchayat, Mamata Devi, said. She, however, claimed that the labourers who left for Haryana were not the same migrant workers who had returned to Bihar during the lockdown. Rather, these labourers had been staying in the village for long.
‘No source of income’
She further said the labourers get handsome wages for farm work in other states and hence they migrate out of Bihar. “Compared to what they are paid in Punjab and Haryana — Rs1,500 [Dh73] to Rs2,000 a day — they get roughly about Rs500 in Bihar. So, they have been migrating out of the state,” she added.
Another group of labourers left for Punjab from West Champaran district on Monday. “We don’t have any option other than leaving for Jalandhar [in Punjab] as we don’t have any source of income right now and are burdened with debt. The long period of lockdown has already made our condition miserable,” said Vashishth Mahato, waiting to board the Satyagrah Express at Bagaha railway station along with many others.
The migration of workers from Bihar continues even though the state government has conducted skill mapping of the returning migrant workers and promised to provide them with employment in Bihar.
Lack of industries
The state government said the migrants would be provided with jobs under various government schemes running in the state, but the workers aren’t convinced given the lack of industries in the state and farm work getting more and more dependent on technology. The lone hope for these workers is the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), though only unskilled labourers stand to benefit from this scheme as skilled and semi-skilled labourers show little interest in taking advantage of MGNREGA.
