Amidst Lok Sabha elections, migration of labourers from Bundelkhand continues

BHOPAL: Election commission's campaign to mobilise voters to exercise their franchise notwithstanding, for the poor migrating from the parched

Bundelkhand

of Madhya Pradesh- satiating the hunger is the obvious first priority. Polling doesn’t douse the fire of empty stomach, they say.


A large number of people migrated barely few days before the polling and a large number of villages in districts of Tikamgarh and Chattarpur wore deserted looks with only aged and firm left behind.

As crop cutting is over, a large number of villagers are migrating to bigger cities to places as far as Mumbai, Bengaluru, Delhi and to the cities of Punjab among others. In the midst of the elections or even on the polling day, railway stations of Khajuraho, Jhansi and Chattarpur and the bus stands were full of the poor migrating to other places .

Polling was taking place in three

Lok Sabha

seats of Bundelkhand in MP – Damoh, Khajuraho and Tikamgarh- on May 6.

The day polling was to take place, Hiralal of Tindari village in Tikamgarh , proceeded to Karnataka.

When asked why he was not staying back for polling, the middle aged man who looks much more elder than his age posed a counter question, “pet bharna jaroori hai ki vote dalna” (is it necessary to feed yourself or vote?). He said that he was migrating to Karnataka and had been doing so for the past 15 years.

This is not the story of Hiralal alone. A large number of villagers in this part of the backward region are forced to leave their families every year.

“There is no water, no employment, and no hope for food here, so what should we do and stay back”, said Guddi, a tribal woman, also of the same village.

Likes of Guddi and Hiralal remain in constant touch with a contact in some distant corner of the country. He is in fact an agent or middleman who supplies labourers.

The number of those migrating from the region may be in lakhs.

The officials in these districts have started a control room during the elections to get in touch with the labourers and are requesting them to come back to cast their vote.

But the labourers ask, “Who would pay and what if my salaries are deducted? I may be sacked too if I violate the terms and conditions of the agent.”

Nitu Mathur, CEO of the district panchayat of Tikamgarh said, “We have created a database of 12,000 people who migrate. We also have their phone numbers and we contact them asking them to come back and cast their votes.”

She said, “We also tell them that their salaries cannot be deducted. We also ask them to give mobile number of their employee so that they can also be directed to send the labourers back to cast votes.”

She claims that the response is "positive" and many have returned.

But Siyabai, a labourer who was packing her belongings in a sack to move out to Jhansi first and then to Delhi said, “No one returns only to cast their vote.”

Sanjay Singh, an activist who works in Budelkhand, said, "Successive governments have betrayed these villagers. Water and food security continue to be the biggest issues."

They get both outside Bundelkhand on the footpath of bigger cities.