Migrating, within UP

Shahira Naim

He’s the sole owner of an acre of land in Junglepurwa Kutti village, located in the backward block of Reusa in Sitapur, but the income generated is next to nothing. Kailash Kumar thus just had to step out, bag and baggage, for work. He could have chosen Punjab or Haryana, but he opted for the nearest big city: Lucknow. 

“Makes sense, doesn’t it?” he asks, but it’s more of an affirmation than a query. “What’s the point going so far away when I am earning the same amount here? Lucknow is convenient. Things have changed,” he says.

The 28-year-old Dalit toils as a construction labourer, sharing space with a bunch of other daily-wagers from his district below the portico of a nationalised bank in Lucknow’s Vikas Nagar area.

Kailash’s land barely fetches him Rs 15,000 annually on an average. It remains under waist-deep water in the winter months of November and December and for a much longer period in the monsoon season, waterlogged by excess water released from the Sharda Canal. He considers himself lucky if he can manage one crop a year.

What Kailash ensures is sending Rs 5,000 for his widowed mother, wife and three children back home; for himself, he scrapes through from day to day.

His neighbour in the village occasionally works in Haryana and sends home approximately the same amount. “I did not go with him as there is no real benefit any longer. The wages here have risen and I get between Rs 200 to 250 a day. From here, I can reach my village by taking a Rs-60 bus ride. Coming from Haryana or Punjab is expensive and time consuming,” he says.

Many like him have opted for intra-state rather than inter-state migration. Labourers crowding the ‘labour addas’ across the city confirm how with wages going up after implementation of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MNREGA) 2005, it is possible to get relatively decent money for non-farm work in big cities neighbouring their villages.

MNREGA expert and Uttar Pradesh Adviser to the Supreme Court Commissioners for Food Security Arundhati Dhuru says that what has really happened in Uttar Pradesh is indirectly related to MNREGA.

“A very positive impact of MNREGA has been that minimum wages in the rural sector have started rising. Initially, labour was dirt cheap. Now they are bargaining for better wages as the wage rate has gone upward, though it is still very unequal and unjust. This revision is hurting big landowners of Punjab and Haryana,” she says.

However, according to Dhuru, even if MNREGA is 100 per cent successful, it cannot provide proper employment and would have a negligible influence on migration. “It provides for barely 100 days per household. Let’s take the average family size as six persons consisting of at least three to four adults. Even if they jointly complete 100 days, each of them would be getting wages for only 25 to 30 days of work per year. This comes to an average of Rs 4,680 per person annually. Is this sufficient to keep body and soul together?” asks Dhuru. 

A UN-supported study conducted by her brought out the fact that barely .005 per cent households were completing 100 days of work. The average working days per household were not more than 40 days annually. 

The Indian Council for Social Science Research-sponsored studies on the rural transformation of four villages of different regions of Uttar Pradesh, undertaken by the Giri Institute of Development Studies, virtually confirms this trend. 

Dr Prashant Trivedi, who conducted the study in Senapur village of Jaunpur district, says that even before MNREGA, things had started to change. 

“Basically the change in cropping pattern and mechanisation of agriculture was responsible for Punjab and Haryana no longer remaining a viable option,” he says. “Due to mechanisation, there was no prolonged need for labour. The combine harvesters earlier taken on rent from Punjab are being bought by contractors and businessmen even in eastern UP as an investment, further eroding livelihoods depending on farm labour.” 

At the same time, the entry of private players has caused an unprecedented boom in the construction sector, where almost 95 per cent of the non-farm labour is employed in Uttar Pradesh.

However, there is a thin silver lining. In areas where dairy farming is a complementary livelihood activity, the human labour-eliminating combine harvester is not welcome. “In rural Bulandshahr, the dairy farmers do not want mechanisation as it reduces fodder,” says Trivedi. 

As Uttar Pradesh is the largest milk producing state in the country, this appears to be good news for the labourers working in the agriculture sector.