By: Garima Pundir
While going around some of the major towns of Uttarakhand, a not so uncommon sight is a group of people huddled at a corner of the street, smoking beedi, ropes slung over their shoulders, waiting for someone to either assign a work to them or relaxing only to continue their ongoing task. The most common job taken by the Nepalese in the Indian Himalayas is that of a porter. In Uttarakhand towns, the Nepalese labour dressed in rags or in kurtā-salwar, a jute bag (bori) on their back, are part of the landscape. Hanging around markets or standing at strategic places, in front of wholesalers or at bus stops, they spend their day unloading trucks and carrying loads to every corner of the towns. The various cities, towns and villages of the Kumaon-Garhwal region of Uttarakhand have been receiving significant number of immigrants from the Terai region and far western hills of Nepal. These migrant labourers are often considered as the backbone of this region’s economy. This movement is known to the locals and country in general, but hardly do we know about the impact of their presence in reshaping the social, cultural, infrastructural, governance and political affairs of the state.
According to the 2001 Nepal census, more than 77% of absentees (young Nepalese workforce ) are to be found in India. Migration from mid-western and far-western regions to the Himalayan Indian state of Uttarakhand has only seen an increase. The supposedly short term labour migration often ends up becoming a permanent one (though not legal) for these immigrants who face the brunt of identity crisis in the destination. In many instances, these migrants are part time peasants in Nepal and part time workers in India. Migration to India is circulatory in nature. The practice of migration for work in India starts often at a younger age, and many continue to travel back and forth until they are old.
Choosing a destination
Factors such as proximity to their home country, availability of work and social networks in the destination, ease of adapting in the living environment influence the choice of the destination by migrants.They have to find a balance between socio-economic constraints in the destination and their ambitions . In Uttarakhand, the trend of local population leaving their ancestral homes has become a common scene where doing manual work remains highly stigmatised due to factors of caste and social status. The local people prefer to move to plains because it provides them better work opportunities in the hospitality industry, private farms and government sectors. Moreover, mobility always leaves an impact on shedding the cultural and professional identity of people once they move to a new place. People are often ready to do a menial work in a new place where their identity remains anonymous rather than doing the same work in their villages or birthplace. This exodus of people from the hills has left many villages of Uttarakhand ghostly. It’s in these barren hills that the Nepalese are working in their agricultural fields, finding shelter in the abandoned houses of the locals.
For people from far-western Nepal, going to Uttarakhand is easy because of the geographical proximity, the similar language, and because the mountain environment is like the one they leave behind. Migrants find that the degree of foreignness in Uttarakhand is less than it is in the Indian plains. Moreover, the fact that many Nepalese are present in Kumaon-Garhwal gives a Nepalese touch to the towns. Despite this feeling of familiarity, working in Uttarakhand is highly disparaged whereas unknown places in India are sometimes idealized as places where one is treated with a lot of respect. However, few migrants in Uttarakhand have ever worked elsewhere. Finally, for people from border districts, migration is a simple process: very little money is needed to eat and sleep on the way. Financial issues do not really explain the differentiation between destinations. In border towns, shopkeepers readily give credit to migrants, who pay off the loan and buy goods when they go back home. The proximity to origin from destination of migration has also provided them a kind of flexibility that they can frequently visit their native place in relatively less fare than from plains of India’. In other way, this short distance provides these immigrants with affordable travel fare.
How they are referred
Throughout India, the reputation of Nepalese as brave, hardworking, trustworthy, honest, and cheap labor makes them prized workers. This social labelling means that the Nepalese are sought after solely on the basis of their reputation but it also confines them to lowly jobs, which are synonymous with “immigrant jobs” . The range of available jobs is limited to unqualified, casual, and badly paid work, mainly as porter or roadworker. The most common way they are referred being that of porter (coolie) in towns where all goods and commodities are carried by workers on their backs. In Hindi novels set in Kumaon in the 1930s or 1940s, the Nepalese are synonymous with coolies who carry luggage or palanquins (dandi) (Brusle, 2018). These immigrants are locally known as “Bahadur” or “Mate”. Some people also call them “Dotiyal”.Once a migrant arrives in town, he can start working as a porter, with just a jute bag on his back to protect it and a strap to carry loads . Bahadur is the name given by Indians to any Nepalese working as a chaukidaar (guard). At the same time, a Nepali going to Gujarat to work as a watchman chooses to be called Gaurishankar, a “religious name”. By adopting new names, migrants want to keep a distance between both their selves: the farmer, attached to his land in Nepal and the worker. Once they return home, they go back to their real identity and leave behind the hated character they are forced to adopt.
The work they do….
The stays of Nepalese labourers in India are shorter (but more frequent) and can be fitted in with the agricultural calendar back home. Men can thus work in India in the winter off-season, i.e from November to April, and in summertime when work in the paddy and maize fields back home can be done by women and children. In extended families, family members may be dispersed: one brother goes to Uttarakhand and comes back to the village to plough fields, another works in Delhi to secure a regular income, and a third stays in Nepal to run the farm. This strategy of risk minimising and labor sharing fits in with the New Economics of labour migration (Stark and Bloom 1991).
“Destinations in India are usually associated with a specific kind of job. The range of available jobs is limited to unqualified, casual, and badly paid work, mainly as a porter or roadworker. The main niche is the one of porter (coolie) in towns where all goods and commodities are carried by workers on their backs. The Nepalese taking up the work of a watchman or security guard prefer to work in major cities of India such as Delhi, while they prefer to take up seasonal or agricultural work in other parts of the country. In Uttarakhand, the jobs available can be undertaken for a shorter span of time and are easier to handle for people who have less manpower at home or who cannot pay daily laborers to replace the missing manpower. These tough men also make their way across the state, and are even active on the trekking routes to the Kuari Pass and Dayara Bugyal, lugging rations into the valleys and up to the mountaintops. But their most lucrative offering is the Char Dham Yatra that Uttarakhand is renowned for. It’s during this season where the Nepali porters carry devotees to the pilgrimages (Brusle, 2018). Apart from these jobs of porters, labourers and security guards, many of these migrants also go to the Terai (southern plains bordering India) and to India in wintertime to sell refined butter (ghiu) or medicinal herbs, or to graze buffaloes.
In some cases, ambitious migrants usually begin by working in Uttarakhand as coolies, and as the years go by, their aims change, as their social and financial capital increases. There is a constant desire to move their coping strategies (of trying to make a living in the provided conditions) to that of accumulative one (the process of of gaining social and other capitals). If an opportunity arises, they are able to move on to a more accumulative strategy by opening a small restaurant. As a consequence their status is enhanced along with their financial capital, and their migration destination becomes entrenched. Running a cheap food outlet enables migrants not only to step out of the labor class, but to earn more money and even to bring their family to India. One of their two main aims is to send their children to private school, the other one is to buy land in the Terai plains of Nepal (Brusle, 2018).
State negligence
The way Nepali immigrants faced center and state government negligence in terms of affordability, accessibility, and availability of basic civic amenities. Neither state government of Uttarakhand nor any state representative of Nepal has come forward to acknowledge their concern. Till this date, the problems of these immigrants have not been discussed in any media and academic circle.These Nepali immigrants work in various parts of Uttarakhand with bad compensation and no recognition suffering more in terms of social security such as banking, insurance, and. government jobs. Thus, these immigrants render without any welfare mechanism from the governments of India and Nepal as well.
Lack of any proper registration system by the government makes accessibility to bureaucracy harder for these immigrants. Despite the legal rhetoric, the Indian state treats the Nepalis laborers as rights-less, non-citizens. Their precarious economic and political position means that they do not risk themselves further by demanding citizenship and labor rights from the supposedly liberal Indian state, but help grease its increasingly liberalizing economy as docile and cheap laborers
References:
- Bruslé, T. (2006). The world upside-down: Nepalese migrants in Northern India. Kathmandu
- Stark O, Bloom DE. (1991). The new economics of labor migration. The Migration of Labor. Oxford, United Kingdom: Basil Blackwell
- Brusle, T. (2018). Choosing a Destination and Work: Migration Strategies of Nepalese Workers in Uttarakhand, Northern India. Mountain Research and Development, International Mountain Society, 2008, 28 (3/4), pp.240-247. 10.1659/mrd.0934 . halshs-01694741. Retrieved from: https://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/halshs-01694741/document
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