Friday, July 10, 2009

The Orissa migrant workers

Very recently, I had the experience of traveling in a general compartment along the Berhampur route. I bumped into a few migrant loom workers in the overpacked compartment. A few moved from Surat to Tamilandu but their experience has been no different. I am not surprised that Sainath chose to ignore the working conditions in Tamilnadu. Kerala indeed is a paradise for them. An irony that  women migrate out of Kerala as nurses and the men go to work in Gulf.
I noticed that just as Oriya workers have taken to looming, quite a few carpenters are migrants from UP. Language does not appear to be a barrier in trade.
The Hindu : Opinion / News Analysis : More migrations, new destinations

4 comments:

Xinhua Ram said...

Sainath apparently wanted to target the evil capitalists from Gujarat.

kuttychathan said...

People from Kerala go to Gulf, and to work as nurses outside Kerala, because they could earn more money. The poor people from other states come to Kerala to do the job Malayalees are unwilling to do.

I don't think Sainath's omission to report on the migrant labour condition is deliberate. Eventhough he has his strong political views, Sainath never harangues his readers and still sticks to that old objective and sober style of The Hindu.

When all other English newspapers are chasing glitterati, chindu should devote more space for such reports about the real people living in real India, rather than promoting jehadis and secular jehadis, reporting the senile antics of communists and parroting their chinese masters.

kuttychathan said...

One clarification...

The first sentence in my above comment should read " I don't think Sainath's omission to report on the migrant labour condition in Tamil Nadu is deliberate". Sorry.

HF said...

kuttychathan,
this is a fairly balanced article and i am glad sainath chose to write on this topic. i was only trying to point out that he was attempting to potray gujaratis as evil capitalists and keralites as good communists.