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Description
For 20 years, Sanjay Giri, 42, a native of Odisha, worked as a gardener in Kerala, earning around Rs 20,000 a month. Recently, he signed up as a salesman in a garments shop despite income dropping to Rs 15,000 a month because he is employed "on all days''. Sanjay does not want to return to Odisha. He sends money to his family and visits them during holidays. "I came to Kerala in search of work as I was unemployed back home,'' he says. Sanjay is one of the 24 lakh migrant workers who have flocked to Kerala in search of a livelihood in the past two decades. Unemployment back home is the common thread running through their tales of migration. In Kerala, jobs are as plenty as the wages are high — a farm hand earns as much as Rs 700-800 a day — and that has attracted thousands of people from UP, Odisha, West Bengal, Assam, Rajasthan, Jharkhand etc. Perumbavoor, about 40 kms from Kochi and a hub for plywood manufacturing, is the exemplar of migration to Kerala. There are around 1 lakh migrant workers in the small town, mostly from Assam, Odisha, West Bengal and Bihar. "Malayalis go to Gulf countries to make money. Kerala is the Gulf for these workers,'' says MM Mujeeb Rahman, president of Saw Mill Owners and Plywood Manufacturers Association. R Mohan, a local resident, says 80% of the people he meets on the street on Sundays are migrant workers. They work as gardeners, casual labourers, shop assistants, waiters in hotels, construction workers etc. Of late, they are also entering new lines of work such as rubber tapping, coconut harvesting, kitchen hands etc. "My maid and gardener are migrant workers," says Bindu Nair, a resident of Kochi. The house maid works in five houses and earns nearly Rs 20,000 a month while her husband, a gardener, makes another Rs 30,000 a month. "They live well, go to the upmarket Lulu mall for shopping and save a part of their income," she says, adding that the couple has saved enough to buy a plot of farm land back in West Bengal.
Keywords
livelihood, Odisha, migrant workers, unemployment, Kerala, migration, migrants, income, West Bengal
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