Two days after his wife urged him to return home in time to vote, Basudev Hembrom reached his village in Jharkhand’s Saraikela-Kharsawan district Tuesday. “People had urged her to call me,” said Hembrom, who works at a construction site in Odisha.
Saraikela-Kharsawan is among several districts in Jharkhand that, along with the state’s Labour department, have for the first time undertaken a coordinated effort to urge migrant labourers to return home to vote.
The efforts include making individual calls to migrants, sending bulk SMSes, reaching out to their families, making sure buses are available from Ranchi to their hometowns, and even contacting their employers. Lok Sabha elections in Jharkhand will take place in four phases – May 13, 20, 25, and June 1.
According to figures from the pandemic years, around 10 lakh migrant workers had returned to Jharkhand during the lockdown. Officials estimate that over 60 per cent have again left the state for work.
“There are around 6 lakh people outside the state who we want to reach out to. Some districts have individual data, and at the state-level, the Migrant Control Room along with the Labour Department is reaching out to 1.7 lakh workers registered under the Inter State Migrant Act. In earlier elections, there used to be a superficial exercise in reaching out to migrants as we had no data. But this time, we are trying our best,” a senior official in the Labour Department said.
Jharkhand’s Chief Electoral Officer K Ravi Kumar told The Indian Express, “We will send bulk messages to all registered workers to come and vote. We have got a list of more than 400 security agencies that employ people from Jharkhand. We are in the process of sending letters to each of these companies too.” He said they would ensure buses connecting Ranchi to other towns and villages “are not engaged in election duty”, and are available for migrants to reach their hometowns from the state capital.
Despite all this, he said, only a small percentage are expected to return. “We estimate that out of the 6-7 lakh workers, only 4-5 per cent will return.”
Travel expenses and loss of wages are among the key reasons.
At just 19 years of age, Vincent Baage, whose father died five years ago, is the sole breadwinner. From Ramdih village in Gumla district, Baage is a welder in Goa, earning Rs 500 on the days he manages to find work. He says he simply cannot afford the cost of travelling back home. “I cannot exhaust my savings,” Baage said over the phone.
According to a Labour Department official, the state Election Commission had said they “cannot provide logistics support to bring the migrants back”.
Their votes could be crucial, especially in seats where the winning margin last time was less than 10,000. In the Khunti Lok Sabha seat, for example, BJP’s Arjun Munda defeated Congress’s Kali Charan Munda by a margin of just 1,445 votes.
Taking this into consideration, several districts have been reaching out to migrants on their own.
Gumla, the home district of around 70,000 migrant workers, has conducted a door-to-door survey and community-level meetings to identify workers. “We have contacted more than 30,000 migrant workers over phone and Whatsapp. We will visit them again during the voter slip distribution,” said Gumla Deputy Commissioner Karn Satyarthi.
One of those who heeded the call in Gumla was 32-year-old Sheru Oraon, who works at a brick kiln in Bihar. He has spent years working as a labourer in several states and has accumulated some savings over the years. He will dip into that as he prepares to head home in time for the May 13 polls at the Lohardaga Lok Sabha seat – one of the constituencies where the winning margin in 2019 was under 10,000. He said he made the decision after getting a nudge from his local booth level officer.
