Westward Ho: Why young men from Tripura are moving to Gulf countries - but making a stop in Chennai first
Tripura is close to Bangladesh, and hence migration to the Gulf countries is a popular route out of poverty and unemployment here.
Muzaffar Ali is watching three girls play hopscotch in the street. The tallest among them completes the first stage and is now attempting the arduous task of carrying back the stone on her right foot “We don’t play it like that back home,” Muzaffar says, “We carry the stone on our head.”
The 19-year-old from Tripura sports a light stubble and hair slicked back, shorter on the sides. It goes well with the blue slim fit shirt that sits unbuttoned on his narrow shoulders, showing the white vest underneath. An army print capri hangs loosely around his legs and plastic slippers with green straps hug the feet.
It is his fourth day in Chennai. He looks at the sea with the eyes of someone who has never seen the coast before. The magnitude scares him but the sea also soothes him. “I sat on the beach for two hours yesterday,” he says, “And I cried, thinking about home.”
He whiles away the hours watching Hindi movies on phone, sleeping and chatting with the other boys in the dark, stuffy room at the Srinivasapuram slum where the Adyar river meets the Bay of Bengal. Assamese security men, Rajasthani carpenters and Odia cooks live here alongside Tamil fishers, and auto mechanics. Lovers scrawl their names on the ruins of houses that the sea clawed down in 2017, during a severe storm. Lorries of bubble-top cans, the only source of drinking water, jostle for road space with cars outside local service stations.
Muzaffar is waiting for three more boys from Tripura to arrive, so that all of them can join as kitchen assistants at a five-star hotel. For them, the go-to person in this unfamiliar city is Ali Hassan, 25, who came to Chennai four years back from Kailashahr district of Tripura and is now a supervisor of housekeeping staff.
A clean-shaven man with keen eyes, Hassan arranges everything for the new migrants. He picks them up from the airport or railway station, arranges accommodation and police verifications, provides professional training and ensures a regular supply of workers to the informal job market, all for a commission of Rs 1,000 per recruit. “Not everyone can be a facilitator,” Hassan points out. “It depends on the level of intellect and natural instinct. You also end up helping your own people along the way.”
Tripura has the highest unemployment rate in India at 19.7 per cent, as compared to the national average of 4.9 per cent, said the Ministry of Labour’s Annual Employment-Unemployment Survey, 2015-16 report.
Unemployment becomes a key issue during state Assembly elections. Tripura ranks 24th among 33 states and Union Territories in per capita income. The per-person income in the state in 2015-15 was Rs 71,666, as compared to the national average of Rs 86,454. Geographical isolation and inadequate infrastructural facilities have often been cited as reasons for such performance.
“There is no company in Tripura, no industry,” says Rakib Ali. “We have farmland back home. My brother works as a decorator for weddings, but there is not enough money for all of us in that work.” A seeker of solitude, he sits outside while his roommates enjoy a siesta, or a movie on their phones. His broad, stout frame is an anomaly in the sea of frail bodies of the migrants in Srinivasapuram.
Ali has been in Chennai for the past six years. Earlier, he worked at a construction site in Tripura. “It was hard job. I started working very young, after my father passed away,” he says, fighting back tears. “I will get a passport soon, and convince my mother to let me go abroad.”
He has saved enough from his salary, Rs 10,000 a month, to fund the passage to Saudi Arabia.
Each one of these young men has a plan — they know what they will be doing in five,10, 20 years. Life is a game of hopscotch; the moves have been charted for them by those who have gone before. Spend four-five years working in a big Indian city, save money to move to one of the Gulf countries, work there on a higher salary and return home with bigger savings. Life can wait. “My mother is looking for a girl, but I want to earn enough money first,” Ali says. “Then I can start a family.”
Tripura had the second highest number of emigrant households, after Sikkim, among north-eastern states, according to the NSS 64th Round Migration in India 2007-08 survey. It had 28 emigrant households for every thousand migrant households, as compared to 14 in Meghalaya, three each in Mizoram and Arunachal Pradesh, two in Assam and one in Nagaland. This can be attributed to Tripura’s geographical and demographic attributes, which differ from its neighbouring states.
Tripura is surrounded by Bangladesh on three sides and has a majority Bangla population due to migration since ancient times, which accelerated during the 1947 Partition of India and the 1971 war for the liberation of Bangladesh.
“Bangladesh has high rate of emigration to Gulf countries and thanks to easy movement of people and news, this trend easily caught up with Bengali men in Tripura. Bereft of a decent work opportunity and large land holdings, this seems like the best available option to them,” says Hasina Kharbhih of Impulse NGO Network, which has been working on the issues of unsafe human migration, exploitation and trafficking in north-east India and bordering countries, including Bangladesh, Nepal and Myanmar. “In the absence of proper information, they end up paying hefty amounts to unscrupulous recruitment agents.”
The trend of emigration is escalating even among the state’s tribal population. Bhola (19) belongs to the Tripura or Tripuri tribe. His family has a small rubber plantation which does not provide sufficient income.
The 12-by-12 feet room he shares with five other boys in Sreenivaspuram is criss-crossed with two nylon ropes bearing piles of clothes, both washed and unwashed. Several bags lie stacked along one wall. Three mats are laid out on the floor. The ceiling fan whirrs futilely overhead, merely distributing the hot air around the room. The grey wall of the kitchen shelf is turning black from the soot from the kerosene stove.
Most boys sit out in lungis, out on the terrace to enjoy the evening sea breeze. A couple of them bathe in the saline groundwater, readying for the night shift. Their vacated sleeping slots will soon be taken up by the ones coming back from their day shifts.
“Water is not good here but there is no other option. Canned water is costly and only used for drinking,” Bhola says. “In Tripura, rivers are clean and there are wells and ponds within our compounds.”
These young men, and the dozens more like them who pour into Chennai by the day, see these hardships as a necessary step to their future. In contrast, many unskilled or semi-skilled emigrants from India mortgage family properties or take loans, often from recruitment agents, at high interest rates to meet the migration cost.
“Such a practice increases the vulnerabilities of migrant workers manifold,” said a 2015 report by International Labour Organization on migration from India to the Gulf countries. “Several cases are reported in which workers are forced to work in deplorable conditions because of the huge debt burden incurred during the pre-departure phase.”
“Internal migration also prepares the workers for a life outside home,” says Dr Irudaya Rajan S, a professor at the Centre for Development Studies, who has researched the emigration from Kerala and Tamil Nadu. “They learn to cook, negotiate language and cultural boundaries, and gain experience at a workplace, which helps them abroad.”
Things can still go horribly wrong, however.
Gopal Das, a 36-year-old driver, had to be rescued from Saudi Arabia in 2017 by the Ministry of External Affairs after he sent an SOS video over Twitter. Das was hired as a family driver, but was forced to work on farms without salary or food.
“Whenever I asked for money, they threatened to kill me,” he says, on phone from his native Barapathari village in South Tripura district. “I am glad to be out of there, but in Tripura, I am not getting regular work. Sometimes I think about going back. Maybe I will get lucky this time.”
The writer wishes to thank the National Geographic Society and the Out of Eden Walk, whose 2018 Journalism Workshop supported the creation of this project.