The Punjab chief minister called for a boycott of ‘people from UP and Bihar’ as Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra watched on. His remarks have prompted a sharp response from rivals AAP
Charanjit Singh Channi stoked a row on Wednesday, days before the state of Punjab goes to polls — 20 February — when he called upon Punjabis to “unite” and not let ‘bhaiyas from UP, Bihar and Delhi’ enter the state.
Addressing a roadshow in Rupnagar, along with Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, Chief Minister Charanjit Singh Channi said, “Priyanka Gandhi is the daughter-in-law of Punjab. Will not let the ‘Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Delhi de bhaiye’, who have come here to rule, enter the state.”
His remark was met with criticism by the Aam Aadmi Party.
AAP national convener and Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal termed his Punjab counterpart’s comments “very shameful”.
We take a look at the issue of migration of people from Uttar Pradesh and Bihar to other parts of India, and when their migration has caused a controversy in the past.
Migrants of UP and Bihar
Residents moving from the states of UP and Bihar to other places, in search of employment and a better life is an old practice.
These migrants are in most cases employed as cheap labour, service providers, businessmen, entrepreneurs, lawmakers and bureaucrats, and they contribute to the economy of states where they migrate.
According to the 2011 census, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar are responsible for the most migrants with 20.9 million people migrating outside the state from the two states.
The 2011 census also showed that Delhi and Mumbai house the most migrants. According to it, migrants from other states in Delhi and Mumbai numbered 9.9 million, or almost a third of the combined population of 29.2 million in these two metropolises that year.
A February 2020 study conducted by the Institute of Population Sciences, more than half of the households in Bihar are exposed to migrants to more developed places. The survey had revealed that the highest migration occurred in the traditional pocked of Saran, Munger, Darbhanga, Kosi, Tirhut and Purnia.
The survey also said that season migration — moving away only for a specified time period — is more predominant in Bihar. It reported that 31 per cent from Bihar migrated to Punjab, 27 per cent from UP migrated to Maharashtra.
Labour migration from Uttar Pradesh is dominated by low skilled males from rural areas. They typically come from households with small landholdings and work as agricultural labourers to supplement their income.
Today, agricultural income alone is inadequate for meeting the basic needs of rural households. As a result, many labourers are less interested in agriculture and keener on construction, carpentry or masonry and other types of casual work in the informal sector. Realising there are opportunities outside the state, they move to destinations such as Delhi, Maharashtra and Gujarat within India and the Gulf countries.
Punjab too has a large number of migrants.
Indian Express in a 2020 report had quoted Mohd Ghulam, chairman of the ‘Punjab Parvasi Cell’, as saying that Punjab has 70 lakh migrants from outside, of whom not less than 30 lakh were from Bihar.
In many cases, as Free Press Journal reported, the ‘bhaiyas’ have ceased to be birds of passage; they have settled down in the state, own property, and also have voting rights, thereby becoming an important element in the changing demographic profile of the state.
Migrants from UP and Bihar have also become an integral part of Kashmir’s economy. While they come from various states, including Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh, those from UP, Bihar and West Bengal form the bulk.
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The Union Territory administration has no compiled data, but industry and trade bodies put their figure between two and four lakh. However, research scholars studying migrant patterns, and the 2011 Census data, say their actual numbers could be over 11 lakh in Kashmir Valley alone.
They are spread across sectors such as agriculture, manufacturing, construction and brick kilns, or work as barbers and hawkers.
Turning on the ‘bhaiyas’
Migrant labourers from Bihar and Uttar Pradesh have often been at the centre of political rows and received hate from states in the past.
In the early 2000s, the Shiv Sena and Maharashtra Navnirman Sena targeted the UP and Bihar migrants.
MNS chief Raj Thackeray had made comments threatening to brand Biharis as infiltrators. He had threatened to force the people of Bihar out of Maharashtra if authorities in Bihar took legal action against Mumbai policemen who had picked up a teenager on charges of vandalising the martyr’s memorial during Azad Maidan protest on 11 August 2012. Later, Shiv Sena’s Uddhav Thackeray also joined his cousin Raj Thackeray to support the latter’s hate campaign against the Biharis.
The Centre had then written to the state government saying it needed to ensure full protection to everyone.
Back in September 2018, the rape of a toddler in a village near Himmatnagar in north Gujarat by a migrant worker from Bihar set off a chain reaction of retaliatory violence in central and north Gujarat towns where industries employed a large number of cheap contract labourers from Uttar Pradesh and Bihar in preference to the locals.
The violence led to an exodus of the migrants back to their homes, leaving industries severely crippled. At the time, around 342 people had been arrested for the violence that erupted in the districts of Gandhinagar, Ahmedabad, Patan, Sabarkantha and Mehsana.
With inputs from agencies
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