For the migrant community faced with absolute poverty and hunger back home and forced to risk a return to their workplaces amid the spread of COVID-19, the arrest of three among them on suspicion of terror links could not have come at a worse time.
The three arrested persons hail from the border district of Murshidabad in West Bengal. The incident may prove damaging for the Ernakulam-Murshidabad inter-State migrant corridor, one of the longest and most thriving migrant corridors in the country. About 30% of all migrant workers in Ernakulam are from Murshidabad, which also accounts for 74% of the total workforce from West Bengal.
Benoy Peter, executive director of Centre for Migration and Inclusive Development, traced the birth of the corridor to the late 90s, coinciding with the Supreme Court’s timber ban in the North East in 1996. “It badly affected the forest wood-based plywood industry in Assam, which had a monopoly in the sector at that time and proved a blessing to the rubber wood-based industry in Perumbavoor that started thriving. This led to an exodus of workers from places like Nagaon in Assam to Perumbavoor who had Bengali as their mother tongue and connections in Murshidabad district. That social networking-based migration led to a surge in the migrant flow from Murshidabad to Ernakulam over the years,” he said.
Mr. Peter said that at present almost all families especially in Damkal and Jalangi community development blocks within Murshidabad had someone working in Ernakulam and seemed to know the names of even remote places in the district. “Along with their counterparts from Tamil Nadu, the workforce from Murshidabad now dominates the footloose migrants engaged largely in unskilled and semi-skilled jobs. mainly in places such as Muvattupuzha, Angamaly, Kalady, Perumbavoor and Piravom,” he said.
George Mathew, coordinator of Progressive Workers’ Association, said the arrest could reassert the baseless public perception of migrants being criminals besides strengthening religious polarisation. “This could even be part of a now-familiar ploy in the country to propagate majoritarian politics, using enforcement agencies,” he said.
Mr. Peter said Kerala society, historically dependent on expatriates, should be more compassionate and not resort to “othering”. “The majority of migrants are law abiding citizens and if this incident were to trigger xenophobic sentiments driving away migrants, then it will be self-defeating for the economy and industry that will come to its knees without them,” said Mr. Peter.
