Nirmal Mishra (50) has been working on a building under construction at Thakurdwar, in south Mumbai, for over two years. But he has been moving from one construction site to another in this sprawling city for over a decade. His home and family are both in Jharkhand, where he tries to make it once a year. Though the upcoming Lok Sabha polls matter to him, he will not be able to go back home to vote.
“I came to Mumbai because it was very difficult to earn a living in Jharkhand. Now, it doesn’t make sense going home for the election because I will lose daily wages. I make about Rs. 250 per day. I cannot afford to buy a train ticket and lose money here,” Mr. Mishra says. He has missed the last three Lok Sabha elections. However, he does try to make it for the local elections.
Every year, waves of people travel from rural areas across the country to Mumbai and other urban areas, looking for ways to make a living. Of them, few are able to go home to vote.
The 2001 Census figures, the latest available, show that 1.57 million migrants from outside Maharashtra came to Mumbai in the period 1991-2001, which amounts to nearly 15.7 per cent of the total population. The 2011 Census figures on migration are yet to be released.
“The Lok Sabha polls are always held in April-May, a period when people leave their villages in search of jobs. One can usually find people in their villages during the harvest season. Even if they want to register their names in the new city, how many actually have the relevant documents?” asks Ram Kumar, an economist at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) Mumbai.
Ask Milan Khamali (30), who came to Mumbai from Nandigram in West Bengal six years ago. “It would be simpler if our names got added on the electoral list here, but that was never my priority. I wanted to first get basic things like a ration card organised,” he says.
The government does not consider short-term migration for this purpose, says migration expert D. P. Singh, from TISS.
