The other Zubeen: Why deaths of Assam’s migrant workers have not stirred election debate

Zubeen Nath was supposed to come home in February for Bihu, to celebrate his wife’s birthday.

Instead, the phone rang at his neighbour’s home in Assam’s Chirang district on the afternoon of February 13.

When his mother answered, she was told that the 26-year-old had died in an accident at the tile construction factory in Bengaluru that employed him. “Someone told her that our son fell into a machine and died immediately,” his father Ananta Nath told Scroll.

Incredulous, his father called his son’s number and an Assamese contractor picked up. “He told me that my son was lying under a machine, applying grease on it, but nobody had noticed him,” Ananta said. “Someone turned on the machine and he got trapped. His body was split into two.”

The next day, Nath’s body was brought home with the help of a contractor.

Zubeen Nath had been working at the company for about five years. He is survived by his parents, his 20-year-old wife and a one-year-old son.

Nath’s father said the owner of the Bangalore company gave the family Rs 50,000 to perform his last rites. “But we have not got any help from the state government,” he added. “The local MLA and government officials visited and only gave us assurances.”

Unlike the death of singer Zubeen Garg in September, which plunged Assam into deep grief, Zubeen Nath’s demise went unnoticed.

He is not alone. Altogether 162 workers from Assam, who migrated outside for work, died between September and February 2, according to a statement by Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma, who admitted the situation was “concerning”.

He said that the mortal remains of the 162 workers were brought back to the state under the Assam government’s Shraddhanjali scheme. No other state government in India has introduced such a scheme, Sarma said.

In the last six months, migrant workers from Assam have lost their lives in accidents across the country – three of them died in a fire in a Goa nightclub, eight died in Meghalaya’s illegal rat-hole mines, nine workers were killed in an accident at a construction site in Chennai, and four were found dead in a rented room in Bengaluru.

Scroll spoke to families of eight migrant workers who died in this period. All of them said they had no other options but to migrate as jobs had dried up in the rural economy. Several belonged to tribal communities or were tea garden workers, some of the most marginalised groups in the state.

Scroll emailed the chief minister’s office, asking for details of the 162 dead workers, the reasons behind their deaths and their age profiles. The story will be updated if there is a response.

In the Assembly, Opposition MLA Akhil Gogoi said the deaths of workers was an indictment of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party government.

“People of the state are being forced to go outside to work as security guards or daily wagers in Chennai or Bangalore because there is no work in Assam,” Gogoi said. “They don’t have any job security. There should be a right to work in the state.”

But Gogoi’s intervention was a rare one. The deaths of migrant workers has got little attention from Assam’s political parties, even while the state is headed for an Assembly election.

Manoranjan Pegu, a trade union activist and political commentator from the Mising community, one of Assam’s largest tribal groups, said the identity of the dead explains the lack of any political backlash. “Who are these migrants? Mostly tribals, working-class Hindus or Miya Muslims from rural villages,” Pegu said. “This cannot be spun into an identity issue or an Assamese versus non-Assamese problem. So, it is not favorable for electoral benefits.”

‘Almost every family has a boy working outside’

In Bengaluru, Zubeen Nath earned Rs 30,000-Rs 35,000 a month, breaking stones at the tiles factory. “The salary was regular even though the work was tiring and hard,” his father said.

A college dropout, he had returned to Assam from Bengaluru during the Covid-19 lockdown in 2020. But had to go back because there was no work in Barpather, a village near the Manas National Park, close to the border with Bhutan.

Like him, about 150 youths from the village went back to the cities in search of work. “In our village, almost every family has a boy who works outside,” Anant Nath said.

The reasons for the exodus are many. While farming is the main occupation, crops are increasingly under stress from elephant attacks, Anant Nath said.

“My home is close to the Manas forest. So, there has been an increase in elephant raids,” Anant said. “Almost every day, the elephants break homes, kill people and destroy standing crops.”

Erratic monsoons and depleting groundwater reserves have also increased the challenges for farmers. “The 80-feet deep well does not have water now,” Nath said. “We are buying water or bringing it from others. The fields are dry. The farm yield is not enough and not self-sustaining. That’s why people are leaving.”

‘Breakdown of agriculture’

Experts Scroll spoke to said that the outmigration of youth is driven by the absence of opportunity at home. Sociologist Chandan Kumar Sharma pointed out that most migrant workers from Assam are being absorbed into the informal workforce in metropolises, where jobs have no security.

“This indeed speaks of the breakdown of agriculture and meaningful rural livelihoods for the youths in the state,” Sharma, who teaches at Tezpur University, told Scroll.

The government’s own figures speak of the scale of the migration. According to a 2020 report prepared in the backdrop of Covid pandemic by the Assam government’s think-tank, State Innovation and Transformation Aayog or SITA, 25 lakh workers from the state work outside the state in low-end jobs.

“For the last many years we have seen outmigration from Assam since agriculture could not provide financial gains except subsistence,” the report by the think tank on the state’s agriculture and allied sectors said.

The absence of opportunity has led Assam’s workers to take on unimaginable risks.

“My relatives are not alone to sign up for life-threatening jobs,” Iqbal Ahmed, a resident of Katigorah area of Cachar district, told Scroll.

Ahmed’s three cousins died in a blast in a set of illegal rat-hole coal mines in Meghalaya’s East Jaintia Hills district on February 5. “If you work the whole day in Katogorah, you may get Rs 200 or Rs 300, while working in the mines fetches you Rs 1,000-Rs 1,200 a day,” he said.

About 25-30 migrant workers from Katigorah had died in Meghalaya’s illegal mines in recent years, he claimed.

Ahmed added: “If you want to survive, you can’t think of death.”

‘It is destiny’

Several of those forced to do hazardous work outside the state come from tribal communities.

Take Paban Sorong. The 34-year-old man from the Dimasa tribe worked in Delhi as a security guard before moving to Chennai as a construction worker.

Last September, he was among nine tribal migrant workers from Assam’s Karbi Anglong and Hojai districts, who died at a construction site in a special economic zone near Chennai.

The men were at a height of more than 20 feet when the iron scaffolding installed for the construction of an arch collapsed.

Sorong’s father Nabin Sorong said his son earned Rs 20,000 at the construction site. He explained that his son had to take risks because they can no longer depend on agriculture for their livelihoods.

Sorong’s family was luckier than others. They received Rs 17 lakh as compensation – Rs 10 lakh from the Tamil Nadu government, Rs 2 lakh from Centre, and Rs 5 lakh from Assam government. The family received compensation as they died while working on a power plant being built by Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited, a public sector undertaking.

Sorong was resigned to his son’s fate. “It was destiny. We can’t blame anyone,” he said.

The exodus of tea garden workers

Among those forced to take desperate measures are Assam’s tea garden workers. Last year, the Assam Chah Mazdoor Sangha, the largest and most influential trade union of the plantation sector, raised an alarm, flagging a sharp rise in outmigration of workers.

A clear reason is the abysmal wages that they earn – tea workers in the Brahmaputra Valley earn Rs 250 per day, while those in the Barak Valley are paid Rs 228 per day.

“It was hard to survive with this little money,” said Bidya Chatriya, whose brother Dhiren worked in the Gelapukhuri tea estate in Tinsukia district.

A few months ago, Dhiren and other tea garden workers moved to Arunachal Pradesh to work on construction sites. “They were promised a daily wage between Rs 500 and Rs 700, depending on the working hours,” Bidya said.

In December, Dhiren was among 21 tea labourers killed after a truck they were being transported in met with an accident in Anjaw district in the eastern part of Arunachal Pradesh on the night of December 8. Senior superintendent of police, Tinsukia, Mayank Kumar Jha, said the labourers were being transported illegally without proper documentation or safety measures. Two people were arrested on charges of human trafficking.

Questions on Assam development

The large exodus of migrant workers puts a question mark on the BJP’s development claims, observers and ordinary residents said.

In the Assembly, Raijor Dal MLA Gogoi too questioned the BJP’s record of development. “It has only made flyovers in the name of development,” he said.

Tapan Sarma, the general secretary of the Centre of Indian Trade Unions, criticised the Assam chief minister for launching a scheme to bring bodies home. “Has the government figured out why they needed to go so far in the first place? What has it done for the safety and economic security of the workers at home?” Sarma said.

Bishnu Jyoti, a tribal resident of Lakhimpur, agreed. “The BJP government talks day and night about development,” he said. “But this development exists only in speeches and advertisements. Otherwise young boys from tribal villages would not have to travel thousands of kilometers to work as security guards, delivery boys, construction workers, and restaurant workers,” he said.

Jyoti added: “Many of them live in unsafe conditions. Some of them never return home alive.” He was referring to four Mising young men from Lakhimpur, who were found dead in a rented room on the outskirts of Bengaluru in January.

Sarma, the senior trade union leader, admitted that Opposition parties too have failed to speak up for the working class. “Assam has 91 lakh workers – both from organised and unorganised sectors – which is more than 30% of the state’s total population,” Sarma said. “But we have failed to highlight their issues.”

Jyoti said the government’s welfare and cash-transfer schemes have not changed the lives of people in rural Assam. “People cannot live on small benefits and temporary schemes,” he said. “They need permanent jobs and stable incomes. But instead of jobs, the government spreads hate and fear.”