MAHABUBNAGAR:Not a single day passes when a bus, private or RTC, chugs out of the district packed with people who are in search of greener pastures to as far as Mumbai and other cities.
As these people leave in pursuit of their livelihood leaving behind their elderly parents and sometimes their infant children, many of the villages in this drought-hit district have no young men or women left.
“I will come back after six months. Take care of the children and yourself,’’ were the parting words of one of the migration labourers who was about to leave in a bus bound to Mumbai, eyes were filled with tears. This scene is quite common at the bus stops in the district.
The people who migrate from here are widely known as Palamur labour and are present across the country, from Mumbai to other far off places and even abroad. Large number of villages in drought-hit parts of the district resemble ghost villages.
People in hordes migrate to other places from these villages and engage in a number of building construction activities like hamali workers or in some sundry jobs wherever they migrate to. Says 70-year Pulya Naik of Paluguralla tanda in Kodangal mandal, “Nine from my family -- my wife, daughter-in-law, sons and grandsons -- migrated to other places in search of work. We don’t have job to do here and there is no one to come to our rescue.’’
Pulya Naik’s family is not the only family and the count is unlimited in the tandas and villages of the district. The poor reeling under abject poverty often leave their homes including their kith and kin as they can’t afford even two meals a day.
The people in the district were in jubilant mood after the formation of Telangana state and hoped that they would not witness such migrations anymore, but their hopes were short-lived as migrations continue to haunt the district even after new government formed one and a half-a-year ago.
Migrants even meet with fatal accidents working in migratory places leaving no trace. Even the district administration has no idea about the whereabouts of migrants until the news of their death spread across the villages.
For instance, Ravi Naik of Paluguralla Thanda in Kodangal mandal along with his wife migrated to Mumbai leaving behind their children and parents. Unfortunately, Ravi fell from a 10-storey building while working and this left the family struggling to eke out livelihood.
Another labour, Amrya Naik, migrated to Mumbai where he accidentally fell from a running train and died. His widow Kamli Bhai is struggling, moving pillar to post to get financial aid so as to arrange a wedding for her daughter. “For the past 11 years, I have been struggling to meet both ends. Now my daughter is grown up. How can I get her married?’’ she questioned when Telangana Express visited her tanda.
Not just Ravi or Amrya, almost all the people choose to leave their native places as they believe it is their only means of livelihood. While the officials allegedly fail to generate employment opportunities for them, natural calamities such as droughts and rising mercury levels have aggravated the problem further.
The labour department attributes the reasons for this crisis as drought and unemployment in the district. In particular, this year, the small and marginal farmers are hit badly due to failure of monsoon.
Among the migrants, 60 per cent of them are STs and 40 per cent SCs and other communities in the district. The contractors, also called as gumpu maistries prefer these communities as they are illiterate and work for meagre wages.