Death In the Village

It’s an umbilical severance, but the migrant worker will return to take that only chance for life: the city

After the initial sense of grand tragedy ebbed, the image of lakhs of migrant workers returning to the village brought about a nostalgic turn in the minds of some urban commentators. They were once again seduced by the notion that the Indian village is an endur­ ing space from an ideal past—the last refuge of sanity, order and values in times of global disarray. A resilient idyll. Some were moved to recall the gram swaraj alternative as envisaged by Gandhi. Some felt it was a reading of val­ues that had exerted its pull on migrant workers: they had seen through the cit­ies as a morally doomed hell, and their love for the villages seemed infinite on the rebound. The city appeared heart­ less, the village compassionate. But all that vicarious love sprang in urban hearts without conceding the fact that the Indian village is itself the problem. It is the first of the maladies for migrants, the very reason why they are migrants.

The problem of migrant workers is not to be defined in terms of a choice be­ tween village and city. It is about a condi­tion in which they are neither part of the village, nor part of the city. Privileged migrants can belong anywhere. They can feel equally at home in Sydney, Dubai and Toronto..and move seamlessly bet­ ween Gurgaon’s Cyber Hub and Koramangala’s pubs. They are in ‘home­ towns’ when they come to Patna, Patiala and Palakkad. Villages are their ances­tral lands. But the migrant labourers are literally called pardesi/bidesi at home and pardesi outside. ‘Those who have gone to other lands’, and ‘those who have come from other lands’. Outsiders in the village. Outsiders in the city.