Note ban forces exodus of migrant labourers

New Delhi: With the agriculture produce wholesale market and livestock food market taking the beating of currency demonetisation, the daily wage labourer class, especially the migrant labourers, are the worst hit. The correspondent visited city’s railway stations and intern-state bus terminus where scores of workers and labourers are seen waiting in a queue to head home.

In the last one week, the city, which is home to over 1,00,000 migrant labourers, has witnessed mass exodus of migrant labourers due to note ban. While the contractors are weighed down over the scrapping of most circulated high-value denomination notes of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000, the labourers feel that they have been punched hard in the stomach.  

Badri Ram Prasad (45), a contract labour who was working in an under-construction site near Mayur Vihar, had to spend three nights under the railway bridge pavement until he had no choice but to head home. “We were a group of 13 labourers who had come to the city in April from West Bengal and Bihar. Everything was working in our favour until a week back. The contractor who had paid us in advance now says that he has run out of money. For few days we managed to survive, but now we are out of cash and have no place to go then head home.”

Lallan Devrai, a 60-year-old labourer who hails from Muzzaffarpur in Bihar, thanked his stars when he learnt about the scrapping of the notes. Huddled in a group, to get inside the train which was about to leave Anand Vihar Railway Station on Sunday, Lallan with moist eyes told this newspaper, “It was a hard punch in the stomach for workers like us who live on cash daily. I am fortunate that my work in Manasa in Punjab got over in time and I am heading home. However, there are over 2,500 labourers still there in Manasa who are cash-stripped and can’t even go home.”

Since the “Demon”-ti-sation policy — as the labour force and lower working class term it — has come into effect, the lower working class has been severely hit. During the visit, a large number of migrant labourer population was seen living in a makeshift home at railway stations and inter-state bus terminals like Anand Vihar ISBT, Sarai Kale Khan, and New Delhi railway station.