Analysis | Are migrant workers excluded from Bihar voters' list queuing up to enter Kerala's rolls?

After the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) in Bihar, over 65 lakh names have been deleted from the voters' list. One of the biggest forced exodus from the electoral rolls of Bihar would have been that of the migrant community.

Two of the reasons the Election Commission of India has given for its mass culling of voters from the list are 'permanently shifted' and 'untraceable'. And these apply particularly to out-migrants. The implication is that Bihar natives who are pushed by the lack of jobs to seek work in faraway states like Kerala have left the state for good.

The State Election Commission in Kerala, a state with a sizable migrant population, is in the process of drawing up the final voters' list for the 2025 local body polls. By August 12, the SEC had received nearly 30 lakh applications, an unprecedented number, for inclusion in the voters' list. 

Onmanorama talked to local body representatives, election authorities at the municipal and panchayat level and a top academic on labour migration to see whether there is a significant inclusion of migrant workers in Kerala's electoral rolls, and also whether the guest workers have applied in large numbers this time for inclusion in the voters' list. The consensus was a big no.

"The hearing process is on and I am yet to see a Form 4 (application to include name in the electoral roll) of a guest worker," said Kavitha, the secretary of Perumbavoor Municipality where there is a dense concentration of migrant population. "Of course, there are migrant worker families who have been living here for 12 to 15 years. They speak fluent Malayalam and have voter IDs. But the number is very small," she said.

The secretary attributes the low participation of the guest population in Kerala's election process to the relay-like nature of migration. "Most of these migrants stay for some six months and leave. They are then replaced by a new set of migrants, and this pattern is sustained," Kavitha said.

Eldhose P P, the president of 'migrant worker'-heavy Vengola panchayat in Ernakulam district, said that he had come across just one migrant worker who had applied for inclusion this time. "He is a worker from Tamil Nadu and has been living here for the last 12 years," Eldhose said.  

Joemon, the secretary-in-charge of Ernakulam's Vazhakkulam panchayat, said that only two guest workers (from Bengal) had approached the panchayat for inclusion this time. "They have been here for the last 15 years, and they applied afresh only because they have lost their election ID cards. I don't expect guest workers to turn up in big numbers," he said. Vazhakkulam has a guest worker population of over 6,000. 

He, too, said that most migrant workers would go back after six or seven months. "They also keep moving from one district to the other in search of better opportunities. They arrive just for work," Joemon said.

Benoy Peter, the executive director of Centre for Migration and Inclusive Development (CMID), said that it was deprivation that had driven migrant workers to places like Kerala. "Migration is an act of desperation. If they want intergenerational social mobility (better prospects for children), at least one in the family will have to migrate. There, in their home state, the work is sporadic and the daily wage is a woeful ₹150-200. And there is no prompt wages for MGNREGA work. Here, they get ₹700 and above," Peter said.

But livelihood is not identity. "That is closely associated with their native place. It is their voter ID card that connects them to their home state. Many migrants do not possess any address in Kerala," Peter said.

Migrants might be reluctant to be voters in Kerala, but political parties that are overenthusiastic about adding as many voters, too, are least bothered about getting them into the list. "Only one in 10 migrants are part of any labour unions. If they are made part of unions, they will have to be given benefits enjoyed by local labour like social security pensions," Peter said, and added: "This is also why they, despite the huge numbers, are not politically important."

No one, as a result, is accountable for the plight of the migrant worker. These days, employers also keep a safe distance from migrant workers. They outsource their requirement for workers. "It is a contractor who brings labour to a work site and, therefore, these migrant workers do not find their way into the account books of the employer either," Peter said. 

They are effectively cast out of Kerala's safety net. And back home, at least in Bihar, they would have probably been erased from the voters' list. Tragedy is that many of these migrants, who could have been disenfranchised, would still be unaware that they have lost the most fundamental right in a democracy: the right to vote.