Despite poverty, Assamese migrants feel safer in U.P.

The Hindu
Lucknow, May 4, 2014

Despite poverty, Assamese migrants feel safer in U.P.

Omar Rashid

On April 16, Feroz endured a 36-hour train journey from Lucknow to reach his village in Barpeta district in Assam. Eight days later, he went to the Chenga polling booth in his village, Radhakuchi Habi, and cast his vote. He returned to the Uttar Pradesh capital a few days later. The entire trip cost Feroz around Rs.10,000.

Despite his meagre earnings, Feroz travels from Lucknow to Assam to vote in every election.

Ali feared, as always, the possibility of attacks by Bodo militants as the train passed Kokrajhar, a two-hour drive from Barpeta. “The Bodos not only burn our homes, they also attack trains and rob people. They kill us without any hesitation. We breathe a sigh of relief when we reach home,” says Feroz.

Amid the unfolding of fresh ethnic violence in Assam, migrants from the State living in Lucknoware anxious about the safety of their relatives back home. Their only source of accurate information is the television.

“It’s only a matter of time before the violence spreads to other districts,” says Feroz, who is seated in a small thatched hut on the outskirts of Lucknow. He lives with his wife, four sons and a daughter. The violence in Assam, though alarming, is remote. Abject poverty and the terror of floods caused by the Brahmaputra has, over the years, forced thousands of Assamese to migrate to other parts of the country. Around 40,000 Assamese migrants live in the U.P. capital.

The Assamese started arriving in Lucknow three decades ago. Their migration peaked as the Bodoland movement caught fire, says Roli Misra, an academic with extensive field experience on the migrants’ issues. In Lucknow, most of the migrants live in squalor. The majority of these migrants pick waste for a living. But their deepest hurt comes when they are tagged as “Bangladeshis” despite carrying valid identity cards.

It is the concern that his name might be removed from the voters’ list — virtually a loss of identity and cause for persecution — that drives Feroz to vote without fail. “If I miss the vote at home, I fear they will chop my name off the voter list. Then I will have no home, no identity. Here we are always suspected to be Bangladeshis,” he says. Their physical and linguistic resemblance to Bangladeshis makes these migrants easy targets of police harassment. “The society still views us with suspicion. We fear that if we ever get reprimanded, our identities will be used to persecute us,” says Feroz’s son Ali (name changed), who is struggling with his studies in a college in Lucknow.

18-year-old Ali, who follows news keenly, views the violence back home with concern. “How do the Bodos get weapons unless the Tarun Gogoi government is helping them? They aren’t economically better off than us. So who is helping them? Why do only our people die,” he asks. Ali requests this reporter to conceal his identity, lest his friends in college find out about his living conditions. “I tell my friends that I live in a rented apartment. If they find out I live in this condition, I will be mocked,” he said.

Despite difficulties in paying colleges fees, he hopes to find a decent job some day. But few migrants can afford private education.

Administrative apathy and strict regulations make it difficult for migrants to get admission in public schools. The transfer of their voter cards to Lucknow is also hindered by administrative conditions. “They aren’t able to get ration cards in Lucknow as the administration demands that they must first cancel their original Assam-based ration cards,” says Sandeep Pandey, Magsaysay Award–winning social activist. Cancelling their ration cards back home, however, would effectively extirpate their identity.

By terming these migrants as “Bangladeshis”, the administration abdicates all responsibility, says Mr. Pandey. In 2009, he undertook a drive to convince the administration that the people it was uprooting from slums in Lucknow were in fact Assamese.

While things have since improved, the stigma remains in their minds, says Mr. Pandey. Despite that, Zain (25), a waste-picker, is thankful that in Lucknow they have a stable means of living and are secure.