“Paniya ke jahaj se paltaniya bani aiyah piya, lele aiya ho piya sendoor Bengal ke [while you come back by ship once you become a soldier, O dear do bring vermilion from Bengal]”, demands a waiting wife in a popular folk number in Bihar. The song goes on to extend the wish-list to the gifts the migrant husband is expected to bring from distant states like Punjab and Rajasthan, and finally from the native land of Bihar too.

The ship has obviously made way for overcrowded trains and the would-be-soldier has disappeared into millions of migrant workers boarding these trains. It isn’t clear whether their families call them back or make them overstay at home to vote. Political parties would want them to do so. But, politics in Bihar seems resigned to the fate of millions of missing migrant voters of the state.

In the recently concluded three phases of polling in different regions in the state , absent migrant voters again showed how the electoral exclusion is becoming part of the social exclusion of the migrant workforce. The invisibility of migrant voters was again the norm — particularly in the constituencies that come under Kosi, Seemanchal and Mithilanchal regions of the state. In the remaining phases of the polls, the same pattern would persist and go unnoticed.

Though  migration of all types of workers – skilled or unskilled, white-collar or blue-collar – is a reality in all parts of the state, the labour outflow is far more intense in flood-prone regions of Kosi, Seemanchal and Mithilanchal. While a significant part of migration is permanent, there is also a pattern of seasonal variant dictated by flood cycle as well as demand-supply factors in the agriculture labour market. This is evident in  the labour outflow from Supaul, Saharsa, Madhepura, Madhubani, Darbhanga, Sitamarhi, Araria, Kishanganj and Katihar districts.

Of late, the schedule of  Lok Sabha elections have coincided with seasonal outflow, particularly with harvesting season in north Indian states of Punjab and Haryana. Besides assured work in the fields and factories of distant states, though braving quasi-racial abuse and bad living conditions, the migrant labour has been attracted by better wages in different parts of the country.

It’s relevant to note a piece of statistics stated by Bihar government in its Economic Survey two years ago. The 2017 study said that per capita income in Bihar is only 35 per cent (Rs 36,964 per person annually) of what it is in India as a national economy. One more figure may also be significant here to see how migration might be driven by very slow rate of urbanisation in the state which, in turn, has restricted employment avenues. While the rate of urbanisation in India advanced from 27.8 per cent to 31.2 per cent during 2001-2011, in the same period urbanisation in Bihar grew a mere by 0.8 per cent, from 10.5 per cent to 11.3 per cent.

The low wages for labour has been a matter of historical continuity in the state — something that has been traced to as far back as the days of the Magadh empire. Historian D D Kosambi had argued that two thousand five hundred years ago, Arthashashtra noted that the lowest annual wage paid by the state was sixty pannas (one panna was a silver coin of 3.5 gram standard) for menial and drudge labour.

That means that the minimum wage was set at 210 grams of silver, which was “almost exactly what was paid to the lowest Indian labour by the East India Company in the early eighteenth century”. Identifying the continuity Dr Arvind N Das wrote in The Republic of Bihar about three decades ago, “Even at today’s prevailing price of silver, it can be calculated that drudge labour are paid almost same amount in money, which their forefathers were paid in silver two-and-half millennia ago.”

However, the last three decades have pulled that wage rate up by a significant degree, and even the forms of economic engagement have diversified in the state. Yet such changes have been slow and haven’t been enough to curb the flow of migration. Alternatively, it can be said that such developments haven’t kept pace with the opportunities in other regions of the country. The sheer number of people from the Bhojpuri heartland you find on railway platforms rushing back home for Holi makes you think that the upswing in wage rates has been at the cost of many waiting and complaining wives.

Almost a decade back, a study by Indian Institute of Public Administration (IIPA) estimated the number of migrant workers from Bihar in different parts of the country to be in between 4.4 and 5 million, and growing rapidly. That number could be way higher today. Unsurprisingly, the study found work to be the prime reason driving migration, far above other two reasons: education and marriage.

While policy wonks and economists can ponder over these numbers and key factors driving them, trains have become the prime site of the scale of migration. A case in point is how Jan Sewa Express, the daily Saharsa-Amritsar train, is popularly called Palayan Express (Migration Express). The scale of labour outflow in the  flood-affected Kosi and Seemanchal divisions is growing beyond earlier estimates. According to a recent newspaper report, 50-60 per cent of the total 2.60 crore people living in these divisions migrate seasonally or even permanently. For people migrating to work as agricultural labour, the seasonal cycle is more important. The same report says that during peak seasons, 25,000 to 30,000 workers leave for Punjab almost daily from Saharsa and Katihar railway stations.

Only a small number of such workers migrate with the family, most leave their families – particularly women members – in their native places. It would be interesting to see whether this is one of the factors behind the fact that women voter turnout outnumbered  that of the male voters in the Lok Sabha polls in 2014. Registering the highest female voter turnout among big states in India, the number of women in Bihar who actually voted  in 2014 Lok Sabha polls was three per cent higher than that of  male voters. A sociological look at the phenomenon of missing migrant male voter would be useful in understanding this gender shift in the turnout figures.

York University-based political scientist Professor Indrajit  Roy has been researching the electoral exclusion of a group as large as the migrant workforce. He says: “This problem has been reported for general elections as well as the Assembly elections in states such as Uttar Pradesh (UP) and Bihar. A study I conducted in rural Bihar during 2016 found that almost half of the 6,000-odd respondents reported being unable to return home to cast their vote during the Lok Sabha elections of 2014.” 

“An earlier study conducted by the NGO Ajeevika and their partners (Ajeevika Bureau, 2012) revealed that over 60 per cent of migrant workers were unable to cast their vote in at least one election held during their adult life for the simple reason that they were away from home”, Roy says while putting in perspective the magnitude of the exclusion in the absence of any mechanism that enables migrant workers to exercise their electoral choice from their place of work.

His study has convinced him of the need for an institutional as well as political initiative to stop this unintended, yet profound, disenfranchisement of the worker-on-the move. “Politicians, the legislatures and institutions such as the Election Commission of India need to take cognisance of their electoral exclusion and ensure that migrant workers can exercise their franchise as citizens, irrespective of their physical location on election day. Their electoral exclusion ill behoves the world’s largest democracy.” Roy writes.

Amid various social challenges that await migrant workers, their irrelevance in the electoral process has been less talked about. It’s time India pays attention to this.