Bhim Mahto, a tribal from Hazaribagh in Jharkhand, had his wallet pickpocketed on a Delhi bus recently. He lost cash, his driving licence and his voter’s identity card. In more than 20 years that he has worked for me, I have rarely seen him in such distress. It wasn’t the theft of the money or the driving licence he was agitated about — these could be acquired again with some effort — but the loss of the pehchan patra, his voter’s ID, was incalculable. Ever since the old ration cards became obsolete as proof of identity, and until such time as Nandan Nilekani’s UID cards materialise, a voter’s ID is the migrant’s lifeline in cities like Delhi. It denotes proof of residence, security of tenure and shield against harassment by police and petty officials. Bhim Mahto’s panic was aggravated by the fact that, state and general elections being over, it would be a while before he could get on to the electoral rolls again.
From Maharashtra to Punjab, Uttarakhand to Goa, anti-migrant speeches by political leaders are getting shriller by the day, with Shivraj Singh Chouhan, chief minister of Madhya Pradesh, being the latest to stir the hornet’s nest by exhorting industry in the state to give jobs to locals instead of Biharis. Chouhan backtracked after across-the-board criticism of his xenophobic outburst, but Raj Thackeray has won his political spurs with the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena winning 5.7 per cent of the vote in last month’s state election, and effectively splitting the Shiv Sena base, thanks to his Marathi Manoos ideology.
Thackeray’s vitriolic attacks against the dadagiri of migrants from UP and Bihar last year led to thousands fleeing the cities of Pune, Mumbai and Nashik, followed by violent reprisals in Bihar. “Mumbai cannot take the burden anymore,” he said in an interview last year. “Look at our roads, our trains and parks. ...The footpaths too have been taken over by migrants. The message has to go to UP and Bihar that there is no space left in Mumbai for you.” Even liberal chief ministers like Sheila Dikshit, now into her third term, find a convenient handle in anti-migrant rhetoric: “These people come to Delhi from Bihar and Uttar Pradesh but don’t ever go back, causing burden on Delhi’s infrastructure,” she said not long ago.
Its rapid rate of urbanisation, vast tracts of land from neighbouring states absorbed into the National Capital Region and employment opportunities in six satellite towns such as Noida, Ghaziabad, Faridabad and Gurgaon, with populations of between a quarter and half a million each, make Delhi one of the top three destinations (together with Maharashtra and Gujarat) for migrants in the country. Thousands like Bhim Mahto flock to the city-state each year. The 1991-2001 census recorded the city’s population at 13.85 million, a decadal growth of about 47 per cent, though it had crossed 17 million by 2009. Roughly two million of these are rural migrants and more than half the migrants, according to the latest Delhi Economic Survey, come from the states of Uttar Pradesh (43.56 per cent) and Bihar (13.87 per cent). The large majority is engaged as construction labour or in petty trades; only a small minority has professional employment.
They may have jobs, but they live in precarious, illegal shelters without access to basic sanitation, sewerage and healthcare. Increasingly, their existence is imperilled by demands of proof of identity — a ration card, electricity bill, or voter’s ID. The city-state of Delhi has been ruthless in sanitising the urban poor in its effort to become a “world-class city” and “showpiece of the country”. Municipal authorities and land-owning agencies have neither the land nor resources to provide housing; over-zealous courts and powerful residents’ associations drive out slum-dwellers and squatters to city’s degraded periphery.
Bhim Mahto was fortunate in one respect. He had encountered a sympathetic pickpocket. A few weeks after his theft, a grubby envelope arrived in the post with his voter’s ID and driving licence returned, but minus the cash of course. He tells me that he can sleep soundly once again as no power can turn him out of Delhi.
