Does Kerala Lead The Way In Offering Social Security To Migrant Labourers?

The present LDF government of Kerala is proactive about providing social securities to its migrant labourers.

- Kishore Kumar Biswas

As many as 15 lakh migrant workers, mainly from Odisha, Bengal and Assam, work in the state. The estimate of workers made by the Gulati Institute of Finance and Taxation, Trivandrum, is much higher, close to 25 lak. The difference in number is due to the difference in the definition of migrant labourer and the method of calculation. But it is also true that the number varies with time. In 2013, the number of migrant labourers in Kerala was the highest there has been a special role of migrant labour in Kerala as it has been famous for out migration of workers to different countries of West Asia for the last 30 years or more. At the same time, it is a receiver of huge migrant labour force from different states of India. The other state is Punjab from where a large number of people have migrated to countries like Australia, Canada, the UK and the US.

Emigration is not a new phenomenon in India. Emigration of Indians is centuries-old. The origin of present day outmigration goes back to the colonial period, with the dispatch of indentured labourers from India to the British colonies in 1824, under a government-controlled system. The British did this with a view to replacing black slave labour with indentured labourers from India, after the abolition of slavery.