Migration-an annual ritual for these farmers

​Sadasivpet (Sangareddy): J Sanjeevaiah owns just one acre of land in Chintakunta village of Kosigi mandal in Kurnool district of Andhra Pradesh. He cultivated onions in his little farm land in kharif 2016 by investing more than Rs 30,000. As onion prices have crashed recently, he realised that he could hardly recover the investment by spending more on labour to harvest and transport the produce to the market.

He left produce of approximately150 quintals of onions in his field itself without harvesting. His survival spirit has led him to migrate to Athmakur village of Sadasivet mandal in Sangareddy district, Telangana, along with his wife and four sons. Sanjeevaiah is not the only migrant. There are almost 500 migrant workers who travel all the way from Rayalaseema region to Athmakur every year to pick cotton.

According to Bimbadhar Chary, a resident of Athmakur, every year Rs 5 Crore worth cotton is procured from the village, which is one of the highest yields in Sangareddy district. Not just the ones affected by falling prices of onions, but there are also land owners from Rayalaseema who go through this annual migration because of severe drought conditions prevailing there.

Narasamma is one such farmer who owns 6 acres of land in kosigi mandal. Due to severe drought this year, she lost Rs 1 lakh which she had invested in cultivating chick pea crop, which failed. “There is no irrigation in our village and irrigation tanks have become dry. We are not left with any other option but to migrate,” said Narasamma. She has three sons.

It is a well known fact that Rayalaseema region has been reeling under severe drought for decades and no efforts have been put in by either previous or the present State government of Andhra Pradesh to address the situation prevailing there. Not only from Kosigi, but migrant workers from Pattikonda and other mandals of Kurnool district also migrate to this village during this time of the year.

Faulty implementation of NREGS has only worsened the situation. The migrants say that they get NREGS work for hardly 1.5 months in a year and that the discrepancy between actual work given and the amount for the number of work days and labour claimed by the officials is huge and this exposes the level of corruption existing there.

It is not that these migrant workers see greener pastures in Telangana. They come here because they need to survive and take care of their family to live for another day. They get Rs 7 for picking 1 kilo of cotton. The maximum a family can pick in a day is 50 kilos. That way, they would be making around Rs 20,000 at the max for two months they work here. They take care of relocation, food and all other personal expenditure. Not to mention they live in small tents in camps located in several places in the village wherever cotton is grown.

Migrant workers from Kurnool district have been coming to Athmakur annually to pick cotton ever since the 1990s. These migrant workers come along with their little children who discontinue their schools in the middle of the academic year. For two months they pick cotton in Athmakur and then migrate to Guntur district for the next three months to harvest green chilly crops there.

This means, they go home only after Ugadi, just before the final exams are held in various schools of Rayalaseema. In a single camp one would find around 30-50 children living in these tents. It is the duty of Department of Education to arrange temporary educational camps wherever migrant children are located, irrespective of where they come from. From what was seen in Athmakur, no such camps were arranged with volunteers.

They can also temporarily accommodate these children in local ZPHS Athmakur school so that they don't miss out on syllabus and are prevented from working in the cotton fields. Bimbadhar Chary is willing to teach the children if the officials of Department of Education can temporarily hire him. He completed DEd and is waiting for DSC notification to be issued by Telangana government so that he can realise his dream of becoming a teacher. The land owners-turned-migrant workers are mostly from Boya and Lambada communities.