Kerala racism towards migrants

IN Regional Media | 24/05/2015
A debate on a Kerala channel that vented hatred of migrants was an example of the way the media fails migrant workers.
REJIMON K asks why they are given short shrift. Pix: asianetindia.com
Other than in news of African and Middle Eastern migrants drowning in the ‘graveyard’ of the Mediterranean Sea or in news about the remittances sent by non-resident Indians, migrant issues have never found much of a place in Indian news bulletins. 
 
When they do feature, the treatment is poor. On Friday night, a leading television channel in Kerala had a discussion on internal Indian migrants causing ‘trouble’ in Kerala. As the state is booming from the remittances sent by their own migrants in foreign countries, especially from the Gulf, and because it has minimum wage protection systems in place, thousands of labourers from north India for the past few years have been flocking to Kerala to find a job, mainly in the construction sector. 
 
For most of them, Kerala is a Gulf country where they can find a decent job and better pay, without needing a passport and visa. Yet, even though the state depends largely on remittances from Keralites working abroad, a mood of hatred in Kerala towards these migrant labourers is often voiced and the same hatred was heard in this TV debate.
 
Called “Should we fear migrant labourers?”, the hostile debate was an oddity given that the channel itself has offices in Gulf countries and depends on advertisement revenues from the Gulf. 
 
The debate revealed the channel’s immaturity and lack of understanding of the complexities of migration. In fact, worse, the channel was sending a wrong message with the angle it took. Even odder was that all the panellists were criminologists and policemen. Since when have they become experts on migrants?
 
By inviting such people, who spoke in racist terms, the TV channel portrayed migrants as criminals and outsiders who create trouble in society and pollute the race or culture. One police officer even went so far as to say that, after a few decades, it will be hard to find a ‘pure’ Keralite due to the influx of workers from other states.
 
The white police officers who shot unarmed black men in the United States recently and the European Union parliamentarians who strongly advocated stopping migration from the Middle East and North Africa, and the ministers in Indonesia who kept the Rohingyas on their boats, harboured the same attitude.
 
Apart from this channel, reporting on migrant issues generally tends to be half-baked in the Indian media as a whole. Whether it is stories on NRI remittances ($70 billion) which is more than double the foreign direct investment received in 2013-14, or the issues faced by Indian labourers who seek to find work in far off cities, the media simplify the issues. 
 
If they were to fail to understand the nuances of the Rohingyas from Burma being ping-ponged in the sea or the migrants from North Africa who try to cross the Mediterranean, I could understand. After all, these tragedies do not have much news value in India owing their remoteness. But at least there should be a good grasp of the woes of internal migrants surely? Don’t these stories of men and women leaving homes in search of a better life far away have any news value? Don’t they need responsible reporting?
 
A report from UNESCO states that India’s internal migration accounts for a large population of 309 million as per the Census of India 2001, and by more recent estimates, it is 326 million (the National Sample Survey Organisation 2007-2008). That is nearly 30 per cent of the total population.
 
The report also reveals that internal migrants, of which 70.7 per cent are women, are excluded from the economic, cultural, social and political life of society and are often treated as second-class citizens.
 
“The constraints faced by migrants are many - lack of formal residency rights; lack of identity proof; lack of political representation; inadequate housing; low-paid, insecure or hazardous work; extreme vulnerability of women and children to trafficking and sex exploitation; exclusion from state-provided services such as health and education; and discrimination based on ethnicity, religion, class or gender,” the report adds.
 
The contribution that migrants make is hardly ever commented on. Their monetary contribution alone is huge. Yet the Indian media still trivialise migrant issues or discuss them in simplistic terms as outsiders versus insiders. 
 
In India, other than P. Sainath, the former Rural Affairs Editor of the Hindu, nobody has discussed internal migration seriously. It is an important subject. It should be handled with a humanitarian approach. Migrants are also human beings. They too have rights. It’s time their rights and their difficulties were given the space and the sensitive reporting they deserve.  
 
Rejimon K is Senior Reporter (Multi Channel), Times of Oman. 
 
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