Bharat Behera has just returned from a long bus journey covering 2,000-km — from India’s southwestern coast to its eastern coast. And, no, it was not an adventure trip.
Mr. Behera’s coast-to-coast bus trip from the industrial hub of Perumbavoor in Ernakulam district of Kerala to the nondescript village of Bagapatia — a rehabilitation colony for climate refugees in Odisha’s Kendrapara district — was unthinkable and unheard of two years ago and was spurred by the COVID pandemic.
With hundreds of youth from Odisha getting ready to migrate to plywood industries of Kerala every year, buses, which were once hired by desperate migrant workers during first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, have now become the vehicle of choice and livelihood for them.
“In April 2020, when train services were stopped due to COVID-19 emergencies, we did not have any option to return home. At that moment our company came to our rescue, hiring a bus for us. We returned home safely,” Mr Behera recalls.
As the economy reopened but with few train services resuming, it became difficult for the plywood factory owners in Kerala to arrange tickets for the workers from Kendrapara to Kerala. It was then that some enterprising bus service providers in Kerala thought of starting regular long distance services. Today, a bus leaves Bagapatia every Friday and reaches Perumbavoor by evening of the following Sunday.
Bagapatia, a coastal village, houses around 570 families from Satabhaya villages that have been steadily devoured by the sea over last three decades which some say is a result of climate change.
The Satabhaya villagers may have found a new home in Bagapatia, but it is Kerala which has become their home for most part of the year due to lack of livelihood opportunities in Odisha. In the village the farm lands are slowly being sand cast or salinated, pushing several families to the brink of poverty with each passing year.
“Of a population of 4,000 population of Bagapatia, nearly 1,700 villagers — both men and women — migrate to Kerala and Tamil Nadu to work. We don’t have any land in our village and there are no industries here those can hire keeping our skills in mind,” Mr Behera said.
“Most men in lower-middle class families leave for Kerala soon after they appear for the Class 10 examinations. Of late, girls in large numbers have also started travelling to Kerala and Tamil Nadu to work in textile industries,” said Sudarshan Rout, a resident of Bagapatia.
To cash in on the demand, travels agencies like CocosKerala have jumped in cater to the migrant workers.
“Initially, we used to charge in lakhs for taking migrant workers from Kerala to Odisha that required crossing four States. And there were many risks involved in the travel too. Now, the bus service has been streamlined. The fare is around ₹3,000,” said Mr. Srikumar, who manages CocosKerala. A bus takes 48-hours to travel the 2,000 km from Kendrapara to Perumbavoor. Kendrapara is yet to be connected with passenger train services and the nearest major train station is Cuttack.
Further, though trains are the first choice for migrant workers, getting tickets is difficult. Migrant workers from coastal Odisha are desperate to leave the State during ever-shrinking employment opportunities back home.
Mr. Behera and his four brothers are now in Kerala working in the plywood industry.
While some are hailing the business acumen of the Kerala-based travel agency to start a bus service from Kendrapara to the plywood factories of Kerala, not everyone sees it as a positive sign.
“The workers leave behind their elderly parents and wives for most of the year. If close to 70% of able-bodied men choose to migrate from one village, the situation in the coastal region can well be imagined,” said Jyoti Prakash Brahma, who has been studying the migration sector for several years.
