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Journal of Agrarian Change, Vol. 3 No.

3, July 2003, Meanings


Changing pp. 395–433. of Seasonal Migration 395

‘They Used To Go to Eat, Now They


Go to Earn’: The Changing Meanings
of Seasonal Migration from Puruliya
District in West Bengal, India

BEN ROGALY AND DANIEL COPPARD

This article uses migrant workers’ testimonies to analyse whether and how
much the act of migrating seasonally for wage work has contributed to chang-
ing social relations. We investigate changes in the meaning of this kind of
migration to workers involved in it over their working lives. The emergence
of peasant capitalism in West Bengal from the 1970s resulted in more days
work and higher wages for migrant workers. This made it possible for wage
workers to view migration as a way of earning and accumulating a useful
lump sum, rather than simply surviving through food payments during the
period of work, as had taken place in the past. However, there was no
general move away from the compulsion to earn a wage through hard manual
labour. Through the testimonies, we explore the ambivalence of migrant
workers towards changes in the relations of production at home and at the
destination workplace.
Keywords: seasonal migration, peasant capitalism, West Bengal, India

INTRODUCTION
Seasonal migration for manual work from rural areas has increased dramatically
in India since the 1960s (Srivastava 1998; Byres 1999, 13). In West Bengal, the
number of migrant workers in rice production in particular has grown markedly
since the 1970s, when a second crop, cultivated outside the monsoon season and

Ben Rogaly and Daniel Coppard, School of Development Studies, University of East Anglia, Nor-
wich NR4 7TJ, UK. e-mails: b.rogaly@uea.ac.uk; d.coppard@uea.ac.uk
This paper draws on the findings of a larger research project on seasonal migration for rural manual
work in eastern India. We are grateful to co-researchers Jhuma Biswas, Abdur Rafique, Kumar Rana
and Amrita Sengupta, with whom we discussed and developed some of the ideas in this paper; to
Sujata Das Chowdhury, who assisted Daniel Coppard with the life history interviews, and sub-
sequently transcribed and translated them; to Phillip Judge for Figure 1; to Mark Holmström, Susan
Johnson, Catherine Locke and Valerie Roberts for comments on an earlier draft; and to Terry Byres
for the thoroughness of his suggestions for changes to the first version submitted. Rogaly is grateful
to Elena Ruiz-Abril for research assistance. None of these people are responsible for the views
expressed here or any errors, nor is the Department for International Development (UK), which
funded the research.

© Blackwell Publishing Ltd, Henry Bernstein and Terence J. Byres 2003.

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396 Ben Rogaly and Daniel Coppard

irrigated by canal water, gradually became more widespread. In the 1980s, this
trend accelerated with the rapid expansion of groundwater irrigation and the
adoption of high yielding varieties and associated technologies. These changes
coincided with an uninterrupted period (since 1977) of Leftist coalition govern-
ment (the Left Front Government), led by the Communist Party of India (Marx-
ist) (CPI(M) ). The most dramatic changes in the forces of production have been
specific to certain agro-ecological zones of the state, in particular to the alluvial
soils of the Gangetic plains. Changes in the relations of production over the same
period have also been diverse – and hard to generalize because of contrasting
starting points.
The research reported here is part of a larger regional project, which has
attempted to link changes in the relations of production to the growth in sea-
sonal migration and the employment of migrant workers. The overall story
which is told is one of wage workers responding to (rather than causing) struc-
tural change. A brief outline of the scope of the project will be given below.
However, the aim of this paper is quite specific. Drawing on the detailed testi-
monies of just four people (two current migrant workers, one former migrant
and the mother of a migrant worker), we analyse whether and how much the act
of migrating for wage work has contributed to changing social relations, includ-
ing relations of gender and generation within domestic groups, and relations
between social classes and social ranks ( jati).1 By using testimonies, we are able
to investigate changes in the meaning of this kind of migration to workers
involved in it over their working lives, to contrast the meanings of migration to
different migrant workers in the same time period, and therefore to avoid the
reductionism and determinism of many less grounded accounts. Reading these
testimonies should help to guard against the belief that labour migration is neces-
sarily either emancipatory or oppressive.
The changes we find fit well with a bigger structural picture of declining
feudal production relations in the source area, associated with migration to work
in intensive rice production at the destination, which has a more capitalist logic.
Overall, the emergence of peasant capitalism in West Bengal from the 1970s has
resulted in more days work and higher real wages for migrant workers both
from within the state and from outside it. This has made it possible for wage
workers to view migration as a way of earning and accumulating a useful lump
sum, rather than simply surviving through food payments during the period of
work, as had taken place in the past. Within this context, however, there has
only been very limited social mobility and no general move away from the

1
These four testimonies were selected from a much larger data set because, taken together, they
express a broad range of motivations for wage work in general and migration in particular, and are
also highly suggestive about how workers’ motivations have changed in relation to their own lives,
to those of their families and to the broader structural changes around them. The alternatives would
have been to draw on a larger number of testimonies, which would have meant foregoing depth, or
to narrow the focus onto the perspectives of a particular sex or age group, which was insufficiently
broad for our purposes.

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Changing Meanings of Seasonal Migration 397

compulsion to earn a wage through hard manual labour. The detailed testimon-
ies allow for an exploration of the ambivalence of migrant workers towards
these changes in the relations of production at home and at the destination
workplace.
The overall approach to studying migration in this research project falls within
the rubric of a political economy concerned with the social relations of produc-
tion and, in particular, with class, conflict and power (Fine 2001). However, the
approach also involves being specific about the type of migration – in this case
seasonal and for manual work. Such specificity is demanded by Standing’s
political economy framework for migration research (Standing 1981). We share
Standing’s criticism of neo-classical economics models of migration, which, like
the then still influential dual economy models, were not grounded in analysis of
actually existing social relations (Standing 1981, 173). Subsequent neo-classical
economics work on migration has made significant advances, most notably by
the focus on migration as a negotiated decision within households in response to
risk and uncertainty (e.g. Stark 1991). However, this approach still does not
provide the tools to unravel how household and individual migration decisions
are caused by, and contribute to, changing social relations, including relations of
production, at a particular place and time.
Standing’s work is especially concerned with the social relations of produc-
tion, which variously hold back migration or economically compel it. He holds
the views that ‘the form of transition [to capitalism] will determine the extent and
function of migration’ and that ‘the extent of migration will influence the pace
and nature of the transition’ (Standing 1981, 190). We do not have strong dif-
ferences with Standing on this, and especially appreciate his identification of a
bi-directional causality. However, we do not concur with the implication that
transitions from one mode of production to the next in the Marxian sense are
inevitable. Indeed, in this paper, we take an ‘emic’ approach, relying relatively
heavily on workers’ own perspectives on migration and on how these have
changed over workers’ life times. The extensive use of testimonies is borrowed
from an anthropological tradition of research on migration. The
uniqueness of particular individual migrant experiences this enables cer-
tainly enhances our generalisations about the group experience, but also
elicits humility about the adequacy of these generalisations and a realisation
that few actual individual lives fully conform to the master narratives.
(Benmayor and Skotnes 1994, 15, cited by Brettell and Hollifield 2000, 11,
emphasis added)
In the context of ethnographic fieldwork reported here, the use of testimonies
reveals the ambivalence individual migrant wage workers had towards feudal-
type ties of unequal mutual obligation involving specific patrons in their home
locality and how this changed over their life-times. With age, and decreasing
mobility, some workers come to value the reliability of patron–client ties. Even
if we limited the story to material political economy alone, at the individual
level changes over time are more complex than standard ‘etic’ categories permit.

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398 Ben Rogaly and Daniel Coppard

Furthermore, the methods used here make possible a more fine-tuned under-
standing of local social relations – outside production as well as inside it and
including contested ideas of appropriate roles inside domestic groups and com-
petition between them on the axis of jati (local social rank) as well as class.
Workers’ own narratives clearly bring out the importance of non-material di-
mensions of the experience of migration, including a sense of being valued (or
not), peer group pressure, and the implications of particular types of work for
social rank within and between households. We cannot make judgements about
the possible role of migration in the emancipation or oppression of workers
without taking account of the subjective experience of being a migrant worker.
The research reported in this paper was part of a larger project, which aimed
to achieve breadth as well as depth in its study of seasonal migration for rural
manual work in the region defined by the source and destination areas of workers
employed in the most dynamic rice-producing areas of West Bengal. A team of
six co-researchers carried out five concurrent year-long ethnographic studies –
one in a destination area and four in source areas. (The testimonies drawn on
here were recorded during Coppard’s fieldwork in a source area2). Rogaly went
from site to site and also spent time at bus stands and railway stations where
migrants and employers struck deals. In a future monograph, we intend to at-
tempt to explain the dynamics of seasonal migration in this region of eastern
India and to contrast it with Jan Breman’s findings from the sugar cane fields
of south Gujarat (e.g. Breman 1990). Important differences include the lack of a
cadre of brokers, non-collusive employers and the greater (though still very
limited) potential for structural change by migrants back home. We will return
briefly to these differences in the conclusion to this paper.

SEASONAL MIGRATION AND CHANGING SOCIAL RELATIONS


IN RURAL WEST BENGAL
Over 500,000 people (men, women and children) migrate seasonally each year,
more than doubling the agricultural workforce in the central rice-producing
district of Barddhaman.3 We found the role of the CPI(M)’s mass peasant organ-
ization to have been crucial in fixing three-way deals between local workers,
migrants and employers, and in resolving disputes. One important component
of this has been that employers have generally agreed not to pay migrants less
per day than local workers (though in practice they often work longer hours).
In turn, local workers have accepted, somewhat grudgingly, and with sporadic

2
Puruliya District, West Bengal. Rogaly carried out long-term fieldwork in another locality in the
same district during 1991–2 (see Rogaly 1996).
3
This very approximate figure is intended to provide an idea of the scale of seasonal migration,
which is impossible to quantify accurately. The reasons for this, and how we came to the number of
‘over 500,000’ can be found in Rogaly et al. (2001). Many of the migrant workers come from other
districts of West Bengal and from neighbouring Jharkhand state (erstwhile south Bihar). See Figure
1 for an illustration of four of the main streams.

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Changing Meanings of Seasonal Migration 399

protest, that migrant workers be allowed in during peak seasons. In the planned
monograph, and to a limited degree in this paper, we would like to be able to
characterize what is specific about agricultural employment relations in West
Bengal, compared to elsewhere in India (and further afield) and why.
West Bengal has the highest population density of all the major Indian states.
In much of the state south of the Ganges, agriculture is dominated by rice pro-
duction with seasonal peaks in labour requirements. There have been radical
changes in production relations since the abolition of zamindari in the 1950s and
the cross-class movement of peasants demanding its implementation in the 1960s.
The United Front coalition governments of the late 1960s, in which the CPI(M)
was a major partner, actively pursued land redistribution, including through
support to ‘land seizure’ by peasants themselves. By the 1970s, peasants of all
classes were seeking opportunities for productive investment (Mitter 1977, 77;
Rogaly 1998, 2730) and the stage was set for the rapid agricultural growth of the
1980s (Gazdar and Sengupta 1999). The vast majority of rice production has
since been cultivated by peasants with holdings of less than five acres of land
(Rawal 1999, 11). Although large rentier landlords have disappeared, 28 per cent
of land is still owned by the 7 per cent of peasants with holdings of more than
five acres (Mishra and Rawal 2002, 338).
In the 1990s there was still a sizeable number of share-croppers, although their
numerical importance was declining in intensively farmed areas (see, for exam-
ple, Halder 1994) and new forms of seasonal fixed rent tenancy had become
commonplace, especially for the cultivation of irrigated summer rice (Webster
1999). In an earlier paper, one of us noted how the coming to power of the
CPI(M) in 1977 also began a period of consolidation of power by middle and
rich peasants alongside an unprecedentedly successful electoral strategy involving
the limitation of the political expression of class contradictions in the peasantry
(Rogaly 1998). More recently, a senior minister of the CPI(M)-led Left Front
Government identified ‘continuing class tension in the countryside’ as the first
‘counter land-reform tendency’ which ‘need[s] to be addressed’ (Mishra and Rawal
2002, 353). The rapid agricultural growth of the 1980s and 1990s meant accumu-
lation for those with relatively greater land-holdings, especially those who had
been able to invest in private groundwater irrigation,4 and thus a process of
differentiation within the peasantry.
Some peasants have built on accumulated profits from agriculture and in-
vested in fertilizer and rice dealerships, other businesses, livestock, machinery
(including tractors), property in nearby towns and in education. Operating as
extended families, the potential dominance of this class is enhanced by their
capacity to mix farming with white-collar employment, rice trading and political
activism. Despite having relatively little land by international standards, they
have been described as the neo-rich (Mishra and Rawal 2002). Members of this
class do not work the land but are involved in supervising wage workers or else

4
Among this group, those who could access reliable supplies of electricity were in a far better
position than owners of diesel-powered pumpsets because of the difference in running costs.

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400 Ben Rogaly and Daniel Coppard

employ an agent to do so. The hiring in (and not hiring out) of labour is an
important mark of distinction in West Bengal as elsewhere in India (see Gidwani
2000). However, the middle and capitalist peasantry are not the only people who
hire in labour. In those areas of intensive rice cultivation which are major desti-
nation areas for migrant workers, even poor peasants will hire migrant workers,
but in their cases only for a few days and only when the workers are not required
by the richer peasants, who are in a position to bear the costs associated with
travelling to recruit labour.
Since 1999, West Bengal’s rice producers have faced a price scissors emanating
from the Central government’s liberalization policy and manifest in lower input
subsidies and, through the freer import of rice, in lower rice prices. Rice produc-
tion has become relatively unprofitable for some and loss-making for others and
this has led to calls from middle and capitalist peasants in the CPI(M)-affiliated
peasant union to limit wage increases.5 According to Mishra and Rawal (2002,
341) real agricultural wages have fallen since the mid-1990s.6 In these circumst-
ances, it is not surprising that the argument of significant common cause between
capitalist peasants and local wage workers has continued to be a powerful one
and may have contributed to the success of the CPI(M) in the 2001 elections.
Class categories such as poor, middle and capitalist peasant have been essential
for this brief elaboration of the changing social relations of production in which
our analysis is set. However, the close-up individual level of analysis which we
pursue in the discussions of workers’ testimonies requires additional tools. First,
as elsewhere in India, there is a strong overlap between class and jati in West
Bengal.7 Moreover, there are problems characterizing classes within state bound-
aries because of major spatial contrasts across the state, which our larger study
brings out. Indeed, differences within what appear to be classes in state level
analysis need to be considered alongside the interests each class has in common.
The seasonal scarcity of labour is such that there are competing and conflicting
interests among rich peasants within the destination area and between them
and rich peasants in the source area (see Rogaly 1999). The study of seasonal
migration also draws attention to the potential conflict between wage workers.
Furthermore, because of the major differences in land productivity, peasant
categories based around landholdings cannot be usefully aggregated across the
state, unless they are appropriately weighted. Almost all seasonally migrant wage
workers across the region we studied combined some of their own production
with hiring out labour to others. However, as we shall see in the locality on
which we report in detail in this paper, ecological conditions changed the degree
to which own production was possible: a drought could temporarily make a
poor peasant into a landless labourer for a year.

5
This information is derived from interviews Rogaly carried out with Amrita Sengupta in
Barddhaman and Kolkata (see Rogaly et al. 2001).
6
Our study found evidence of stagnation rather than decline, see Rogaly et al. 2001.
7
See, for example, Kohli (1997), Samaddar (1994), Rogaly (1998, 2731) and Halder (1994). See
Lerche (1995) for an Uttar Pradesh case study.

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Changing Meanings of Seasonal Migration 401

The spatial location of employment has implications for what doing wage
work means, even the hard manual work of uprooting, carrying or transplanting
rice seedlings or of cutting, binding, loading and threshing the ripened plants,
and then storing the grains and straw. As the narratives in the following section
also suggest, there is variation across space in what it means to work for another
person for a wage per se, what it is to carry out a particular type of work and
what it is to work in view of others (particularly for certain women, for example
newly married women, to work in view of certain men). This does not necessar-
ily relate to variations in the meanings of work in different local contexts,8 but
more crudely to being seen by a relative, neighbour or other local person. Part of
the meaning of a piece of work only takes on significance when someone you
know can see you doing it or hears from others that you have done it.
Thus relations between wage workers and their employers in contemporary
West Bengal are actually relations between heterogeneous groups of people,
lying on a continuum of size of agricultural holding operated, with land quality
and irrigation access being important in influencing the cropping pattern and
productivity of individual plots of land. A unit of land in dry unirrigated
Chottanagpur yields much less than the same unit in intensively farmed parts of
the alluvial plains. Some wage workers have land; some employers have very
little. Some people both hire in and hire out labour. Secondly, migration and the
employment of migrant workers are not neatly related to landholding. Variations
of climate between years,9 unexpected shocks and more predictable life-cycle
changes make for fluctuations in the supply of labour power and effective
demand for it over time. The presence of local workers alongside migrants and
of recruiting employers in source areas would make for a multidimensional set of
class relations, even if classes were more polarized. While class is central to these
social relations of production, in which a large proportion of production is or-
ganized around wage labour, others have argued with respect to West Bengal
that ‘class stratification in the present agrarian society is so complex that it is
difficult to use the old categories to understand class relations in the countryside’
(Mishra and Rawal 2002, 353). Moreover the meanings attached to doing par-
ticular types of work and of being employed as a manual worker for somebody
else vary across space and are strongly associated with ideas about jati.
Jati, like class, is particularly complex in rural southern West Bengal
because there is no clear polarization and no single dominant jati. Jati refers to
a person’s social rank in relation to caste, ethnic group, religious community
or nation. Importantly for this paper, it varies across space as people identify
themselves and are characterized by others differently at home and away from

8
P. Bardhan (1999) argues that cultures of work are determined at least in part by agro-ecology. In
his view, there is no accident in the tendency of landowners in West Bengal to get others to do their
dirty, wet paddy production work for them.
9
And the variation in vulnerability of different qualities of productive land to adverse climatic
conditions.

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402 Ben Rogaly and Daniel Coppard

home.10 Moreover, ideologies of work are strongly linked to ideas about jati.
There is an unbreakable link here with class. Having to do hard manual work
for others is an important marker and even more so for people in jatis which
assert higher social rank through generally not hiring out labour. The paid work
done, where it is done, and for whom, is caught up in contests over the relative
standing of different jati. Ideas about work and jati are used as resources in
establishing the distinction of individuals and of groups in relation to others (see
Gidwani 2000). In the next section, we examine how the meaning of migrating
for manual work in rice production has changed over time through the testimon-
ies of four individuals.

CHANGING MEANINGS AND EXPERIENCES OF WAGE WORK


The answers to the questions of who migrates for wage work, what it means to
them and how that changes emerge from complex social relations, but also
contribute to them. This paper is concerned with individual migrant workers’
experiences and the potential for wage workers to effect change in the structures
that compel them to carry out hard manual work for others. In aggregate, we
can assume that wage workers have less power to shape these relations than the
rich and middle peasants who employ them. However, actual changes in social
relations take place between people, rather than between categories. They do not
follow a neat pattern which corresponds to class or local social rank expressed as
jati. Local social rank also changes over time and varies among wage workers,
who include both poor peasants and landless people. In this section, we draw on
the narratives of migrant workers in a rural locality of Puruliya District to illus-
trate some of the ways in which the pattern of seasonal migration, its meanings,
and the social relations in which they are embedded have changed over time.
The testimonies reported here are extracts taken from interviews with wage
workers in a locality in Puruliya District, which lies in the Chottanagpur Plateau
and is the westernmost district of the state of West Bengal.11 The locality was
selected because, like other localities in the eastern blocks of Puruliya District,
many wage workers migrate out seasonally for employment in rice cultivation
and in brick kilns in the plains of West Bengal. The project as a whole was
concerned most with seasonal migration for agricultural work as this was pre-
dominant across the four studied streams (see Figure 1). The work involved in

10
In a separate paper, Rogaly and Rafique (2003) have analysed the struggles involved in migration
from the perspective of women left behind by male migrants, and the compromises they have to
make to stay on the right side of the male kin they rely on. The paper concerns another of the four
streams of migration studied, the only one which involved (mainly Muslim) men going away on
their own. In the stream discussed in the present paper, migration is by men, women and children.
11
We present selected extracts from the interviews, which sometimes took place over several
sittings. The extracts do not include interviewers’ interventions and consequently read as more
flowing and coherent here than the taped interviews actually were. This is part of the process of
translation, which also includes the rendering of the Bengali original into English (by Sujata Das
Chowdhury), and which inevitably reflects the choices (conscious or otherwise, and socially embed-
ded for sure) of the present authors.

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Changing Meanings of Seasonal Migration 403

Figure 1. Four seasonal migration streams into or across West Bengal.

Source: Drawn by Philip Judge.

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404 Ben Rogaly and Daniel Coppard

rice cultivation was in several ways similar in the source areas and in the destina-
tion areas of West Bengal, centred around Barddhaman District. Many migrants
from the Puruliya locality, which we will call Bajnagarh, cultivated small plots
of rice themselves and hired out wage labour to larger-scale cultivators in and
around Bajnagarh. In both locations – source and destination areas – rice was
transplanted and harvested by hand. There were seasonal peaks in labour re-
quirements associated with these work tasks and some complementarity between
the two areas as the monsoonal harvest of those poor peasants who migrated
occurred slightly earlier than in Barddhaman and the cut paddy of those who had
significant amounts of low land cultivation in Bajnagarh (former landlords, now
peasant capitalists12) could wait to be threshed as there was no widespread
summer rice cultivation. That the latter occurred to such a large extent in Barddha-
man District and hardly at all in the eastern part of Puruliya created another
complementarity. Nevertheless, the supply of workers to peasant capitalists in
Bajnagarh was reduced by the migration and there could be conflict too with
workers’ own cultivation, particularly at the time of transplanting the monsoonal
rice crop.
The operations of transplanting and harvesting paddy are performed in groups
by those who can afford to hire labour. In the destination area, all the tasks
associated with these operations were done by both male and female workers,
predominantly, but not exclusively, adults. Back at Bajnagarh, agricultural wage
work – apart from ploughing – was done by women and adolescent boys more
than men, who were found to seek higher wages elsewhere or to prefer their
own cultivation. Transplanting there was exclusively done by women. Trans-
planting includes uprooting seedlings, washing the mud off roots to make them
lighter to carry, collecting them into piles, carrying them to other fields and
replanting them individually. In Bajnagarh, work was generally organized so
that uprooting would be done in the first part of the day, with replanting done in
the afternoon.
At harvest, the key activities requiring groups of workers were cutting the
crop with a sickle, binding the cut crop and loading it onto a bullock cart, or for
some rich peasants at Barddhaman onto a tractor trailer. The bound rice plants
then needed to be unloaded and threshed. Threshing was usually done by hand
on a stone slab in Bajnagarh but threshing machines, either foot-pedalled or
diesel-powered, were common in Barddhaman. After threshing, straw would
be piled up. This last task was considered a special skill by both employers and
labourers, and was undertaken by one or two experienced members of the
group. As the testimonies showed, some workers valued being identified by
employers and by fellow-workers as having particular practical skills and leader-
ship qualities.

12
Some of whom combined agriculture with other enterprises, including transport. Below we use
a combined jati-class category for the major employers at Bajnagarh. This is appropriate because the
broad range of social relations of production they are involved in does not fit into a single materialist
class category.

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Changing Meanings of Seasonal Migration 405

Employers at Barddhaman also hired migrants for other agricultural work,


including potato planting and harvesting. Wage work in Bajnagarh included
constructing bandhs or arhs and levelling land so that it could retain the water
necessary for wet rice cultivation. The building and maintaining of bandhs was
also asked of migrant workers at Barddhaman. Workers from Bajnagarh proudly
claimed that Puruliyan workers had contributed much to the digging and con-
struction of the canals of Barddhaman District.
The major employers at Bajnagarh were descendants of the former zamindars
who were still disputing the amount of compensation offered them by the gov-
ernment. Locally referred to as rajas (literally rulers), and Rajput by jati, these
employers had had diverse fortunes following the abolition of zamindari. Some
among them had diversified into business (for example, transport: one owned
three buses). Others had white-collar employment. However, all the rajas now
managed the cultivation of a larger proportion of their own land through hiring
and supervising wage workers. Being a raja in Bajnagarh has symbolic signific-
ance because of the association with earlier feudal wealth and power.
We refer to rajas as a jati-class because raja operates as a social rank in a way
which is inseparable from class position, and because rajas are involved in a broad
range of social relations of production, which cannot be aggregated into a single
materialist class category. Those rajas who hired in large numbers of agricultural
workers now resembled capitalist peasants rather than landlords. Though rent-
ing out land to poorer tenants was still practised, there had been a marked
decline in the mutual obligations between rajas on the one hand and the former
service providers, poor peasants and landless workers around them on the other.
Some land-owners in Bajnagarh might be described as middle peasants relying
mainly on their own labour for cultivation and only hiring out as migrants in
difficult years, such as the years of drought in the late 1990s. As we shall see in
the testimonies, feudalism was in decline in Bajnagarh, but had not disappeared,
and while the former landlords became capitalist peasants, some middle peasants
had experienced downward mobility.
The workers who provided the testimonies were (quite understandably) un-
able to give detailed contextual information on every employer they had worked
for. Some migrants from Bajnagarh travelled to a labour market place at Bankura
bus stand unsolicited and made deals with employers who had travelled there
from Barddhaman District. Others, however, were recruited by one of the two
regular labour gang leaders (sardars) in Bajnagarh, who had provided workers
to the same group of employers in a single village of Barddhaman for over a
decade. These sardars would travel to Barddhaman in advance of each season and
return to Bajnagarh with detailed requirements for migrant workers.
The destination area study by Amrita Sengupta and visits to destination area
villages by Daniel Coppard, Kumar Rana and Ben Rogaly, suggested that in the
late 1990s employers recruiting seasonal migrant workers were engaged in capit-
alist production relations. They were not wholly landlords because they them-
selves took part in recruitment and supervision – on some or all of their land.
They were capitalist peasants rather than middle peasants because they relied on

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406 Ben Rogaly and Daniel Coppard

hired manual labour more than on their own.13 There was a clear cultural distinc-
tion between employers who worked the land themselves alongside the workers
they hired and those employers who would go as far as supervision, but no
further. Even for employers with a landholding of around seven acres, there
were differences between those who aspired to genteel bhadralok status and avoided
all manual work, and those who were proud of being chashis (peasant cultiv-
ators). Those with still smaller land-holdings in destination area villages also
employed seasonal migrant workers for periods of just a few days, borrowing
them from the larger-scale employers. These could be characterized as middle
peasants.
Many capitalist peasants hired both local workers and migrant workers
at transplanting and harvest. When Coppard visited the Barddhaman District
village to which labourers were regularly taken by the established labour sardars,
he met one employer, who regularly hired labour from Bajnagarh. The max-
imum area he controlled in any one season was approximately twenty acres,
including land rented in. He also owned one tractor, six peddle threshers and a
diesel-powered pumpset for groundwater extraction. Another employer, to whom
the first occasionally supplied migrant labour, cultivated four acres and might be
described as a middle peasant. When capitalist peasants supply labour to middle
peasants at the destination, they do not charge a commission, but they do en-
hance their own social standing, which is part of their class position locally.
Employers who can afford to recruit their own migrant labour are also in a
position to decide the timing of operations. Others have to wait their turn.

Jaladhar Kaibarta
Jaladhar Kaibarta is a 35-year-old man, residing in the Lohar para of Bajnagarh
with his wife and younger son, aged six.14 His elder son, twelve years old, has
been working in a sweet shop in Ranchi ( Jharkhand) since August 1999. The
para, consisting of single-storey mud-dwellings, is built at the foot of the walls
of some of the largest brick houses of the former rajas. There are several different
jati in Lohar para. Many of the residents were said to have originally settled in
the para to provide various forms of service to the raja.15 Jaladhar’s parents were
fishermen ( ghuna):

13
As in Bajnagarh, the categories of middle peasant and capitalist peasant are not broad enough to
subsume all the recruiting employers in the destination area. Some mixed multiple enterprises in a
similar way to the larger Bajnagarh employers. The categories are also problematical because, as
elaborated above, they misleadingly imply an equivalence in the class structure in source and destina-
tion area. Further, their uncritical or de-contextualized use might be taken to infer, wrongly, that
each peasant class in West Bengal is a class-in-itself and does not contain contradictory interests.
14
The names of people and of some places have been changed throughout the paper. There are
inconsistencies in the ages of people mentioned in this and other narratives.
15
This is based on accounts given by the rajas themselves, as well as by various respondents in
Lohar para. Referring to rajas in this way is not intended to obscure the major wealth and other
differences among raja families (see the discussion of the testimony of Jaladhar Kaibarta, below).

JOAC303C04 406 5/22/03, 9:54 AM


Changing Meanings of Seasonal Migration 407

My parents used to work the whole day. They caught fish, then after
selling those in the market we got some money, and from that we bought
supplies. [As a child] I played throughout the day. When I became a little
more responsible I took cows to the field, and later my elder brother sent
me to school. After a few years, when I was in class four, my brother
couldn’t afford to continue my schooling, so I stopped and started working
locally as a labourer. I did all types of work, digging and levelling fields,
cutting paddy, ploughing, but the wage then was very low, between five
and ten rupees per day. My parents would get angry with me because I was
not interested in learning our caste profession, that is, making nets and
catching fish. Whenever I worked for others, as I sometimes did, I never
gave the money to my parents. That is also why they were annoyed with
me. But out of a mere five rupees, what was I supposed to give them?
When I became older I started catching fish, learning from observing my
parents. I learnt how to make nets. One day I went to catch fish with a new
net in one of the raja’s ponds. The raja took my net away, and beat me.
The rajas are not very good. They never tolerated torkari16 on top of my
rice. I was twelve when I got beaten by that raja. Those rajas have since
died. We don’t care for the rajas now. We only have a little respect for
Haripada Raja17 because he helps us out when we are in need. Our chil-
dren’s generation does not care at all. My son sometimes says that he will
move away when he gets married. He doesn’t like the rajas’ dominance in
the area, nor the neighbours complaining about him to them. The neigh-
bours don’t like our improved living standards. We have just made a new
roof, and they will not be happy with that. Last year we suffered a lot
during the monsoon. We simply sat under an umbrella for the whole night.
The cows were soaked. Nobody observed our suffering. But now we are
making our new roofs and they just can’t tolerate it. The neighbours are
not good.
My parents were labourers for the rajas. My father was very honest and
innocent, so he did not even have land to build a house on. We four
brothers bought this piece of land with the help of Haripada Raja, but the
roadside portion he kept for himself.
When I was a child, the place [Lohar] was beautiful. We had a bamboo
bush near our house. There was a temple of Manasa. There were so many
trees, and the ponds were full of fish. But even then my parents suffered
from poverty. Now, although we are working as labourers, we are not
facing such poverty. We used to be poor all the time. After working we
had food, which is what we manage now. But as the wage has increased,
so has the cost of things. Previously, pastu18 was a standard menu for us.

16
Torkari is the generic term for a cooked vegetable accompaniment to rice.
17
This is a pseudonym which we use for one of the richest among the rajas, who continues to be an
important patron in the locality.
18
A paste made from poppy seeds and mixed with vegetable accompaniments to rice.

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408 Ben Rogaly and Daniel Coppard

Even in marriage parties pastu was a common menu. But now only those
who have money can eat it. We eat only potatoes, tomatoes and other
vegetables.
Earning money is very hard for us. My eldest son was a good student,
but I couldn’t afford his study. The younger one is going to school and the
elder is bearing his schooling cost; he wishes to do so until he completes his
schooling, so we expect he will finish. You can see our condition. We are
doing earth work and agricultural work. Our profession will no longer be
ours, because fishing in ponds and rivers has become restricted. And you
can find fishing nets in every house, maybe in Santal or Mahato or Bauri or
Sahis houses, so we are compelled to do other work.
In this locality there is no work at all. We have to wait until someone
calls us for their personal work, and [even] then the wage is only Rs 20
after a whole day’s work. We can only sit and eat food until Jaistha-Sraban.19
As the rains start we do our cultivation and after harvesting, leaving the
paddy inside, we go to Barddhaman. As soon as I became responsible I
started migrating. I first went with a Dom family who lived next door.
That was before my marriage. They used to go previously. I was unem-
ployed, so they asked me if I was interested to go with them. Before going
some said, ‘You will have to do a lot of work. You will have to start your
work from early in the morning.’ But I thought, ‘Let me see,’ and I found
that it was not so difficult. Sometimes I missed my village and relatives,
but that is quite natural. Sometimes I was uncertain whether I could con-
tinue to work over there, thinking that I might have to come back early
because of my mental condition. But the Dom man was very good. He
always encouraged me.
We stayed there [in Barddhaman] happily. We were the same age group
and cooked in the same place. Sometimes while working together we
sang jhumur.20 We enjoyed that. When binding paddy, if we sing we will
not realize when our work has been completed. When we first reached
Barddhaman town it was new to us. The people were unknown to us, so
we moved together, and talked only amongst ourselves.21
I first decided to go for fun. Lots of people were going from the village,
so I thought I would also go to see the new place. Those whose financial
situation was not very good used to migrate then. Our condition was not
good. Even now we prefer to go because if we work there for one month,
we may bring food for another two months. We can also buy new clothes
for the children. If we can bring back at least Rs 500, we can buy saris for

19
Mid-May to mid-August, the main period for preparing land and seedlings for the annual
monsoonal rice crop.
20
A genre of folk song in Puruliya District.
21
This refers to the process of finding work. Agricultural employers would come to Barddhaman
town to recruit workers arriving from Puruliya and elsewhere, mainly for work in rice transplanting
and harvesting.

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Changing Meanings of Seasonal Migration 409

our wives, and if we bring rice it will be our food. It is certain that we shall
at least bring rice, because they offer 1.5 kg of rice per head, and we don’t
need that amount of rice for our food. So we save that and bring it back. If
by chance we can’t get any work here, we at least can eat that rice.
My parents never stopped me going. I was older then, and they thought
that I could manage my own food anywhere. Sometimes to make my new
clothes I went to pub.22 When I first went I had no family of my own, so I
had no responsibilities. Now I have my family, so I have to ask my wife,
or have to make arrangements for them before leaving. But since we have
been going to pub it has been possible to get loans from local people, as we
have done this year. By combining a loan with our previous earnings from
migration, I have managed to make this tiled roof. We will have to go to
pub to repay the loan.
We took the children with us when they were very small. We never
missed a single year then. But this year, since we have [bought] a few
livestock my wife remained behind to look after them. If we leave the
children here to look after the livestock alone, the neighbours will eat the
animals. We have always tried to earn some more money. Our children
have become used to good food. If we offer them ordinary food they are
not satisfied. What is the value of our lives if we fail to give them good
food?
Those left behind are concerned about where exactly we have gone,
how the employer has behaved towards us, etc. They worry if they receive
any news of a bus accident. But those who migrate, since we are from the
same village and known to each other, enjoy migration. In the evening
time, young boys will not allow us to sleep. They will sing jhumur and
dance. There is cooking on one side, and song and dance on the other. The
employers have realized what type of people they have. The Barddhaman
people are afraid of us [people from Chottanagpur] because they think we
are short tempered and fighting people.
I made a group, and we now migrate together. Sometimes, if I find it
impossible to go, I ask them to go but they don’t like to leave without me.
We are used to working together; if by chance some refuse to go we all feel
bad. They know that I can negotiate with the employer about workloads
and wages.
This time they requested me to say something to our employer. He was
making the group work until 5 or 6 pm. We were unhappy, so once I had
a talk with him, ‘What did you say in Bankura?23 Why are you using them
until the evening?’ He said, ‘they don’t know the work properly, and so
they are very slow.’ I said, ‘Okay, I will stay with them for the next day.’
I worked with them and there was no problem. Harvesting work was very

22
Literally east, referring to rice cultivation work in and around Barddhaman District.
23
A labour market place where work arrangements were negotiated.

JOAC303C04 409 5/22/03, 9:54 AM


410 Ben Rogaly and Daniel Coppard

easy for the people of our group, but potato planting was unknown to
them and that created problems. While planting potatoes, you have to
maintain at least a four to six fingers gap, but they planted closely, some-
times with four to five seeds together.
We have to pay the [political] party office Rs 5 per head, and they [in
turn] will help us get the correct salary from the employer. If the employer
fails to keep his promise then we will complain to the party, and with their
interference, it will be solved. This system is very helpful for us, so as we
reach the village we try to find out which party is in power there. Within
three or four days, when the neighbours become known to us, we ask
them about the local political situation, and then we start saying we are also
from the same party which is in power there.24
People of pub do not generally make any miscalculation about wages,
but here the employers are not so reliable. They cheat us. Suppose we are
working for one month, at the end of the work the local employer will say,
‘You were absent for two days.’ But that doesn’t happen there. They will
pay us the full amount, and also warn us about pick-pocketing. Sometimes
for our security they will also accompany us up to the village bus stand if it
is far from the village. But not all are so helpful. If we find an employer’s
behaviour towards us is not good, or he is talking badly to all of us, then
we may decide to change our employer. But then the employer will not
agree to pay our wages because we have not finished his work. With the
help of the party we will be able to get our wages. The party also works for
the village’s good name. If an employer betrays us, and the party does not
help us, then the village would automatically become infamous because we
would discuss the matter at the Bankura bus stand. Then it would be hard
for the villagers to get labour next time.
Those who don’t have any regular income are bound to go to pub,
because that is the way we can bring some money. We can buy clothes
from that money, and the rice we bring with us is also very helpful. If I see
my children in front of my eyes are not getting enough food, how can I
give up trying? If I don’t get any work, I might try to steal. We can’t stand
to see our sons suffering. But now we are getting work in Barddhaman.
Why should we steal?

Discussion
Jaladhar Kaibarta narrates his life as a wage worker, stressing a sense of respon-
sibility for his family, which began when his father died and increased when he

24
In Barddhaman District, this is usually the CPI(M), which has by far the largest number of
affiliates – through its mass organizations – of any party in the district. Many rich peasants belong to
the Krishak Sabha (CPI(M)-affiliated peasant union) and/or to the party, as do peasants of all classes
and local wage workers. Migrant workers are asked to pay subscriptions to the party at the monsoonal
rice harvest. In the larger research project, we found instances where the local members of the CPI(M)
had intervened to enforce payment by recalcitrant employers (see below and Rogaly et al. 2002).

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Changing Meanings of Seasonal Migration 411

became a father. Jaladhar says that he would steal if necessary and indeed blames
his father’s honesty and innocence for their lack of a homestead plot as children.
The narration includes a sense of migrating because of poverty, because of mater-
ial need, but which at the same time began from curiosity.
It was as a migrant that Jaladhar first did manual work for others. In terms of
class relations, that migration has helped Jaladhar and his family move away
from dependence on the rajas as patrons, explained largely as a consequence of
additional financial freedom and control. This became clearer in other conversa-
tions with Jaladhar regarding petty accumulation – investment in cattle, new
roof as investment to attract a good wife for his son – and the ability to access
and manage credit. Jaladhar explained that being known to be a regular seasonal
migrant worker improved his capacity to access credit in Bajnagarh. Such credit
included a loan for the roof, which was paid off by additional migration and
interest-free credit for day-to-day purchases and agricultural inputs from local
shopkeepers and dealers.
Yet there is a continuing reliance on one raja, singled out. Aside from this
more personalized relationship, Jaladhar and others continue to refer to the prin-
cipal landowners and employers of the locality collectively as ‘raja’. Rajas often
spoke of themselves as a homogenous group, as a means of distinction, despite
very significant diversity and conflict among them. Importantly, such differen-
tiation of wealth and influence among the rajas was also well recognized by wage
workers and other non-rajas. Yet the collective ‘raja’ has remained a powerfully
enduring term of identification.
Jaladhar narrates a two-way deterioration in relations with the rajas as a jati-
class. On the one hand, rajas resented any form of upward mobility among their
erstwhile service jati-classes. On the other, Jaladhar emphasizes the decline in
respect for the rajas between his own and his son’s generation in Lohar para. This
may well have been nurtured by his son working away from home in teastalls,
an opportunity offering relatively greater potential for independence and self-
worth. Interestingly, this proved to be a pattern among young men of the para.
It was explained by another Lohar para resident that the very act of moving away
to work and earn gave rise to the qualitative change in relations, quite apart from
the meanings attributed to the type of work done.
Jaladhar expressed his and his son’s disgust at what he sees as the envy of their
neighbours – other wage workers belonging to Ghuna and other jati – as migrant
remittances were spent on visible improvements to Jaladhar’s house. Conversa-
tions with other migrating households of the same para revealed how they attrib-
uted an outbreak of local violent conflict during Pous Sankranti25 to the envy of
non-migrating households, who resented visible signs of affluence (such as new
clothing) afforded by migrants’ earnings. Moreover, Jaladhar laments that their
caste occupation of fishing is no longer restricted to Ghunas. Yet the story of
doing migrant work at Barddhaman is one of (particularly male) camaraderie

25
A major festival in mid-January which coincides with the end of the period of threshing and
storing away the main rice crop, as well as with the return of agricultural migrant labourers.

JOAC303C04 411 5/22/03, 9:54 AM


412 Ben Rogaly and Daniel Coppard

across jati (among Puruliyan wage workers).26 From his first adventure with the
Dom, through to forming a group which expected each other to go (‘if by chance
some refuse to go, we feel bad’), and the references to jhumur songs, there is a
sense of the Chottanagpuris making the most of a situation of hard manual work.
Jaladhar also contrasts the meaning of being reliant on wage work for others
in the locality with the greater agency he can exert as a migrant, especially as
a small-time leader of a migrant group. Coppard travelled with Jaladhar to
a labour market place and observed his negotiation with various employers.
His demeanour was one of quiet confidence, standing straight and looking
employers directly in the eye. He seemed more comfortable than a number of
the employers there. Further assertiveness is expressed in the narrative regarding
his willingness to stand up for his rights and the rights of the group by com-
plaining to individual employers and to local political parties in cases of mistreat-
ment. This contrasts with the experience of being a wage worker in Jaladhar’s
own locality. ‘In this locality there is no work at all . . .’. He relates a dependence
on others for work, waiting to be approached and declining returns to their old
jati occupation of fishing.
The employers of the alluvial plains are seen as being kept in check both
by their fear of the people of Chottanagpur and by the need to avoid bringing
their village into disrepute to avoid disruption to the flow of migrant workers.
By capitalizing on exaggerated images of harsh landscapes and peoples in
Chottanagpur as held by employers in the plains, Jaladhar influences the experi-
ence of class relations at the destination. The same employers are seen as being
regulated by an institution characteristic of Barddhaman District (at the heart of
the plains areas), the political parties ensuring proper payment for the sake of the
village’s reputation. In another conversation with Jaladhar, he described how he
was able to use the good behaviour of Barddhaman employers as a tool to help
him contest local Bajnagarh employers’ dishonesty.
Here we see the pattern of migration changing along with family circumstances
(for example, having children and accumulating livestock). Jaladhar’s recent prac-
tice of migrating every year is in part a response to a sharp decline in the availability
of local work due to a persisting drought. Clear aspirations for a certain quality
of life are expressed: ‘Our children have become used to good food . . . What is
the value of our lives if we fail to give them good food?’ Yet in spite of the refer-
ences to being better off and the expressed capacity to move out of raja domina-
tion, Jaladhar is acutely aware of continuing poverty: ‘now only those who have
money can eat pastu. We eat only potatoes, tomatoes and other vegetables’.

Brick kiln migration and Bahadurer-ma


Privately owned brick-making units (brick kilns) have become main sources
of employment for many Bauri households in Bajnagarh. The work and

26
There is a silence about who does the cooking and other essential work while young boys sing
jhumur.

JOAC303C04 412 5/22/03, 9:54 AM


Changing Meanings of Seasonal Migration 413

remuneration are organized very differently to work in rice production. Al-


though gangs were hired from Amdih, units of two people were required for
each work team, which was often made up of husband and wife. The men cut
and shaped the brick from the mud, while the women carried the bricks (three at
a time) to a space for them to dry in the sun. Bauris expressed pride in their
brick-making skill, which they saw as distinguishing them from locally recruited
workers, who merely carried the bricks. Payment for brick-cutting was approx-
imately Rs 100 per 1000 bricks per unit of two workers and was made at the end
of the season. Other workers were employed at different rates for carrying bricks
to and from firing and for storage. Migration to brick kilns involved far longer
absences (up to nine months per year) and of whole families. Children and others
unable to perform heavy work would migrate to help with cooking, cleaning
and other reproductive work. This meant parents could earn more per day (given
the piece rate arrangement). Older children would also assist with drying bricks
and earn additional income through casual labour.
Unlike the migration for rice work, brick kiln migration involved a signific-
ant advance payment in Bhadra-Asvin (the hungriest season in Puruliya) and to
meet festival expenses. Pre-migration advances of up to Rs 1800 were common,
and in addition the brick kiln owner would pay a weekly advance of Rs 250–300
for food, fuel etc. at the workplace. Remittances brought home were thus rela-
tively small as deductions were made against all advances before payment at the
end of the season. Economically, we do not consider brick kiln migration as
having moved away from being merely a survival strategy, as has been the case
with agricultural migration, albeit only for some people, some of the time. How-
ever, as the testimony implies, brick-kiln work has been associated with changed
social relations manifest in reduced dependence on the rajas as a jati-class. It is not
clear whether the prime motivators of this change have been the rajas or this
particular jati-class of workers, the Bauris.
Bahadurer-ma27 lives in the small hamlet of Amdih to the north of the rajas’
houses. Like the vast majority of other people living in Amdih, she is Bauri. The
rajas explain that they originally brought the Bauris to the locality to do manual
work for them (under a similar arrangement to the one they had with the people
of Lohar para). The Bauris were regarded by other jatis in the locality, including
the rajas, as of lower social rank than the service jati of Lohar para. Many Bauris
have since moved away from working for the rajas as domestic (women) or
manual (men) workers, often on annual and longer term arrangements, to rely-
ing on earnings from seasonal out-migration to agricultural work (mainly rice
transplanting and harvesting) in Barddhaman and to brick kilns. Bahadurer-ma
is a passionately vocal woman of 70. She has lived in Amdih since her marriage
55 years ago.

27
Neighbours and immediate family spoke of this respondent to Coppard and Das Chowdhury via
her identity as mother of Bahadur (the literal meaning of Bahadurer-ma). We adopt this practice
here. Bahadur, who is her eldest son, has been considered the head of the household since her
husband died.

JOAC303C04 413 5/22/03, 9:54 AM


414 Ben Rogaly and Daniel Coppard

I worked in my parent’s village as a housemaid. I also did agricultural


work. My aunt married in this village, and she arranged my marriage here.
When I heard that I was going to marry a man who already had five wives,
I did not feel very comfortable, but at the same time I learnt that he had left
them. Previously it was very common: if the girls disliked their husbands,
they just left and remarried someone they liked. Now remarriages have
become less common. I was 15 when I came here to be married and when
I was 16 or 17 my first son was born. I have delivered seven daughters and
four sons. My husband’s other wives had not provided any sons. Three of
my daughters and two of my sons are still alive. After the[se] shocks [of the
deaths of six of my children] I have become like a stone. I was healthy
earlier, but now I’ve become thin. I am shameless; that is why I am still
working and taking food. God knows how long I have to live. I have 21
grandchildren. That is how old a lady I am.
My husband worked for the same raja from his youth until his death.
His wage was five ser of paddy per day. We would collect the paddy every
five or six days. When my children grew older I also started to go to work
in the raja’s house. My husband died ten years ago, but I still continue to
go.
I arranged all the children’s marriages. My elder daughter-in-law was 13
when she came here. She was just a child. Bahadur [eldest son] was 17. She
was just like a packed bag, and now she has grown old before my eyes. She
has much tolerance. That is how she is still staying in our house. My
grandson’s marriage was arranged by his parents because I was sick then.
The dowry was not very high considering my family status. We have lands
and we don’t have any real crisis. So Rs 4000 as a dowry was nothing
actually, although they also gave bangles and necklaces of silver. The land
we have was my father-in-laws. My father-in-law employed agricultural
labour because he could not cultivate himself, [but] we now cultivate the
land ourselves.
After marriage I was busy with household work: cooking, bringing
water, looking after the children. I also made rice from paddy because
wages were then given in paddy and there were no husking mills. When I
was young, my husband didn’t allow me to go to the rajas’ houses, not
even to collect his wages. [She was reluctant to say why, then her daughter-
in-law explained: previously, young women would not go to rajas’ houses
because rajas wished to keep beautiful women at night. If they tried now,
they would be beaten by our men.]
I started doing agricultural work locally earlier when I was 18–19 years
old. The wage was 3 ser of paddy, but it was profitable then because the
market prices of other things were low. Now we are given Rs 20, which is
2 kg of rice.28 Where will we buy oil, salt and vegetables from?

28
This local wage was less than half the standard wage paid to agricultural migrant workers at the
time of the fieldwork: Rs 28 and 2 kg of rice.

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Changing Meanings of Seasonal Migration 415

I first started working in the raja’s house when my children grew older.
I stopped going for a while, but after my husband’s death I joined again.
Why should I give up my job? Now I am working in the raja’s house
because of my temper. I can’t tolerate my daughter in law’s dominance: I
get angry easily and stop taking food at home. So I need my own earnings.
In the afternoon I can no longer tolerate the sun, so my daughter does my
work then. She also works in a separate household. I go there early in the
morning. I have to clean the cow shed, wash utensils, clean the burned
utensils, sweep the courtyard; there is a lot of work to do. We carry the
utensils to the pond. The rajas’ women used to bathe in that pond earlier.
The government provided all their facilities. Their electricity line had been
sanctioned in our name. We demanded electricity from the higher author-
ities, and learnt that the line they are enjoying actually had been sanctioned
for us. As we are illiterate we are helpless.
During Ashar-Sraban29 I also do local agricultural work. I will sing Jhumur
songs in the fields and play music and dance. This old lady will do every-
thing there. The raja and small farmers of Amdih will employ people, but
how will the rajas give us work daily? Maybe they employ us once every
ten days. We either go to the Mahato villages or work for people of our
own caste. The rajas will only employ well dressed, smart young women,
not an old woman like me.
When I first came here Amdih sukhir Brindaban chhilo – Amdih was as
peaceful as Brindaban.30 Life was comfortable. When we worked in the
rajas’ houses they would never look to see what we had taken from their
houses. They used to say, ‘nie ja’ – ‘take it’. Suppose we had done some
threshing in a raja’s house and cleaned the paddy. If we said ‘there are many
stone chips in this paddy,’ they would ask us to take the paddy, and make
rice out of it for ourselves. But now they are even measuring the amount
of muri31 they are giving us, even after much heavy work. They are not
ready to give us any extra. Now if the sons of the rajas find only a little
paddy spread in the floor, they will ask us to carry it inside their houses. So
the good days have passed. They will never come back again. We have
never seen such a crisis in this area before. These rajas, their nature is to
squeeze the poor. They like to swallow the poor.
When I came here all the men of Amdih worked for the raja. The raja
were very rich then. Large stores of paddy and rice used to be in the
courtyard, not inside their rooms, because they were too big. Our people
used to make shelters on top to protect them from the rain and sun. When
I came here, no-one used to go outside the village for work. But at
present due to hunger, they are moving around in search of work, either
eastwards [i.e. to Barddhaman], or to Raniganj, Kalipahari, Asansol, Tata
[for brick-making].
29
Mid-June to mid-August. Season for transplanting the annual paddy crop.
30
The kingdom of lord Krishna.
31
Puffed rice, considered a snack.

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416 Ben Rogaly and Daniel Coppard

At that time, the rajas’ work was the only work here, and that was
sufficient for our people. Now the rajas are not employing us. They prefer
Lohar people as domestic workers. Ashar-Sraban is coming and you will
see they will not employ us. In earlier times, Lohar women would refuse,
saying – ‘don’t touch the raja’s utensils, otherwise we will have to take
bath’, but now they are washing the utensils, and so we are not getting any
work. Previously Ghuna people used to catch fish, but now they are doing
agricultural work for the rajas. Bahire khete khete hobek – we have to earn our
food by working outside the locality. I can say this even in front of them.
We don’t like to do that work because of the amount of food they offer.
Our men demand more wages and for that reason the raja sometimes bring
labourers from other places. The wages are so low here that men working
in the field can’t manage food for their women. But the raja also avoid
employing us. They will bring Majhi, Mahato, Lohar or Ghuna. Then our
men will automatically go east to work. They cannot simply wait and
watch that. Now they have learned brick-making very well. Raniganj,
Tata, Asansol, wherever you go you can see Bauri people are making
bricks. Our newly married granddaughter-in-law has not learned that work
yet, but others, my two sons and one grandson, know the work very well
and have been going for the last four years.
We used to catch fish from the ponds and canals. Now from our earning
we are buying rice, vegetables and fish. We are earning daily and spending
daily. I am worried about my sons’ future. We have lived in a good time,
but I wonder what is waiting for them. In the whole of Manasadih there is
nobody who can employ us poor people. We have to work outside for at
least 6 months a year. We only get water and wood from this village, and
we buy rice from what we earn outside. From Sraban ( July–August) they
have to go outside, and then again in Agrahayan (November–December).
Some will go to cut paddy, some to make bricks. During Bhadra-Asvin
(mid-August to mid-October) they will eat from the money of the brick-
kiln contractor.
People had not started going to the brick fields when I came to Amdih.
Now it has become common. Shopkeepers will not give loans to us, they
give loans to the service holders who get a monthly salary. We get loans
only after giving collateral to them. By giving mortgages of daughters’ and
daughter in laws’ utensils we eat. With the interest, the amount of loan
doubles, so their [our sons’] pockets get empty as soon as they come back
[from migration].
Only one raja gives us loans, not all the houses. The raja who gives us
loans, gives them to us because we have a good relation with him. That
doesn’t mean that he will give loans to all the villagers of Amdih. Others
have relations with other families, and they might take loans from them.
But in Manasadih there is an invisible knife at the poor snake.
What they earn today, we will eat tomorrow. We don’t have any
savings. Our life has no value. If Bahadur can gather paddy or money by

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Changing Meanings of Seasonal Migration 417

working outside, then I will have mental peace. Every day they have to
work to get food, that’s what I don’t like about this life. I know now it is
not possible to buy land again.

Discussion
Bahadurer-ma’s narrative reveals much tension in her accounts of her relation-
ship with the rajas. Part of this is revealed in the contrast between her open,
almost fearless criticism of the current rajas – ‘I can say this even in front of
them’ (impersonal) – and her refusal to identify her own particular employer
(personal).32
Like Jaladhar Kaibarta, Bahadurer-ma admits a continuing reliance on and
indeed good relations with a raja patron. At the same time, the current rajas’
general callousness towards other Bauris is remarked on. However, there is a
difference in their perception of change in employment-class relations, even though
both were at one point closely associated with the rajas. Jaladhar’s narrative
described a permanent state of agitation, while Bahadurer-ma relates to a time in
the past when things were better.33
She spits vehemently when she talks of the rajas. She blames the rajas for
abandoning the Bauris, for preferring to employ others in their place. At other
moments, she puts the agency in the hands of the Bauris, emphasizing their
pride, as expressed, for example, through their unwillingness to work for the
low wages paid by the rajas. Yet at the same time, one of her most heartfelt
concerns is with the decline of the rajas. In the good old days, there was plenty of
food freely available. Now, with much more reliance on cash to buy it, there is
a sense that the rajas’ decline, in spite of the possibility of migration, will make
survival even more difficult.
When account is taken of Bahadurer-ma’s daughter-in-law’s intervention dur-
ing the narrative, the past is not simply portrayed with nostalgia. There is ambi-
guity here too. That Bahadurer-ma’s husband forbade her as young woman
from working for the raja for fear of her being used sexually suggests a less than
golden age. Further, Bahadurer-ma’s statement that the rajas would in present
times have been ‘beaten by our men’ for such behaviour powerfully describes a
greater capacity on the part of the Bauris to control events, in stark contrast to
the rest of her narrative.
Bahadurer-ma deploys jati categories herself to explain changing relations, the
rajas preference for employing other jati to do the work that Bauris used to do.
She herself feels that she is treated with more respect if she works for jati-classes
other than the rajas. Other Bauris expressed pride in the relatively recently skill
of brick-making. Members of other jati considered this very tough work, to

32
Although his identity was already known to us.
33
This may be a consequence of the age difference between the two: Bahadurer-ma is about 35
years older than Jaladhar.

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418 Ben Rogaly and Daniel Coppard

which, perhaps ironically, a degree of respect (‘we’re not tough like Bauris’) was
attached.
Unlike Jaladhar, there is no ambiguity about Bahadurer-ma’s continuing
poverty. Migration is not seen as emancipating in any sense: it is a means of
getting by. Access to loans for consumption relies on keeping a good relation
with the raja patron, in contrast with the general improvement in creditworthi-
ness associated with migration for rice work in particular, as alluded to by
Jaladhar.34 However, among the Bauris, Bahadurer-ma emphasizes her own relat-
ively high level of wealth: ‘The dowry was not very high considering my family
status. We have lands and we don’t have any real crisis’ (this in spite of having
lost much of their land).
Bahadurer-ma’s narrative of a long and hard life is also intensely concerned
with paid work as providing some autonomy in intra-household relations, espe-
cially vis-à-vis her daughter-in-law, whose increasing power Bahadurer-ma finds
so difficult to handle. This is evident from the way she carries herself, despite her
age, and is not surprising considering that Bahadurer-ma has arranged marriages
and expects to be centrally involved in organizing those of her grandchildren. If
her own daughter helps out, this does not detract from the increased self-esteem
she experiences at home through continuing to labour for the raja patron.

Soma Mahato
Across the fields to the east of the rajas’ houses there is a separate hamlet with a
tightly clustered group of single-storey dwellings,35 where Deshwalli Majhis,
Mahatos, Rajputs, Karmakars and others live side by side. Most residents culti-
vate land, whether as owner occupiers or tenants, and many households pursue
a strategy of both hiring in, and selling, agricultural labour. A relatively large
number of women and men regularly migrate out for agricultural work in
Barddhaman. They are mainly organized by the two established sardar referred
to earlier. Soma Mahato, a Mahato woman of 28, is a regular migrant worker.
She was born in the hamlet and has returned there, having separated from
her second husband. Others report that she has an extra-marital relation with
Ramgopal Majhi, one of the two migrant labour sardars. Ramgopal was present
for much of the interview.
My mother never worked outside the house. She only did the cooking and
looked after the children. My father was a carpenter. He used to make
roofs and doors as well as doing his own cultivation work. All of my
fathers’ four brothers lived with us. My jetha [father’s elder brother] and
kaka [father’s younger brother] were both bagal [cowherd] in two different
rajas’ houses. At that time my uncle’s son and I were the only children in

34
This contrast could be read as one between brick-kiln and rice production migration. However,
Bahadurer-ma refers to both.
35
Most of these are of mud, though there are also a few brick-built houses.

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Changing Meanings of Seasonal Migration 419

the family and living was not difficult. But as my father’s brothers married
and had children our living conditions deteriorated. They improved again
when we separated from my uncles and each brother started their own
cultivation.
Before separation we grew much maize on our homestead land during
Bhadra-Asvin.36 We used to give it as loans to other people of our caste
and, in return, after the paddy harvest, they would repay the same quantity
in rice. That was profitable and we didn’t have to eat corn instead of rice.
We hired in wage workers for our main cultivation tasks as there were
fewer household members then. This was less profitable and when the
family separated, both the agricultural and homestead land was divided up
and my father and uncles managed their own cultivation. We still cultivate
our part of the homestead land, but eat the maize now instead of giving
loans.
Soma has two younger brothers and two younger sisters.
When I was 5 or 6 years old I went to the local village primary school for
a few days. But my father’s brothers were not happy with that. ‘Your
father cannot even earn five paisa and you want to go to school!’ So I
stopped going and started looking after our buffalo. I did that work for
many years. My brothers are educated though. They have studied to high
school level. The elder of my brothers has passed class eight. I am now
urging my sister’s son to continue his studies. I will bear the cost myself.
My own marriage happened before I had grown up, before the family
separated. Although I was healthy and stout, my menstruation only started
after my marriage. But my husband was not good. He never looked after
me properly. When I stayed there my father had to give me money, some-
times Rs 200–300 per month. My husband was useless. He couldn’t do
agricultural or any other work. He didn’t have much land either. So I came
back. My marriage took place in one Falgun37 and I came back in the next.
I had no relation with anyone. I worked locally and then started migrating
out for work [the following year]. After four to five years I got married
again. However, [my second husband] refused to keep me with him. He
had been married before and this was his practice. For the second marriage
my father had given me some expensive utensils. When the marriage ended
I brought them back. My father said ‘Since you are not going to marry
again but are still young, you had better have the operation’ [sterilization].
Only my parents knew about my operation. I started off in the morning
and after the operation I took rest in a Brahmin woman’s house. Then in
the evening the bus dropped me back at Manasadih. I walked from there
[a distance of almost one kilometre].

36
The hungriest season of mid-August to mid-October.
37
Mid-February to mid-March.

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420 Ben Rogaly and Daniel Coppard

I learnt to cook at my in-laws’ house, and when I came back from my


first marriage I started doing waged agricultural work. I learnt how to
transplant seedlings and bind the bundles of straw. I had never done it at
home. I also did earth cutting for large farmers. When I was 16–17, I
worked as a coolie on a dam during Baisak-Jaistha.38 Mahadev Karmakar39
held the contract for that work. I earned Rs 50–60 a day, when the local
wage rate was only Rs 12. Wherever they [Ramgopal Majhi and other
labourers] went they informed me and I accompanied them. Once or twice
I visited the brick field.
After working locally for a year I started going to Barddhaman. This
was 10–12 years ago. I have been migrating to the same village in
Barddhaman ever since. I knew that people from our village went to
Barddhaman. I thought that I could eat at others’ expense [in Barddhaman]
and bring back money and rice. To earn was the motivation of my migra-
tion. But not just money and rice, also oil, salt, chilli, turmeric, potato and
dal. Before going I had seen and heard about that earning in kind. So I
wished to go. My father said, ‘parbis to ja – if you can, you may go’, and I
thought, ‘Let me try. The employer in Barddhaman is a big farmer. Eighty
labourers work together, so if one cannot do the work properly, that would
not be a big problem’. I went with an aunt and uncle, which may be why
I was allowed to go so easily. Ramgopal was a labourer too then. No one
from our side [of the village] was migrating then, but by the time Ramgopal
became a sardar, people from our side had also started going.
When I first went, it was Baishak.40 We reached Barddhaman quickly,
by 3 pm. I was not very worried. I thought, ‘It is only agricultural work.
I can do that’. In the beginning the work and the fields were unknown to
me, so we followed the sardar. But now the employer puts me in charge of
work: ‘Take this many labourers and finish cutting paddy for that field.’
Now I know my way around. Those who are new follow me. Nothing
else has changed in my work.
When I first returned from Barddhaman, I bought three blouses and a
saya (petticoat). Two blouses were for my mother and sister and one saya
and blouse I kept for myself. Later I also brought wool from Barddhaman.
At Barddhaman bus stand there is a large rest room. We keep our luggage
there and take turns to do our shopping. Now we come back by train,
walking to Barddhaman from the village which is another type of joy.
To my eyes nothing has changed [there]. The duration of work in dif-
ferent seasons is the same.41 Working hours have decreased a little, because
38
Mid-April to mid-June.
39
See the testimony which follows.
40
Mid-April to mid-May.
41
Other data from the wider project suggested that length of the working day varied according to
the number of hours of sunlight, which was greatest at the summer rice harvest and least at the
monsoonal rice harvest. For those working on a piece rate, common in the summer harvest when
employers feared that storms would destroy the crop if it was standing in the field too long, working
hours were even longer, in one case as much as twenty hours per day.

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Changing Meanings of Seasonal Migration 421

now the employer has given us responsibility for completing work, both at
harvest and transplanting. So, if we manage to finish that work earlier, we
can get off earlier. Even if I get work locally, I prefer to go to Barddhaman,
both because the wage is higher and because we also get rice, vegetables,
oil, salt and dal. It is simply more profitable to go to Barddhaman. We can
save both money and rice by working there. If I hear some people are
going, my mind will be restless to go there too. I will think to myself,
‘how can I arrange to go with them? Why are they not asking me to go
with them?’ In my opinion it is good to go to Barddhaman, at least it is
better than working locally. If we work locally we just earn and eat, we
can’t save anything. Only in Barddhaman are we eating and saving at the
same time. On the way to Barddhaman we never experience anything bad.
No harassment or accidents, nothing. If there are mosquitoes in Barddhaman
[it’s not a problem since] we have bought nets for Rs 100. We are earning
money, so that is not a big problem for us.
I keep some of my earnings (Rs 100–200) with me for buying gifts for
my nephew and sister. The rest of the money I give to my father. I am
now responsible for everything in our household. I look after the money
and spend it, whether it be for our agriculture, or household expenditure,
or relatives or medicine. My father put me in charge. I have become like
the elder son of the family because my brother is suffering from a long term
stomach illness. He cannot do any hard work for the time being. If he is
well for a few days, he falls sick again shortly afterwards. Before this illness
he also worked with me locally and in Barddhaman. He has suffered a lot.
For the last 12 years I have been in Bajnagarh, and I have been going to
Bamunia [a village in Barddhaman] continuously for the same period of
time. The money we earn we save; only if we don’t get any local work or
there is crisis of food do we spend it. From that money we have bought
one bigha [a third of an acre] of land, and have taken three pieces of land
from different persons on mortgage, in exchange of Rs 1200 for each piece.
As long as my health remains as fit as it is now, I shall continue to go to
Barddhaman. Ramgopal and his wife have just gone to collect money from
Bamunia. They will also fix a date, and I will go without finishing our own
cultivation if necessary. My father will make a separate house for me and
give me a piece of land. [Although I am a single woman] I never feel
insecure about that. I know my father will arrange everything for me.
Because of migration our land-holding has increased now. So in our fam-
ily, migration is not only for survival, it is a source of extra income.

Discussion
Soma Mahato has spent her life doing hard manual work for others for a wage.
Alongside a process of becoming a regular migrant wage worker for rice trans-
planting and harvesting a total of four seasons per year in Barddhaman, Soma
has become increasingly relied on by the father and brother she lives with to

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422 Ben Rogaly and Daniel Coppard

organize the household economy and to bring in cash income. However, from
the start, the kind payments of rice, and especially the accompaniments, attracted
her to the Barddhaman work.
Soma’s story can be read as one of emancipation as a woman in terms of her
move away from difficult marriages towards effectively running household af-
fairs in her natal village. When she first migrated she required her father’s per-
mission and was only allowed to go because she was accompanied by relatives.42
Migration has been central to her small-scale but steady accumulation of wealth
for the household, some of which she expects to inherit. It has also enabled her
to purchase goods on the journey home, including the blouse and petticoat,
which are signs of upward mobility for many women. She has a very positive
view of migration, clearly indicating, moreover, that it was and continues to be
her choice. The meaning of migration for Soma contrasts with that for many
other migrant women in the locality, who are obligated to go by (and often go
instead of ) their husbands.
Soma even describes walking to the train station from the destination village
as a ‘joy’, despite the problems of carrying rice, cooking utensils, etc. It is likely
that her love affair with Ramgopal contributes to the joy she experiences in
migration. If Soma Mahato is on a path to emancipation, it is not one which she
currently plans to lead away from doing migrant work. In Barddhaman, follow-
ing repeated migration to the same village, and perhaps also because of her close
association with Ramgopal, the employer has given her a leadership role, which
she values in itself. In Barddhaman, she is also able to be more intimate with
Ramgopal, whose wife does not usually migrate.
In Soma’s narrative, the rajas fade into the background. Her uncles were
employed by them and as a child this was an important source of income.
Consistent with Soma’s narrative regarding migration to Barddhaman, she does
not see being a wage worker in itself as demeaning. Soma Mahato is proud of
being able to do agricultural tasks competently. Indeed, she speaks positively of
life at home once they stopped hiring in workers and managed their own cultiva-
tion. This may have to do with Mahatos’ sense of themselves as cultivators. For
example, the ‘uselessness’ of her first husband is associated with his inability to
do agricultural work and his lack of agricultural land. However, it also seems to
run against the grain of the idea that controlling others’ labour is necessarily
status enhancing.

Mahadev Karmakar
Mahadev Karmakar lives in the same hamlet of Bajnagarh as Soma, although
he too has spent long periods living elsewhere, in his case in his mother’s village
of birth. He is now fifty, with five sons by his first wife and a daughter by his

42
Even now, most of Soma’s remittances are handed over to her father: a demonstrative, if also
mostly symbolic, gesture towards his authority.

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Changing Meanings of Seasonal Migration 423

second. They are Karmakar, known as blacksmiths because of their caste occu-
pation. Through Mahadev’s life, he has practised several occupations, including
bagal (cowherd), owner-cultivator and agricultural wage worker. Seasonal mi-
gration was something he (and some other members of his family) did in the past
– for several consecutive years – and has now given up. Mahadev now works as
a munish (regular manual worker) for one of the raja. His wife and second son
continue to migrate seasonally.
When I returned to the village [from my maternal grandmother’s house]
I was a grown man, and none of the villagers recognized me. I came back
and [my wife and I] made our own house and started living here. One
Rajput boy was very helpful to me. Now he is at Adra colony because he
has been attacked by leprosy. He helped me in many ways. We collected
wood for fuel and for making houses. Having only rice with us, he worked
for his meals. He has done more for me than my own father.
One year after returning to Bajnagarh,43 I started going to pub. I last
went thirteen or fourteen years ago. By then I had been going to pub
continuously for nine years. I first went after having an argument with my
parents. No one was with me; I was alone. When I first migrated there was
no sardar system. It was our own personal decision. Whoever felt unbear-
able poverty decided to go to pub. With some money and food they used to
start from here. I met a group of five people. They were also from Puruliya
District – from the neighbouring block. We were happy that we were from
the same place. I told them that I was alone, and they asked me to join
them.
So we became six and started off. We reached Badulia More, it is on the
Raina line. We met an employer there. His appearance was not good. The
condition of his house was unknown to us. I found some differences in
mental attitude between him and us. I said to Doiba, one of our group,
‘The way he is talking, there is some doubt in his mind, and he doesn’t
trust us at all. He can’t be a good man.’ Doiba was Hari by caste. He said,
‘Let us try.’ I said, ‘Maybe at the end of our work he will not pay us
properly.’ [As it turned out] he only gave the right amount of food for two
days, and then less for the remaining days.
Compared to now the amount of migrant labour was less, because of
water problems. The quality of water might sometimes cause sickness, so
some avoided going. But I was strong enough so I used to go. In the third
year I took my wife, but she didn’t know how to do any of the work
except cutting paddy. Binding and threshing were new for her. Within
seven days I taught her everything. There was no source of healthy water
in that village, only small ponds over which grew a layer of fungus, which
we had to remove to drink the water. It would not suit everybody. We
were poor and had no choice.

43
From other things Mahadev said, this refers to a point in the mid to late 1970s.

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424 Ben Rogaly and Daniel Coppard

[Later in the year we went back and] worked with a good and true man,
Sakti Ghosh, milkman by caste. Whilst negotiating, we told him that even
if his work wasn’t finished, he had to let us leave before Pous Sankranti
[a major annual festival in mid-January]. He replied, ‘If the work isn’t
finished, I cannot allow you to go.’ So our decision was to find another
employer. We were six women and eight men, fourteen in total, and since
the male numbers were more, Sakti Ghosh was reluctant to lose us. He
asked why Pous Sankranti was so important for us. I tried to explain to
him that on that day, after bathing, we will have good food. ‘Is that all?’ he
asked. ‘No, there is something more’, I replied. ‘After having food there
will be cock fighting.’ ‘What is that?’ he asked. Again I tried to explain to
him, ‘We will tie knives to the cocks’ legs and make them fight each other.’
‘Why so?’ he asked. ‘There is a story linked with Ramayana. After finishing
the war with Ravana, Ramachandra asked all the animals and men, “Who
will continue this war in the future?” Nobody but the cocks agreed to
continue. You see, if we keep two cocks from the same mother separate for
a few days, although they are brothers in relation, they will fight against
each other. Will a man do that?
The employer understood, but asked what the benefit was. I replied, ‘If
my cock can defeat the other then I will have another cock for our feast.’
Then he realized the importance, but even then he was only willing to let
us leave on the day of Pous Sankranti. ‘Na babu, seti hobek na – no sir, that
can’t be. You have to allow us to leave at least two days before.’ Sakti
Ghosh was unhappy, but he didn’t want to lose us so he tried to deduct the
wage rate by 2 annas because there would be some work left. We promised
him that we would finish his work after returning. We would take leave
only for five days. He agreed, and after discussion with his son he prom-
ised to give us the same wage rate which would be finalized at the village
level at the end of the work.
From the next year I went to Bamunia.44 I worked for five years continu-
ously.45 That is why it has become very easy and familiar to me. Since then
employers have come over here to my house to take me, but now I refuse
to go.
When I first went, it was not common. Only two of us went from this
village. My parents liked me migrating; when I brought some extra money
from pub [Barddhaman], it was really helpful for my family. At first I left
the house without saying anything to anyone, but after that, they sent me
with other local people. I also made them understand that without migra-
tion it was not possible to pass the days. We didn’t have any children when
I first went. For the first two years I went alone. For the next four years,
my wife went with me. Only in the last year was my elder son with us.

44
The same destination which Soma Mahato still migrates to.
45
This means that he migrated there for the agricultural peak seasons over a five-year period. He
did not always work for the same employer.

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Changing Meanings of Seasonal Migration 425

I continued to migrate out of crisis and poverty. We were two brothers,


two sisters, and two wives, and my father never did any agricultural work.
It was difficult to manage for food, clothes and accommodating guests just
from our blacksmith’s work. So I started migrating. I stopped because of
my parents’ death, there was nobody to look after the children. After my
father’s death we continued, but after that of my mother, it was impossible
to leave the house.
So, I migrated for nine years. After that, the Nitya company took a
contract for constructing a canal from Golabari. My wife was strong, and
she was interested in going again, so we went. My wife and I suffered there
as Ramachandra suffered in the forest. My sister’s husband worked in the
Jharia coal mines cutting coal. After the canal-building work he arranged
work for me in there. Now, even if you give lots and lots of money, it’s
not possible to get a job over there, but by verbal request he managed to
get a job for me in Kusumdih colliery. I had to work underground and as
I went into the mines I felt very uncomfortable and unsafe. I didn’t know
what depth I was at. If I faced any danger, there would be no one to rescue
me. Even if I died there, nobody would get the message. This type of
work was valueless for me, because my life was not being valued. After
working for one month, I took my salary, and left the job. The salary was
Rs 45 per month, which is Rs 1.5 a day.
Previously, my father was in Congress, so I was also automatically in
Congress. We were marked as a Congress family. Because of being a Con-
gress party member I got a contract for constructing a canal five to six
years ago (although later in the same year I joined CPI(M)). The block
office gave the money to me. It was Rs 60,000, and my charge was to
employ labour and pay them. From that work I made a profit of Rs 800.
My father was not pleased with this work – ‘you are doing the work of a
government contractor? Some manual worker might beat you’. I answered,
‘Others are doing the same work, why not me?’ I constructed Liya Bandh.46
I employed people from this village and other hamlets.
By doing agricultural work in my own field and some blacksmith work
we were able to save two per cent of our earnings. I asked my father to do
the blacksmith’s work so that I could earn some more money by moving
around. That was when I first started visiting the rajas. That was another
incident. Previously I was a Congress party member. One day I was ac-
cused of robbery. The police visited my house with a search warrant. I
asked one of the raja to help me but he refused. Then I decided to visit
my mother-in-law near Puruliya town, who was an active member of the
Mahila Samiti [the CPI(M)’s mass organization for women]. On the way I
met another of the raja, a CPI(M) leader, who asked me to have tea with
him. He helped me. He accompanied me to the police station and they
withdrew the case against me. From then I became a CPI(M) party member.

46
A small local tank.

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426 Ben Rogaly and Daniel Coppard

Now I have to visit the same raja’s house daily and I receive Rs 20 as well
as food once a day. Since I came here today [to talk to you], I have sent my
second son to his house instead. I do odd jobs there. In the off season and
in the agricultural peak seasons I work as a munish.
I stopped migrating because I didn’t have faith in my strength. If I fail to
work continuously, or feel sick, then it will be my loss. So, I dropped the
idea of migrating. In the rajas’ para, where I work now, if I go there from
early morning, they will give me food and Rs 20. What else do I need?
Now my second son is also going there, so we are getting Rs 40 per day.
That is enough for us. Here, in the house of the raja I work for, if you are
not lazy, as soon as you reach there you will get tea and roti. Then at 10.30
am I will get 2 ser of muri; in the afternoon they will give rice with tasty
accompaniments; and at the end Rs 20. It is better to go there. This raja also
gives loans if necessary, and if by chance he doesn’t have money and we
want to buy something from the stores, he will tell the shopkeepers to
supply us groceries on credit.
All my children were born at home. Now my middle son goes to the
raja’s house for work. The elder one looks after the wheat and paddy fields
and also the goats, while my younger sons go to school. My third son is
staying at Calcutta Ramakrishna ashram. He is in class X now. The next
two are going to Manasadih school, they are in class IV and V. The young-
est is a daughter. I said to my sons that as long as I am alive try to continue
your study. It will be helpful for you in the future. Even if it does not lead
to a secure desk job it will be helpful for mixing with people, and earning
something will be possible through that. I have tried to make some capital
and start our own blacksmith work but my elder sons are not interested.
Working in others’ houses is better for them. I am also not capable of
blacksmith work now, so it has stopped. My sons are going to school.
Sometimes they demand shoes, so I buy shoes for Rs 40. Sometimes they
ask for exercise books, so I provide them. Now my wife needs a sari, so I
will buy the sari for Rs 140. On top of that, attending marriage parties is
also expensive, so all the money is finished.

Discussion
If migration is proposed as a route to emancipation, Mahadev Karmakar’s strat-
egy has been in the opposite direction. But he sounds quite resigned to the
patron–client relation he now has with one of the raja, and which Mahadev’s son
looks like continuing. Mahadev acknowledges the security of reliable employ-
ment and the benefits of the raja’s patronage, which together offer fewer risks
– particularly health risks – than seasonal migration. However, some other
residents of Bajnagarh view the situation differently. One, a local Congress
Party worker, strongly criticized the move, arguing that Mahadev Karmakar,
whom he saw as his wage worker and supporter, had been bought by the CPM-
leader raja, whom he believed to be very corrupt.

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Changing Meanings of Seasonal Migration 427

Mahadev first migrated after a row with his own parents. He experienced
some of the (implicitly male) camaraderie and solidarity described by Jaladhar in
Case 1. However, for Mahadev, the meaning of migration shifted quite clearly
to supporting his family – first parents, then children – in times of crisis. In
contrast to Soma Mahato, Mahadev considers migration to be arduous and dan-
gerous. For example, he describes how in his second year of migration he had to
drink pond water. ‘We were poor and had no choice.’
In spite of this, the story of persuading a destination area employer to let him
and the others in his gang go home at Pous Sankranti illustrates the priority
given to that festival over security of employment. Mahadev Karmakar distin-
guishes matter-of-factly between Barddhaman employers, not seeing them as a
class unified by an homogeneous attitude to the wage workers they employ.
Strikingly, the conversation Mahadev recalls in such detail portrays the em-
ployer as willing to reason and open to persuasion about the importance of the
Pous Sankranti festival. Indeed, Mahadev takes a similar tone when he describes
the deal he has reached with his raja employer in later life.
Over his working life, his immediate family shift from being a location
of youthful rebellion to being needy of support and finally helping him as he
becomes older and weaker. His wife’s migrations lag behind his own. This could
be because she has waited longer in order to care for their children as infants.
Alternatively, the reason for his wife starting to migrate later than Mahadev may
have been part of a pattern common in the locality of men migrating without
family first and then later, once it had become familiar and known as a reliable
source of remittances, taking their wives with them. When both his parents died
there was no support for migration, no care for the children, so migration tem-
porarily stopped. Mahadev’s wife recently started migrating again, sometimes in
spite of her husband’s protests. She argues that it is financially necessary to go,
and during the study period, she was observed to exert her authority within the
household, both by insisting one of her sons accompany her (as a woman she is
unable to go alone), and by preventing a daughter-in-law from migrating (who
wanted to go but had recently given birth).
Mahadev has practised several kinds of work. He rejects mining because he
feels his life is not valued – anything could happen – but his father argues against
him being a labour contractor because of how this might be seen (and responded
to) by his former fellow manual workers. This argument was made in spite of
the fact that earnings associated with contracting are relatively high and that,
unlike in the case of mining, Mahadev would have more control over his own
fate. The clear references made to the meaning of work relate closely to ideas of
class loyalty. There are no such references to the expectations of belonging to a
particular local jati in terms of relations with others in that jati or anybody else.
If anything, Mahadev appreciates the support and understanding of the Hari,
Goala and Rajput men he describes at various stages on the way. Like Bahadurer-
ma, Mahadev ends up reliant on work for the raja and, also like Bahadurer-ma,
he uses a child as a substitute when he is unable to go to work. He requires the
raja patron’s recommendation to get shop credit locally.

JOAC303C04 427 5/22/03, 9:55 AM


428 Ben Rogaly and Daniel Coppard

CONCLUSION
Given the low levels of agricultural productivity and few employment opportun-
ities in the Chottanagpur Plateau areas to the west of the state of West Bengal, it
is not surprising that many people have felt compelled to migrate seasonally in
order to earn enough to eat. At a more aggregated level than we have attempted
here, it is likely that the smaller number of migrants to the alluvial plains in the
1960s and 1970s were, in general, working to stand still. Food and cash earned
would be used for immediate requirements. In the 1980s and early 1990s, as real
wage rates increased and the number of days of available employment continued
to grow, more people migrated, earned more than they needed to consume
during the period of migration, and began to return with sums of money which
could be used for food over a longer period, or even for investment in housing,
in agriculture or livestock, in marriages and in other social events. This con-
tinued even with stagnation in real wages in the later 1990s. The quote of the
title (‘they used to go to eat, now they go to earn’ – taken from a district council
chairman interviewed in another migrant source area in West Bengal) probably
does reflect the bigger picture.47
But by switching the scale of analysis to the individual level, it is clear that
much is missed in this aggregated perspective – and much of what is missed
matters. Halfacree has shown this in his review of the literature on residential
migration in the US. Too high a level of aggregation has led to a ‘normative
association’ in the US between employment migration and economic better-
ment, when such migration – by men – is, more often than not, bad for women
(Halfacree 1995). In the opening section of this paper, we argued that it would
be necessary, within a political economy framework, to go beyond standard
class categories, in order to avoid a deterministic conceptualization of social
structures.
The narratives drawn on in this paper reveal that changes in the patterns of
seasonal migration from the Chottanagpur Plateau to the alluvial plains have not
been unilinear. There have been important changes in why people migrate over
time, in relation both to the life courses of individuals and their families as well
as to agro-ecological and climatic changes, the latter being characterized by
periods suited variously, and unsystematically, to different levels of agricultural
production and employment. Short dips in fortune may not dent the long-
term aggregated trend, but can be associated with major hardship and ill-being
for the specific people involved. Variations between wage-worker households
in what migration means (within the same time period) reveal that desperation
and compulsion continue to be important parts of the experience of seasonal
migration, amid, what is for some, a more optimistic trajectory.48

47
As narrated by older migrant wage workers in all four source localities included in the wider,
regional research project on seasonal migration, from which this paper is drawn.
48
Indeed, a few people interviewed in the wider regional study had, through making use of migra-
tion remittances, been able to move away from reliance on arduous manual wage work altogether.

JOAC303C04 428 5/22/03, 9:55 AM


Changing Meanings of Seasonal Migration 429

What complicates this further is the range of meanings which individuals


attribute to the work done in migration, whether agricultural or in brick kilns.
For Soma Mahato, at one end of the continuum, there remains a sense of excite-
ment and curiosity about migration, despite having been migrating for twelve
years. For Bahadurer-ma, at the other end, the migration of her sons is driven
by material need. But migration is not reduced to a single meaning in any one of
the wage-workers’ narratives. The same individual expresses conflicting and some-
times ambiguous or even contradictory dimensions to the migration experience
itself and to the more general experience of being a wage worker. For Bahadurer-
ma, for example, the rajas will not seek out Bauri workers, while at the same
time, Bauri men refuse the rajas’ low paid work.
The meanings of seasonal migration to a particular wage worker change over
the life course, as the title suggests, but they change differently for different
people. So Mahadev Karmakar’s migration begins with youthful rebellion and
shifts to being compelled by the need to support his family. He then stops and
tries to stop his wife from returning to migration – but she is insistent: arguing
that they need the money. Her sense of urgency does not stretch to allowing
their daughter-in-law, mother of a young child, to migrate. Mahadev’s wife
prevents her from migrating while going herself. For Soma Mahato, migration
began out of a desire to earn the accompaniments that form part of the kind
payment to agricultural migrant workers in the alluvial plains. Over time, its
importance to her increases. She enjoys the time away, probably because she is
able to be with her lover, and also because she experiences a sense of being
valued at work through the employer’s actions in giving her responsibility to
oversee particular tasks and show others how to do them. Her earnings from
migration give her an increasingly central role in her father’s house back home.
Material need is part of the picture but it is kept in the background of Soma’s
narrative.
Both Mahadev Karmakar and Soma Mahato belong to the same class, that of
wage workers. But they experience migration differently and their experiences
change over time. The differences between them are not explainable by jati
(Mahadev is a blacksmith and Soma a Mahato), although the Mahatos’ jati
reputation for pride in cultivation is consistent with Soma Mahato’s confident
statements about her skills in carrying out agricultural work in the destination
area. The narratives suggest a number of different processes of change in social
relations between classes and between jati in the source area.
Jaladhar Kaibarta and Bahadurer-ma both emphasize the changes in social
relations between source area employers and source area workers. Both have
strong ongoing employment relations with individual rajas; yet both value – in
different ways – moves away from dependence on the rajas for employment and
other kinds of patronage. Jaladhar, who belongs to a service jati, suggests that
there has been a decline in respect for the rajas by members of the service jatis
more generally, most especially in his son’s generation. The rajas resent the
upward mobility of people who were brought to the locality to be of service to
them. Bahadurer-ma narrates the pride of Bauris, a jati originally brought to the

JOAC303C04 429 5/22/03, 9:55 AM


430 Ben Rogaly and Daniel Coppard

locality by the rajas for manual work, in now being able to resist the rajas’ low
wages and defend Bauri women from demands made on them for sexual favours.
Both these trends are caused, at least in part, by the increasing availability of
seasonal migration for agriculture and brick-making and other work opportun-
ities outside the locality. Yet, Bahadurer-ma also expresses a fear of the con-
sequences of the decline in the economic fortunes of the rajas.
Relations between source area wage workers and their employers are ex-
pressed in terms of both jati and class, even though the speakers are well aware of
the internal differentiation within their own jatis and classes, as well as the wide
range of wealth among the rajas. At the same time, the individual relations which
Jaladhar, Bahadurer-ma and now Mahadev too all maintain with one raja (though
not all with the same one) evince the continuing strength of vertical patron–
client relations in the locality.
While there is a certain conceptual unity attributed to the service jati and to the
Bauris in their relations with the raja, the narratives also illustrate internal divi-
sions within each of these jati. Jaladhar’s reference to the envy of his neighbours
at the sight of his tiled roof suggests that, where migration remittances have
enabled some visible upward economic mobility, this may be resented by those
of the same jati, who do not migrate as wage workers. Bahadurer-ma distin-
guishes herself from other Bauris in emphasizing her wealth-class, despite taking
the part of the Bauris as a group in her narration of relations with the raja. She
speaks resentfully of the service jati who have replaced the Bauris as rajas’ munish
(regular manual workers).
In the descriptions of relations between migrant wage workers and their des-
tination area employers, references are made to class solidarity among the former
group, particularly in earlier days, fifteen or twenty years ago, when men more
commonly set off alone, without others from their jati or para. Both Mahadev
and Jaladhar refer to camaraderie between men of different jati. Indeed, Mahadev
includes within this the ‘true and good’ employer who hired him on one of his
earliest trips to the alluvial plains. Mahadev does not see the destination area
employers’ behaviour towards migrant workers as determined by their class
status, but more by their personal characteristics. In Jaladhar’s narrative he speaks
of a certain satisfaction from being recognized by other Lohar para migrants as a
leader who can negotiate well at the labour market place. This again implies
some room for manoeuvre in the package – wage, length of stay, living condi-
tions, type of work – being negotiated. Employers from the plains are not seen
as an undifferentiated mass by their migrant wage workers; we too have observed
how they do not effectively unite to share labour market place information to the
disadvantage of migrant workers because they are often competing with each
other to hire workers quickly in brief, but regular, periods of shortage. Jaladhar
described how in negotiation at the time of being hired and at the workplace, he
and other migrant workers would play on what they saw as the fears of wage
workers from Chottanagpur on the part of plains employers.
This provides one of the main contrasts between our own study and Jan
Breman’s study of cooperative capitalism in sugar cane cultivation and processing

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Changing Meanings of Seasonal Migration 431

in south Gujarat (see, for example, Breman 1990). The cooperative provided
employers with immense combined market power. This enabled them to ex-
clude local workers and bring in a workforce made up entirely of migrants. The
hiring of workers – on the cooperative’s terms rather than on the terms of
individual employers – was carried out by intermediaries. There is no such cadre
of intermediaries in the West Bengal rice fields. Taken together, we believe that
this gives the wage workers involved in rice production in West Bengal more
room for manoeuvre and negotiation than those hired by the sugar cooperatives’
jobbers.
Types of work and employment relations entered are produced, in part at
least, by intra-household relations in wage-workers’ households. They also in-
fluence them. Changes over the life course referred to at the beginning of this
section involve changes in ideas of appropriate work and responsibility within
the household. Material and demographic circumstances also change. Infants
require care either at home or at the destination area workplace. Whether this is
available to enable migration depends on household structure, wider kin net-
works, and the personal inclination of the people involved. The changes in the
meanings of migration experienced by Jaladhar relate to his marrying and having
children, and the acquisition of livestock (itself brought about due to migration
remittances) as well as a recent drought. Soma speaks as though migration is
liberating. Having separated from her husbands and returned to her natal village,
she has used migration both to further her individual interests and to play a key
role in the household economy. Bahadurer-ma’s wage work is also strongly
influenced by her intra-household relations. She works in part to retain her
independence from her daughter-in-law.
This analysis of four migrant workers’ narratives is part of a wider project
which uses different sources of data to examine the dynamic relations between
seasonal migration and social change, including whether, as a result of migra-
tion, social relations have changed to the benefit of migrant workers. It was our
contention in the introduction to this paper that alongside and interacting with
changes in social relations were changes in the meanings of particular kinds of
work and employment, which in turn influenced well-being. These narratives do
enough to identify some of the important ways in which the act of migration
contributes to changing social relations of production. Indeed migration can also
lead to emancipation in the context of other social relations such as those be-
tween genders and generations inside households.
The evidence for the proposition that migrants have increasingly been able to
accumulate and invest is mixed in these four narratives and we need to analyse
more of our data to come to firm conclusions there. But the narratives do
indicate that some migrants have become materially better off through migra-
tion. Further, looking in such detail at the life stories of just a very few people is
also useful in enabling us to contrast the experiences of members of what some
would portray as an undifferentiated class. The same kind of work means differ-
ent things to different people at different times and even to the same person at
the same time. In Jaladhar’s, Bahadurer-ma’s and Mahadev’s testimonies there is

JOAC303C04 431 5/22/03, 9:55 AM


432 Ben Rogaly and Daniel Coppard

an explicit valuing of the patronage of particular rajas at particular points in their


lives. Another Bauri respondent described some of the advantages of working as
a regular labourer for one of the raja. He saw it as enabling him to stay at home
while others were forced to migrate and endure hardship without even being
able to improve their lot in the process. This reliance on local patrons, on feudal-
type relations, coincides in Jaladhar’s and Bahadurer-ma’s case with a portrayal
of the rajas as a jati-class needing to be cut down to size.
In trying to unravel some of the complexity of social relations between mi-
grant workers and their employers at this micro level, however, we should not
be tempted to conclude that the big picture is simply fragmented. None of the
narratives report significant cross-class social mobility. While we have focused
on the fluidity of the experiences of migrant wage workers, it is important to
emphasize that the power to set the changing categories and boundaries is un-
equally distributed. Despite what they reported as their economic decline, with
which Bahadurer-ma concurs, the rajas in the study locality have managed to
replace the Bauris with other workers as they have needed to. At least some
individuals remain or have recently become economically dependent on rajas.
They still own the vast majority of the fertile land in the locality and the eco-
nomic opportunities that go with it. This creates some of the preconditions for
seasonal migration. The same migration has changed the quality of the class and
jati relations between the rajas and the wage workers, but only incrementally.

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