Migration bug: Haryana youth goes the Punjab way
It may not be on the scale of Punjab, but rural Haryana is fast catching up on the frenzy to go abroad — through legal or illegal means
Migration bug: Haryana youth goes the Punjab way
Chandigarh: Compulsion — this one word echoes across villages and conversations in Haryana. More specifically in the Ambala, Karnal, Yamunanagar, Kaithal and Fatehabad belts, which have seen the maximum number of rural youth leaving the comforts of their homes to go to foreign shores. Legally and illegally.
We are educating people to go to agents registered by the Ministry of External Affairs and not fall prey to others wanting to make quick money. There have been many cases of fake visas and fake tickets where the complainant is sent back from the airport. There have been a few cases of deaths.
While many hope to get a foothold through a study visa or other authorised routes, there are others who enter a country of their choosing stealthily in the dead of the night, after paying through the nose. It is an arduous journey and the fear of being caught weighs heavy on their minds, but the hope of a better life propels them to keep going notwithstanding the huge risks. Migration has become the buzzword among the youth of rural Haryana, even women. With more and more youth prodding their families to sell off land to fund their travel, the state is gradually going the Punjab way.
Skewed job opportunities, merit being overlooked in government jobs, rising crime graph, rampant corruption and deteriorating quality of life in Haryana are turning the youth to foreign shores.
Sewa Singh, 70, a farmer of Dherdu village in Kaithal district, vouches for it. “Majority of our boys has gone. Their families remain. Our village has 1,100 votes. Even if all the voters turn up for polling, the figure won’t touch 800. The rest have gone abroad and are doing well for themselves,” he says, with a glint of pride in his eyes.
The number of IELTS centres and travel agents is rising at an exponential rate in Kaithal, Kurukshetra, Ambala, Karnal, Yamunanagar, Fatehabad and many other places in Haryana. Pride, yes, at the boys getting ‘settled’, but a walk in the deserted lanes paints a grim picture. The village is slowly losing the generation that has kept it alive. Left behind are elderly couples and locked rooms.
Sitting on a charpoy at the entrance of his huge courtyard, 65-year-old Jagdish Chander says, “We were 11 members in this house a few years back. My brother was the first to leave. His sons followed, then their families. My daughter went after them. Now, I sit at one end of the house, near the entrance, and my wife, Kamla Rani, at the other, in her room. All those abroad, in the US, Italy and Greece, make video calls. We are illiterate and have only learnt to pick up the phone. We don’t even know how to make that call. The house is empty but we know they are all happy and earning well.”
Many villages are seeing the exodus of youngsters, leaving behind their parents and locked rooms. Kamla Rani misses all of them but underlines that she and her husband will survive this separation. Like the rest of the village does in the knowledge that the children are happy.
A former sarpanch of Khanoda village, Darshan Singh, says caste is no bar in the yearning for settling abroad. While it has a lot to do with following in the footsteps of acquaintances, it is also about the disillusionment of being unskilled and unemployed. “The Jat and Ror communities have taken the lead, and the moneyed are sending their children abroad. Land is being sold to fund the foreign dreams. There are a few instances where a couple of Scheduled Caste families in the village have taken loans to send their children abroad. Nobody wants to miss out on the chance of a better life,” he says, adding that migration also results in good matches for the boys.
Similar stories
Comments are closed.