Tirupur: "I don't know how many eyes watched me in those few hours" is the anguished record of a woman who traveled by train from Salem to Chennai on November 5. A shock awaited the woman who had confidently boarded the train from Kochuveli to Gorakhpur. Not hundreds, but thousands of men were waiting to cram themselves into the train.
Even though she had boarded with her husband and one more friend, the crowd standing around harassed them. The Tamil Nadu woman narrated the harrowing ordeal on social media, but there are countless untold stories of passengers' miserable experience while traveling in trains operating from south to the northern states as hordes of migrant workers returned home on the recent festive season.
ETV Bharat visited the Tirupur railway station to find out the root cause of the overcrowding on board the trains. The railway station still looks almost like a battlefield. Even after Diwali, crowds of people are waiting for trains for some festivals celebrated in northern states with passengers complaining of scarce trains even during festivals.
In Tamil Nadu, the number of migrant workers in most of the informal industries has increased significantly. In all industries such as textile, construction, hotel, people from northern states are working more than ever before especially in industrial cities like Coimbatore, Tirupur, Salem and other areas. As there are only weekly trains from the industrial cities of Tamil Nadu to the northern states, getting tickets is very difficult with migrant workers also traveling on unreserved tickets.
If there is no space, they travel by occupying the seats, corridors, toilets in the reserved compartments. Migrant workers account for 35 to 40 percent of hosiery manufacturing firms in the textile hub of Tirupur alone. That is to say, there are two and a half lakh migrant workers in the northern states doing various jobs in Tirupur textile companies.
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Especially in the cities of Coimbatore, Tirupur, Erode and Karur in Tamil Nadu, and in cities like Kochi and Thiruvananthapuram in Kerala, northern state migrant workers work in huge numbers. But the number of trains going to northern states on this route is very less. A train runs once a week from Coimbatore to Dhanbad via Tirupur, Erode and Salem.
Similarly, only one weekly train from Coimbatore to Silchar, one weekly train to Rajkot, one weekly train to Jaipur and one weekly train to Nizamuddin are operated. Apart from this there are separate weekly trains to Hisar in Haryana, Jaipur and Paravuni in Rajasthan. But when compared to the number of migrant workers, the number of passengers allowed on these trains is not even 5 percent.
As the Coimbatore, Tirupur, Erode, Salem railway line is the main route for trains to North Kerala and South Kerala, trains departing from Thiruvananthapuram, Kochi, Ernakulam, Alappuzha, Kozhikode and Mangalore also stop on this route. Due to lesser trains, migrant workers are risking their lives to travel to their hometowns without restrictions.
Train coaches and toilets are not cleaned due to uncontrollable and large number of people boarding them. It is estimated that one and a half lakh laborers migrate from Tirupur alone for Diwali and Satpuja festival. But only three special trains are available for the migrant laborers from Tirupur. A northern state laborer from Tirupur said, “Workers from many northern states come and work in Tirupur.
Hence additional weekly trains should be run to West Bengal, Odisha, Jharkhand, UP, Rajasthan, MP. Even doubling the existing trains is not enough”. He said that thousands of migrant workers travel on festive days like Diwali. A week before and after Diwali, special trains should be run daily to West Bengal, Odisha, Jharkhand, UP, Rajasthan, MP and other states, he said.
Tirupur Exporters and Manufacturers Association President Muthuratnam said, "If the northern workers go to the festival, they will return after at least 10 days. So they have to run special trains as per the number. He said, "It is the government's responsibility to provide transport facilities to the North State workers when the knitwear companies are fully operational from next Monday."
