‘Vidarbha to Vadodara’, a sweet and sweaty migration, year after year
On Vadodara’s Chhani-Sama canal road, under the canopies of two mango trees and one neem tree, a sugarcane juice extractor is standing. It is wooden but mechanical. A few feet away on footpath, Laxman Dhale (54) and his wife Manda Dhale (48) are having a chit-chat under the tree. It is the afternoon of May 17, 2024, and a thermometer is indicating 44-degree Celsius. Otherwise busy road is deserted today.
In January this year, Laxman Dhale, a resident of Shirla village in Akola district of Maharashtra’s Vidarbha region, migrated to Gujarat’s Vadodara along with wife, son, and son’s family. Leaving behind a locked house and farmland of 2.5 bigha, Dhale family would sell fresh juice of sugarcane till mid-June and return home.
Dhale family has been migrating to Gujarat for the last sixteen years in the summer season to earn a decent living. “In our region, farming is challenging and not rewarding for small farmers like me after monsoon. Also, employment opportunities are scarce for men. Women may get some work in farms. But most families migrate to cities after Kharif harvest in our district,” said Laxman.
Laxman and Manda work together and share work. Their day starts around 9:00 am in the morning and can go till late in the evening around 9:00 pm. Earlie, their wooden juicer used to be manual, which required strenuous efforts to extract juice. However, it is motorised now. Street vendor’s work is challenging, particularly for women, as they have limited access to toilet and other basic facilities.
Laxman’s elder son Rahul, along with his wife and daughter, also migrates to Vadodara and runs a separate juice cart a few kilometres away. Dahle family, after almost six months of work and stay in Vadodara, will earn around Rs 1,20,000.The family will return to Shirla in the first week of June to till their farm for monsoon season. “I don’t miss my family as we all are here, but I do miss my villag, especially during some festival,” said Manda, who is indifferent to return to her hometown in Vidarbha.
