Social Conditions that Lead to Donkey Route Migrations from India | Bharat Dogra

Recently as several illegal immigrants from India have been deported back to India in US military aircraft, often in handcuffs, this has led to a lot of discussion on dangerous ‘donkey routes’, involving many treacherous stretches across several countries, to desired destinations like the USA and Canada.

Several angry voices have rightly protested against the handcuffing of deportees and the inflicting of other indignities on them by the US military staff. In addition, there has been a lot of resentment against the various agents who have made their fortunes by providing or promising transport to desired destinations, generally in illegal and dangerous ways.

Various published interviews of deportees reveal that they had spent anything from INR 3 to 10 million for this. This money was often raised by selling farmland and raising loans.

Thus while strict action should be certainly taken again such agents and their networks, the entire phenomenon of such large-scale illegal migration and acceptance of grave risks for reaching the USA or Canada raises several disturbing questions. It is not that those migrating are trying to escape from any conflict zone or from extreme hunger and deprivation. Most of those migrating are from the relatively more developed provinces or states of India, and here too they are generally not among the poorest landless families, as is evident from the fact that they are able to raise INR 3 to 10 million through loans or through selling farmland owned by their families (farmland in these developed states can be quite highly priced).

So what exactly are the social conditions which are driving this drift towards illegal migration with all its dangers, difficulties and uncertainties in the villages of more developed states of India like Punjab and Haryana?

One factor that may be noted here is that these have been the leading Green Revolution states. The green revolution raised high hopes for a few years but with agrochemicals causing serious ecological harm, soon farmers faced diminishing returns but the costs remained high and additional high mechanization costs brought debts at high interest rates from which it was difficult for farmers to emerge free. So we had a strange situation in which, following the green revolution, everyone was saying how fast these villages are developing fast but actually most farmers were in difficulties and debts. Lack of balanced rural development resulted in absence of adequate non-farm satisfactory livelihoods in villages or in close proximity to them.

Since this was an imposed development model, this was not accompanied by social reform and mobilization for this. The result was that high expenses relating to alcoholism and intoxicants continued to increase, and lack of social progress was also reflected in higher expenses on dowries, marriages and litigations or disputes.

Inequalities continued to increase and were also reflected in the education sector as the better-off sections could send their children for high cost education which opened up the doors to further upwards mobility while others were denied this. What is more, education was generally more focused on the achievers, pushing their accomplishments, while there was a tendency to often neglect, if not isolate and insult, those who could not be in the ranks of achieves or needed special attention to catch up, or what is most likely, had somewhat different kinds of abilities which could not be nurtured in the prevailing system.

At the same time in the existing unequal system those who were wealthy or achievers rode a wave of consumerism, while TV and movies took the message of consumerism and glamour even to those homes who could not afford this.

Thus in many, many households and particularly among their young members there is a very strong yarning, even desperation for somehow finding some outlet for earning an amount of money big enough to pay back debts, meet social obligations ( like arranging marriages) and achieve certain aspirational goals ( constructing impressive-looking house with modern amenities, buying car or other glamorous consumer goods).

Alongside in this situation there are colonized ways of thinking which make youths believe that the best way of achieving all these goals may be found in some western countries, particularly the USA. With such a mindset, when a youth is falsely told by some agent that sending him to the USA can be arranged easily, he falls into this trap, ultimately finding himself a few months later on the treacherous donkey route.

This is the broad pattern of social conditions which send youth to donkey routes, but in addition there can be other complications like some gangsters or criminals getting involved actively in pushing all this so that in the process they can carry out other illegal activities alongside, or else they can get recruits for their illegal activities from among those who are caught, or deliberately entangled, in very desperate situations.

Hence while the various policing agencies can certainly act against various illegalities, the broader context and cause being related to social conditions, solutions are also related necessarily to improving and reforming socio-economic conditions at several levels.

(Author: Bharat Dogra is Honorary Convener, Campaign to Save Earth Now. His recent books include Protecting Earth for Children, When the Two Streams Met, Man over Machine and A Day in 2071)