Remittance from Surat

Remittances by Oriya migrants in Surat, where they toil hard in oppressive conditions, to their families back home have not brought about a turnaround as most of the money goes towards debt-dowry payments. This has been revealed in a study Income, remittances and urban labour markets (Oriya migrant workers in Surat city's study)' by Gagan Bihari Sahu and Biswaroop Das of Centre for Social Studies and published by Adhikar Publication, Orissa.

According to the study, on an average, 57.9 per cent of the remittances sent by Oriya migrants to their families are used for marriages and to meet dowry demands. The second important purpose for raising loans is to meet costs pertaining to house repairs and constructions.

Indeed, the extent of raising loans from informal sources to pay for dowry has been highest (62.2 per cent) among households receiving Rs 20,001 to 30,000 as remittances annually.

Remittances emerge as the most important source of income for Oriya migrants families and contribute as high as 57.5 per cent of their total household earnings. Of the 100 samples, 62 per cent of migrant families had borrowed money from formal as well as informal sources to meet their financial needs, according to the study.

A sample of 100 migrant workers was randomly selected for the analysis. The researchers also visited native villages of 25 respondents in Orissa to further understand the utilisation pattern of remittances and their impact on those households.

The estimated population of Oriya migrant population in the city was more than 6 lakh. Sahu said, the total size of remittances from Surat to Orissa would be approximately Rs 556.56 crore per annum.

Their study reveals, the average size of outstanding debt per family was Rs 18,280 during 2006-07, with the share of formal and informal sources being 20.1 and 79.9 per cent respectively.

In Surat, lakhs of people have lost jobs in diamond & textile industry during the recession recently. The turnover of the industry in Surat is around Rs 300 billion and has nearly 600,000 power looms, 50,000 embroidery machines and 450 printing and processing textile units which together process around 2.5 billion meters of cloth per day. Now the time has changed Surat is facing shortage of workers.

The Surat textile industry is fully dependent on migrant workers hailing from the northern states of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and the eastern state of Orissa in particular. During this period, the textile industry in Surat faces an acute labor shortage which cannot be filled up with any other means and due to which machines stay idle, leading to a loss of productivity, which has reached 12-15 percent in the current year.

Mr Devkishan Manghani, General Secretary of Federation of Surat Textile Traders Association (FOSTTA) who said, “Workers are mainly from UP, Bihar and Orissa, they go their home town after Holi and start coming back by the end of May”

He added by saying, “So textile sector in Surat faces problem and losses for one and half month. This time it has incurred loss of 15 percent which approximately amounts to around Rs 15-20 billion and there are some 100,000-150,000 such workers”.