How Caste Identity Prevails Among Odia Migrant Workers In Surat

As the sun’s rays breached the dark and narrow corridor of Panch Manzila in Surat’s Ved Road area, the light exposed years of dirt that had accumulated on its now black walls. The cacophony of hundreds of powerlooms echoed from the bylanes nearby, where Odia migrants worked gruelling 12-hour shifts to earn Rs 20,000 to Rs 25,000 a month.

Every corner of the worn-down staircase is littered with gutka packets, pan stains, soap and paste packages, and polythene bags. The smell of urine from the common toilets, and the dampness of washed or sweat-soaked clothes linger as a top note of the squalid and ill-ventilated living quarters.

While a row of workers slept on the mat-laid floor tucking their hands under their tired heads, others spoke in hushed tones on their mobile phones and still others settled in to eat the rice, dal, and sabzi (vegetables) that is the standard fare provided twice a day.

Akul Dandapani Nahak, a 54-year-old former powerloom operator from Ganjam who runs a mess on the third floor, sat on his foldable cot that was pushed against the pale blue-painted wall. Sacks of rice foreground the portraits of various Hindu gods on the wall, while a table fan desperately circulated musty air.

“There’s hardly any money to be made in running a mess,” said Akul, who catered to around 40 Odia workers, all of them from upper caste and Other Backward Classes (OBC) communities like himself. “In the 20 years I have run this mess, lower caste [Dalits] workers have not been accommodated here. I ask them their caste when they come,” he said. Accommodating Dalits leads to inconvenient conversations around handling food which affects the business of running shared spaces, he said.

Surat and Ganjam are on opposite coastlines, separated by more than 1,600 km of land. But the migrant corridor is one of significance for thousands of Odia workers who have travelled, worked and returned home over decades to Ganjam, which is one of the 14 migration-prone districts of the state. Surat’s textile powerlooms, from which originates around 90% of polyester used in India, are operated largely by Odia migrants. Much of the migration is through social networks including those based on caste.

One of the factors for the reduction of multidimensional poverty in Ganjam from about 22% in 2015-16 to 6% in 2019-20 is migration, said an August 2024 report by Centre for Migration and Inclusive Development (CMID) and Gram Vikas. According to an analysis of the Odisha Migration Survey 2023 (OMS) by S. Irudaya Rajan, chair, International Institute of Migration and Development (IIMAD), and Amrita Datta, Assistant Professor, Department of Liberal Arts, Indian Institute of Technology Hyderabad, Ganjam is the district that receives the highest remittances in Odisha, at nearly Rs 120 crore per month.

Akul Dandapani Nahak, 54, has been running an Odia mess and accommodation for 20 years. It caters to upper castes and OBCs like himself. “I ask them their caste when they come,” he says.

While this cash flow improves the economic circumstances for migrants, caste identity and hierarchies of their home state tend to get replicated in Surat, particularly in the living spaces where Scheduled Castes (SC) or Dalits find restrictions and discrimination in terms of access to accommodation, cooking or handling of cooked food in shared spaces where different caste groups live. This is the second of a two-part series studying caste equations in the Surat-Ganjam migration corridor. You can read the first part here.

Identifying by caste

Ramesh Sethi, 41, moved to the Siddharth Nagar slum in Surat less than a year ago from Diamond Nagar, some 20 km away. Sethi, from the SC Dhoba community in Ganjam, is a powerloom operator who was preparing to leave for work around 6 p.m. to begin his 12-hour night shift. He had packed his food at the ‘Sethi’ mess run by 64-year-old Debraj Sethi, who belongs to the same caste.

Ramesh, who lives in a rented room, has studied only till primary school and has spent 25 years working in Surat’s looms. The work pays around Rs 20,000 a month for operating multiple noisy looms, with no more than two days off in a month. He pays Rs 2,300 monthly for two meals a day at Debraj’s 22-year-old mess that caters to SCs, almost entirely from Dhoba community.

“If I go to a mess run by higher castes [mostly OBC-operated] here, I have to take my own thali and wait for someone to serve me,” he said. “Here I can serve myself without worrying about [‘polluting’] the food.” In Diamond Nagar where he worked earlier, the mess catered to hundreds of workers, and no one bothered with his caste, he said.

Ramesh Sethi, 41, a powerloom operator, prefers to eat at the Sethi mess where there are no caste-based restrictions due to his Scheduled Caste identity.

Not all messes that IndiaSpend visited restrict accommodation or food based on caste, but mess owners said that the cooking is always done by upper castes and OBCs.

“As food and consumption are mapped onto principles of a caste order, cooking and eating of lower caste and communities outside the caste system are labelled as dirty,” said a 2021 paper by anthropologist Dolly Kikon, on food cultures in India reiterating social hierarchy and caste logics of cleanliness and purity. “An integral part of Brahminical power is based on regulating and upholding dietary taboos grounded on caste ideology,” it said.

According to a 2020 analysis in the Economic and Political Weekly by Amit Thorat and Omkar Joshi, with reference to SCs, Brahmins were 6.5 times more likely to practise untouchability, compared to forward castes and the OBCs, who are, respectively, 2.8 and 2.2 times more likely to indulge in the practice.

The practice of untouchability is more prevalent amongst Brahmins compared to other social groups because they “probably feel that it is imperative to adhere to the notions of ritual and physical purity as these perceptions are also profoundly linked to their identity, which imbues them with both a sense of pride and social dominance”. While it can be observed among SCs and STs, it is only to a “much lesser extent”.

Workers having a meal in a mess in Panch Manzila. Accommodating Dalits leads to inconvenient conversations around handling food which affects the business of running shared spaces, says Akul Dandapani Nahak, 54, who runs an Odia mess and accommodation.

Ganjam continues to be a significant source of migration

About 40% of Odisha’s population comprises SCs and STs. According to the latest population Census which has not been updated since 2011, more than one in six people in Odisha are SCs. In Ganjam, this proportion is slightly higher than the state’s average.

While government data on migration from Ganjam to Surat are inadequate, in 2007 it was reported that there were nearly 900,000 migrant workers from Odisha, and by the end of the next decade there were an estimated 600,000-800,000 migrant workers from Ganjam alone. The district, historically, has experienced multiple climate disasters including famine, drought and cyclone, which forced communities, particularly marginalised and oppressed castes, to migrate.

The recent OMS data analysis shows that Ganjam district forms a significant migration source, accounting for 40% of its current migrants going to Gujarat. While Ganjam has the highest number of current migrants (373,254), the incidence of current migrant households in the district (29%) is lower than three others--Bhadrak (41%), Denkanal (34%) and Nayagarh (32%).

A 2016 study supported by the Ministry of Statistics & Programme Implementation on the impact of remittance from migrant Odia workers concluded that internal migration and remittances are a strategy of countering backwardness for households and forms a safety net against poverty, indebtedness, and unemployment.

Debraj, who has spent 40 years in Surat--17 of which were spent in a dye and printing establishment--said that Brahmins (and other upper caste migrants) and OBCs will not come to his mess to eat because the food there is cooked by a Dalit. “There are 10 people from my community who eat here. Lower castes [than his] like Pano [SC community] have another mess.”

He cooks twice a day. The first round of rice, dal, and sabzi begins at around 4 a.m. and workers start arriving for a meal by 6 a.m. He cooks another batch at 3 p.m. for workers leaving for the night shift. He manages to save around Rs 3,000 a month, he says, and just manages to get by.

Migration should ideally help in reducing caste-based hierarchy and the intensity of caste discrimination, said Rajan of IIMAD. “But social network-based migration may not allow it. Such trends are seen when migrants move to other parts of India and globally too.” Social networks help migrants find employment and support in work destinations where they need safe harbour or have limited local ties.

Debraj Sethi, 64, in his mess where he serves food to 10 Odia workers, all of whom are from his Dobha community, categorised as a Scheduled Caste.

Republic hostel and mess in Sayan has been incubated by Aajeevika Bureau Trust, which works for migrant worker welfare in south Rajasthan and urban Gujarat and Maharashtra and is run by Shelter Square Foundation. Its intention is to provide better and cleaner facilities for migrants. But there was an untoward instance, said Bhagwan Behera, the manager of the mess.

A few upper caste workers demanded that they be given a separate thali [plate] because non-vegetarian food was being served and common thalis were being used for all. “We have strictly said that we do not provide separate thali and if they have a problem they are free to leave or eat elsewhere,” said Behera. “Only one of them, who is an older migrant worker, bought a separate thali for himself.”

Accommodation at the Republic hostel and mess in Sayan incubated by Aajeevika Bureau Trust.

Kalia Sahu, 22, who was part of the group, said that he does not understand why the older migrant was persistent on getting a thali. “I did not want to be dragged into this issue. The thali sometimes smells like non-veg food, but I clean it a few times and use it,” said Sahu, who says that he is from a caste “like Brahmins”. He has been working in Surat since 2017 and puts bobbins on 80 machines in a power loom in Sayan. Sahu has been the mainstay of his family since his father became paralysed, forcing him to believe that money is most important for a person and not caste.

“There should be no caste discrimination,” he said. “I will eat food made by anyone, [as] I do not have a choice here [work destination]. But in the village Brahmins make the food [in our functions].”

In Surat, caste identity precedes migrants because older generations are already well established, said Liby Johnson, executive director of Berhampur-based Gram Vikas. “Farming communities in Ganjam, many of whom belong to OBC, tend to be socially conservative.”

Migration is an exit route

According to a January 2023 study on caste dynamics in migration from Ganjam (Surada block) to Gujarat and Kerala by Madhusudan Nag, Benoy Peter and Divya Varma, migrants cluster in areas where there is a larger presence of those from their own community. “…the social stratifications that prevail at the source tend to get replicated at the destinations too, limiting the scope of social emancipation that migration could potentially offer to the marginalised communities,” the paper said.

“Villages are stratified by caste. Migration is an exit route when communities do not have an alternative,” said Nag, researcher and lead author of the report. “It is a tool to fight forms of oppression. When higher caste groups move in [to the destinations], the same patterns or structures emerge and SCs and STs get replaced.”

He said that Dalits were the primary migrants to Surat dating back to the 1970s, and have been so even during colonial times. “Caste influences the decision to migrate, but choice of destination is also influenced by it.”

Ajeeth Kumar Pankaj, faculty at the Department of Social Work, Indira Gandhi National Tribal University, Regional Campus Manipur, and researcher on migration-related exclusion and inclusion, said that migrants do not carry only their bodies but their social capital and caste.

“Caste identity travels with them [migrants]. But the cosmopolitan nature of cities tends to dilute the caste to some extent,” said Pankaj. “We need to understand how its intensity gets reproduced in destinations or changes there.”

Migrant workers told IndiaSpend that at the workplace, caste identity did not impact wages or type or access to work, but aspects of caste tend to show up even at work.

There have been instances where other higher caste workers would not have tea during the break or eat food together due to caste hierarchies, said Ramesh who sends around Rs 10,000 a month to his family in Ganjam. “I do feel bad, but I do not say anything. What can I do?,” said Ramesh.

According to OMS 2023 analysis by Rajan and Datta, the monthly average remittance in the previous 12 months of SCs (Rs 4,814) and STs (Rs 3,261) was lower than that of OBCs (Rs 5,531) and upper castes (Rs 5,402). SCs and STs are overrepresented in rural-rural migration streams, and underrepresented in the more remunerative rural-urban and urban-urban migration streams.

Most of the residents in the Siddhanth Nagar slum are Odia migrants who have been around for decades. They know each other's caste, said Debraj.

“This will not end [because] people will not leave their caste,” he said.

Within Dalit groups there are hierarchies, and communities who experience untouchability more compared to others, particularly those in the lowest level of the caste hierarchy, said Pankaj. “So the experiences of communities who are seen as touchable [like Dhoba community] and untouchable within the Dalit community are different. People from the same source areas will identify these communities.”

Better than before in villages, but caste identity remains significant

Back in Ved Road, Ramesh Nahak, 42, powerloom operator from the SC Pano community, shares a large hall with workers from different castes. He came to Surat in the mid-1990s with his elder brother because the family's financial condition was unstable. Most workers faced similar circumstances when they migrated to Surat.

“As a child, I had a pair of clothes and used to usually wear my school uniform. Watery rice gruel with very little vegetable or onion was the daily staple,” said Ramesh Nahak, whose father leased land for cultivation. Over the years, with the money saved from his work in Surat, he has bought 2 bighas (less than 2 acres) of land. He operates 15 machines, 11 more than when he started as an operator in the early 2000s that earned him Rs 1,700 a month.

“It used to be a jhopdi [thatched roof hut]. Now I have built a palace,” he said of his home in Ganjam.

When he arrived in Surat, Ramesh Nahak used to stay with his brother in a rented room. But when he heard that Bhimba bhai (brother), who is from a nearby village in Ganjam, did not have restrictions based on caste in his mess-accommodation, he was glad. “This mess is different, I thought. He allowed us to stay here [despite caste identity]. When mess owners ask us to separately keep a lunch box or thali [due to casteist notions], dil toot jata hai [it breaks our heart],” he said.

Bhima bhai is 56-year-old Bhimbadar Samudra, who has lived in Surat since 1987. He is a prominent member of the Odia migrant community. His mess accommodates 100 migrants where half are OBC and upper caste and the rest are SCs, he claims.

After he spent 12-hour shifts in the powerlooms in his early years in Surat, Bhimba bhai supplemented the income by selling vegetables, extending his work day to 19 hours on most days. By the early 2000s, he had saved enough to start a mess. It was vital during the Covid-19 pandemic where he provided more than 150 women-headed families free meals.

“I do ask about their [workers] caste but I do not deny accommodation,” he said. “There are rooms where migrants from the same caste live. If someone insists [to stay with their caste worker] I tell them to pay the rent for separate rooms or adjust with others.” He charges Rs 3,300 per migrant per month for food and accommodation.

Bhimbadar Samudra, a former powerloom worker from Ganjam, has lived in Surat since 1987 and runs a mess in Surat’s Ved Road.

Another resident in Bhima bhai’s mess, Sunil Kumar Nahak, a 50-year-old power loom operator from an SC community, lives in an adjacent room to Ramesh Nahak. The room, which can at best accommodate two people comfortably, has six workers, all from the SC community like Sunil. It is smaller than the large hall where Ramesh sleeps.

“We all [in the room] know each other [so] we decided to stay together,” said Sunil. No one has directly had issues about his caste, but he too has had experience of discrimination at the workplace where another worker from an upper caste enquired about caste. “I told him [I was SC], and asked why he was bothered and how it impacts our work.”

At the powerloom, the jodiya system tags two workers together who work in shifts and manage the workload and machines. Occasionally such issues do emerge, said some workers.

“Anyway, I will not make the mistake of taking food directly,” Sunil said, when asked about caste-related problems he had seen in his nearly three-decade long stint in Surat. “I ask someone to serve me. I am born into a certain caste and it will remain. If I touch [food or water] my caste won't change, but someone may take offence. I do not want to get into this lafda [confrontation].”

Sunil Kumar Nahak, who is from an SC community, lives with five others in Bhimba bhai’s mess. They are all from SC communities and live in a small room paying Rs 3,300 for food and stay.

Bhimbadar, who like Akul runs a mess, confesses that the food is cooked by OBCs, and never Dalits. “Upper caste migrants [including OBC] have a problem if Dalits cook or handle food, but they can eat in my mess,” he said.

Workers say that caste-related segregation and practices have changed over the years in their villages because there are more interactions and travels. In public spaces, caste groups mingle with each other and even visit each other's homes and dine together.

Ramesh Nahak claims that caste-based segregation has reduced in his village because more people are travelling outside. But it does exist when it comes to religious events, where food cooked by his family is not accepted by Brahmin priests because his community, Pano, falls in the lowest strata of the Hindu caste hierarchy .

“They do accept money and fruits, though,” he said.

New destinations in the south

As the first part of our series highlighted, with a large number of OBCs in Surat and repressed wages for long hours of arduous work, SCs and STs are moving to southern states where wages are better.

Nag and others find in their report that caste-related exclusions force marginalised migrant populations to explore newer destinations that are more egalitarian, more secure and have the potential to accelerate the social mobility of their current and future generations compared to the traditional destinations.

There is more migration towards the south from Odisha, according to OMS 2023. Tamil Nadu has become an important migrant corridor with 10.8% of current migrants outside the state, followed by Karnataka (9.2%), and Gujarat (8.6%).

“Usually confrontation on issues of discrimination or segregation leads to violence for Dalits. So they tend to travel to different locations which is a survival strategy,” said Nag. “But once the (upper caste) OBCs dominate in the new location, a similar caste structure may arise, probably replicated in a different manner and form.” He highlights inadequate data on caste particularly Dalit and adivasi migrants and reasons for migration, which he feels should be prioritised by state governments.

IndiaSpend has written to the labour commissioner in Odisha for their response on data on migrants in Surat and Gujarat and southern states, if they are aware of caste-related issues, and the policy and support schemes for migrants. We will update this story when we receive a response.

While new destinations motivate the younger generation of migrants, experts feel that wages and social networks are factors that encourage them to move to meet their aspirational goals.

Some of the southern states have better migrant policies and better wages, said Pankaj. “Although caste may not play a direct role in migration to another destination, it may be one of the reasons.”

Series concluded. You can read the first part here. This story is also co-published by The Migration Story.

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