BENGALURU : Large swathes of south India’s cash crop belt, where areca nuts, coffee and tea are grown, have suddenly woken up to the critical role played by migrant farm workers.
An estimated 150,000 migrants have returned to their home states from Karnataka alone, creating an acute labour shortage during the harvest season.
With locally available labourers demanding at least twice the prevailing wages, the farm economy is in a fix. “Some of them (migrants) are farmers themselves and go back to their lands.
But over 70% are landless labourers who migrate to Karnataka, Kerala and Goa to work in the plantations," said Abdul Rahim, a labour contractor from Kasargod in Kerala. “The fear of being quarantined or stung by corona (sic) thousands