Bihar’s migrants head home for Deepavali and Chhath; Railways add special trains

Lakhs of migrant workers from Bihar are travelling home from cities across India for Deepavali and Chhath, the State’s most important festival, filling trains and stations from Surat to Kanyakumari.

The Railways say about 15,000 trains will run to and from Bihar during the festival season, against roughly 12,000 in normal times, according to a report on 4 November. Zones across the country have added special services. Southern Railway is running a one-way train from Kanyakumari to Barauni; Northern Railway’s Ferozepur division has scheduled 15 pairs of special trains making 98 trips; and six more pairs of festival trains will be routed through Muzaffarpur to serve north Bihar.

In Surat, where workers from Bihar and Uttar Pradesh staff the textile and diamond units, lakhs of people have left from the Surat and Udhna stations since 1 October, by the official count, and another 2.5 to 3 lakh are expected before the festivals. That could leave the city’s units short of hands for weeks.

Not everyone found a seat. Four young men from Areraj in East Champaran reached home on Saturday, 7 November, after driving an old auto-rickshaw about 2,200 km from Bengaluru, The Hindu reported.

The bigger picture

Bihar sends more workers to other States than almost any other, because there are too few jobs at home. Chhath, a festival of thanksgiving to the Sun that falls about a week after Deepavali, is the one time of the year many of them return. The scramble for train seats, with crowded coaches and long queues at stations, has become an annual story, and the journey back to work after Chhath is often just as hard.