Who is a migrant worker?

A listless shadow that slips away from our radar of keen perception. One of those countless oppressed, forgotten lives, whose death is the only proof that they also lived among us. They are the muse of intellectual debates, the pillars of parallel cinema, the genie who suddenly comes back to life on election days and then slips into oblivion. These are lives that has no right to dignity, shame, joy and above all the right to life. They are the trump card of politics and the most convenient thing to flush out from the scheme of things once they have outlived their usefulness. “Good Days” never existed for them as nothing has ever been good in their lives except for unfulfilled dreams and the hope of a tomorrow.
Their sweat and blood flows through the arteries of every city but none notice it. Every sky scraper, every shopping mall, every national highway needs them to sober the image of Great India. Though the hands that helped build the India of every privileged man are too frail to register their mark on its surface. But, who cares. After all we need their poverty to flirt with our sensibilities and to pretend that the dark heart of this land has feelings for them.
Their’s are the most consistently unchanged plight in the unique history of our land. They are the fodder that fuels the production of every brick in this land. And yet, nobody gives a damn, as they are better left like bricks in a wall, hidden under a layer of cement,sand,plaster and paint.
They live,eat,defecate and die, while India makes giant strides towards progress and might.
Because we find more meaning in our fantasy than the bitter harshness of their reality.
To the nation, they are not even a statistics.
But, they are alive too and feel most ordinarily and extraordinarily as much as any of us do.
Then why have we become a civilization of revolting contrasts, where the existence of some are below definition, while the rest is so properly defined.

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