Reliant on Gujarat for jobs, factories the most pressing demand in Nandurbar

Every morning, Sonali Vinayak Gavit sets out on a rickety tempo for Umbarpada in Gujarat’s Surat district where she works. The interesting aspect of the 25-year-old’s journey is that she is not a resident of Gujarat. Sonali lives in the village of Panbara in the Navapur taluka of Maharashtra’s Nandurbar district.

However, Sonali’s story is the norm in this part of the world. Every day, thousands of locals in the tribal-dominated Nandurbar district, like those from Sonali’s village, travel across the interstate border to Gujarat as they get an assured daily wage of Rs 350 there.

“In the morning, a train heading to Surat is packed with villagers from Navapur,” says Sunder Gavit, a third-year BA student in Panbara. “The villagers go up and down daily.” Some migrate to Gujarat for three to six months at a time on a contract basis, he adds.

Across the Scheduled Tribe (ST) communities in the Nandurbar Lok Sabha constituency, which goes to poll on May 13, unemployment is an issue that resonates. “With no industries coming to our district, people have no option but to explore work opportunities in Gujarat,” Sunder says.

Though education is gaining prominence in the tribal belt, the hopes of the youth for a transformation in Nandurbar go unanswered. Despite some infrastructural improvements and better access to welfare schemes, the district has remained backward for over six decades. The Centre’s Ujjwala scheme for subsidised LPG cylinders, for instance, has reached every household here but women use LPG sparingly — to make tea in a hurry, but not for rice or “bhakri (bread)”, which are still cooked on chullahs. “Rs 900 for a cylinder is expensive,” says Pramila Gavit, a daily wager and homemaker.

Once a Congress bastion from where