Indian Workers Queue up at Recruitment Drive in Haryana’s Rohtak

“It is better to die every day, go there once again and die (It’s better to die in Israel working instead of dying a little everyday unemployed here),” said Prakash Kumar Singh.

Hailing from Bihar’s Buxar, the 35-year-old electrician has done a two-year vocational training course from an Industrial Training Institute (ITI). Having worked in Kuwait for eight years, he was confident of getting this job in Israel. But he was disappointed:

“After coming here today, we learnt the job is only for Haryana domiciles,” he said. Prakash said that he had barely arranged money to take a train to Rohtak, spent Rs 200 in a guest house, and now doesn’t even have enough to go back home.

The Quint reached out to NSDC and HKRN to confirm if residents of Haryana were given preference in the recruitment drive. They are yet to respond.

Meanwhile, Sunit Mukherjee, Director of Public Relations at the Maharishi Dayanand University, told The Quint that the university only acted as a venue to conduct the drive – and cannot comment on the hiring process.

Virender Chauhan, a 47-year-old tile-maker from Uttar Pradesh’s Khushinagar, shared the same dismay as Prakash Kumar Singh. Having worked in Dubai and Russia before, he promptly responded to the hiring advert.

The sole breadwinner of his family of six, who earn Rs 700 per day on days he finds work, Chauhan said he will sit for the recruitment drive in Lucknow. “Mil gaya to nahi chodenge (If I get it, then I will not let it go),” he said, and then quickly lamented that if he could save just Rs 10,000 per month, he won’t go and take up a job in Israel.

Usman Jawed, a specialist researcher and migrant worker rights advocate for FairSquare, a London-based non-profit organisation, told The Quint that the rush for such high-risk jobs highlights the persistent lack of remunerative livelihood for blue-collared workers in India.

“This desperation is a reflection of incredible hardships that an average Indian worker goes through. Unfortunately, it has become banal for the upper-middle class in the absence of a political voice of these workers,” he added.