A 2024 Tamil Nadu story along a highway: Migrant labour, Ukraine war, and a Jharkhand dhaba

But what has resulted in huge job losses is “order recession” or sharp drop in orders from Europe, which accounts for over 40 per cent of the export market, post the Russia-Ukraine war.

The turnover of garments exports has dropped by a minimum 30 per cent from Rs 38,000 crore in 2021-22.

Just like the textile industry warmed up to migrant labour over the last decade and more, the traditional business community in Kongu Nadu’s textile belt comprising Erode, Tiruppur and Coimbatore, are opening up to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

They didn’t have a problem with Hindi-speaking labour, having accommodated them in hostels and other shelters here, a decade-and-a-half ago. Now, they are seeing in BJP the possibility of a change – and in this, economics is as much a factor as politics.

Indeed, one of the areas in the state where the BJP is looking at a gain over its just-under 4% vote share in 2019 is this Kongu region. A majority of those in business here belong to the Vellala Gounder community, a backward class, who were originally agriculturists five decades ago but have risen the socio-economic ladder through education and hard work.

“We are yesterday’s labour, and today’s owner. My father was a farmer and the building we are sitting in was farmland 40 years ago,” said Raja Shanmugam, a Gounder himself, promoter of Warsaw International and a medium-sized exporter employing some 600 people.

Ironically, language may be a hot button in Centre-state politics but on the street here, it doesn’t find a strong echo. Tamil Nadu and Kerala are two states where fertility rates have dropped sharply due to education and social reform and the population is aging. So, migrant labour from the north and east has always been welcomed by both the political class and the business community despite the old anti-Hindi stance of the Dravidian parties.

“The industry is very accommodative — doesn’t see caste, creed, gender and geography. We are the guardians of our workers,” says Shanmugam.

A big grouse the industry has with the DMK-led state government relates to the power sector. “Not only did the state implement a power tariff hike, MSMEs are required to pay ‘minimum demand’ charges for the last one year. This charge, calculated at Rs 330 per KVA, depends on the connected load capacity, irrespective of usage. Most mills are operating at 50-60 per cent of their capacity. At a time when the industry is facing such a sharp downturn, this ‘minimum demand’ charge only serves to wipe out whatever little profits we may make,” said an MSME garment mill owner on the condition that he not be named.

Nearly 45 per cent of the total workforce of 800,000 in the garment industry is migrant labour. “With many having returned to their home states due to lack of work, the industry is now facing shortage of labour,” said a major garment exporter who also did not wish to be named. He said getting workers from outside adds to production cost since most companies pay for food and shelter as well.

“But the government is doing little to help ease the labour shortage…in some ways, things will get only worse because one, literacy levels are quite high and nobody wants to do factory work; two, freebies offered by the state disincentivises the working age population to engage in labour, and three, other states like Uttar Pradesh are implementing major infrastructure development projects, and workers are getting absorbed there… A big labour shortage looms once orders pick up,” the exporter said, explaining why the state needs a “fresh government” here.

Shanmugam says Tamil Nadu BJP President K Annamalai being a Gounder is not the only reason for those in the community to support him. “Both DMK and AIADMK guarded the political turf well. There was no ‘C’ (third party, after Plan A and Plan B) factor in Tamil Nadu till the appointment of Annamalai as the party’s head in the state in July 2021. In a short while, he is equated with all top leaders,” he told The Indian Express.

Though the Gounder community is the biggest in the constituency, in the absence of a caste census, the numbers are not available. But their influence can be gauged from the fact that in all the four Lok Sabha constituencies of Erode, Coimbatore, Tiruppur and Pollachi in Kongu Nadu, all three parties, DMK, AIADMK and BJP, have fielded only Gounders — except in Coimbatore where the AIADMK has fielded a young politician belonging to the Naidu community.

While BJP always had a good presence in certain pockets including Coimbatore, Annamalai seems to have energised the party with his combative policeman personality, brash comments and repartee, be it about people or incidents, and presenting for the first time, what businessmen say, an alternative to Dravidian politics.

“He spreads misinformation many a time on issues and even historical incidents, but never apologises,” claims S Doraisamy, who won the Assembly polls in 1967 from DMK, is one of the senior most members of the Dravidian movement, but has retired from politics.

This is probably what makes the 39-year old Karur-born 2011-batch Karnataka cadre IPS officer, who quit the government in May 2019, instantly popular in Tamil Nadu. “He gets away most times because he moves from one hot button topic to another,” said a Gounder second-generation businessperson, who did not wish to be named. Compared with other Lok Sabha constituencies, Coimbatore has also become a contest of pride for both the BJP and the DMK. Many factors come to BJP’s aid. Take for instance, the Hindu-Muslim politics.

Annamalai would rake up the 1998 and 2022 blasts in the city once in a while to accuse the DMK of “appeasement politics”. After DMK’s Dayanidhi Maran called him a “joker,” he shot back saying he is “totally useless without his family’s surname”.

Another young businessperson, who also did not wish to be named, said, “He is seen as one who has a direct connection with Prime Minister Modi, and was handpicked by him. See, Modi himself came to Annamalai’s defence after Dayanidhi mocked him.”

More than anything else, he has effectively conveyed a message that the party leadership may take the final call, but always heeds to his assessment.

J Ramesh Kumar, Coimbatore district president of the BJP, said there is criticism that BJP is a Hindi party. But the truth is the top leaders in Delhi always listen to Annamalai. “He insisted on going alone, and not aligning with any of the Dravidian parties… Of course, the central leadership took the final call, but they heeded his advice. He is the most popular of the candidates, particularly with women and youth, in the constituency,” he said.

In Coimbatore, AIADMK has fielded 36-year-old Singai Ramachandran, the party’s IT wing secretary, and an engineer, IIM Ahmedabad MBA, is seen as a candidate with potential to give both the DMK and the BJP a fight. The DMK candidate in this constituency is Ganapathi P Rajkumar, former Mayor of Coimbatore, who joined the party more than three years back in December 2020.

BJP supporters talk of a “silent wave” in favour of Annamalai, DMK volunteers sound confident of the Rising Sun symbol to be the most recognised amongst all parties, and AIADMK is sure its strong booth level presence will see it through. “People write us off… But you will see our booth management on April 19,” says Ramesh Kumar, who claims 20 party workers are engaged in each of the 2,048 booths in the constituency.