BHUBANESWAR: Not everyone can script such story of courage as Manasi Bariha. At a time when thousands of migrant labourers from across the country were held up in Tamil Nadu brick kilns and had lost hopes of returning home post COVID-19 lockdown, 19-year old Manasi from Balangir district made sure she becomes a catalyst in helping the larger cause.
She too was one of the stuck labourers along with her father in a brick kiln there. Paid a measly wage of Rs 250 for daily labour of 10 to 12 hours a day, Manasi’s struggle reflected in the lives of most labourers who were unable to fend for sustenance.
It was when the going got tough and she along with other labourers in the kiln wanted to return home after nationwide lockdown was imposed, the owner did not let them leave.
He made a condition that if they completed the target, they will be allowed to move. On May 18, when the workers protested, the owner and his men arrived in the dead of the night and went berserk brutally attacking the workers leaving many of them badly wounded.
Mustering courage, Manasi quickly slipped into a safe space from where she made frantic calls for help. "I called up some of my relatives in my village seeking help. One of my acquaintances reached out to a voluntary organisation which immediately took up the issue with the Tiruvallur district administration and that worked," she recalls.
"The local police reached the spot, rescued us and took the injured persons to hospitals. Though the police arrested one of the hooligans, the brick kiln owner Munusamy managed to abscond," says Manasi. She informed police about other labourers held captive and made to work during the lockdown in brick kilns in and around Tiruvallur.
That helped and soon a series of rescue operations began at the kilns and within a week, the local administration and police could rescue 6,750 labourers kept in confinement in as many as 30 brick kilns in Tiruvallur. The labourers belonged to Odisha, Chhattisgarh, Andhra Pradesh and West Bengal.
Manasi’s life has been a saga of unending hardship, yet she has not let the circumstances weaken her. At the tender age of 11, she lost her mother who died of post-delivery complications leaving behind a two-month old baby girl to look after and a loan burden of Rs 2 lakh to repay.
Her father Tiknu Bariha had borrowed the hefty amount from money lenders to meet her mother’s medical expenses. The family had also mortgaged some land with two money lenders of her village Matiabhata under Khaprakol block and was not able to release it.
Without any other option left, Manasi’s family took an advance of Rs 56,000 from a labour contractor and agreed to work in GDM brick kiln in Pudhukuppam in Tiruvallur district of Tamil Nadu from December last year and the rest is history.
Manasi and her father were part of the 355 people group from Balangir, Nuapada, Kalahandi and Bargarh engaged by the Sardar in the brick kiln which has the dubious distinction of exploiting labourers.