Four years after a migrant’s death in Kerala, families in Odisha still bear the burden

16-year-old Radura Naik looks old beyond her years. Ever since her father, 38-year-old Susanta Kumar Naik, was crushed to death at a workplace in Maradu, Kerala, nearly four years ago, fate dealt Radura, then on the verge of adolescence, a cruel bargain.

Radura, VIII, when the family had to leave their home in Ekalpur village in Odisha’s Kendrapara district and shift to Bhubaneswar to survive after losing their sole breadwinner. He had to drop out of school after grade one and take up a physically demanding full-time job at a two-wheeler garage.

Muskan, meaning smile, reads the name of the garage on Cuttack Road. But the smile seems to have completely left Radura’s life.

Her meager monthly salary of ₹2,000, along with the extremely irregular daily wages of her mother Babi Naik (35), barely enables the family to make ends meet. Radura’s three younger siblings (two sisters aged 12 and 10 and a brother aged 6) are still attending school, but it remains unclear how long they will be able to attend.

Susanta Kumar and her relative Sankar Naik, 28, were crushed under a concrete slab while demolishing a two-storey house on October 26, 2022. Nearly four years later, the family is yet to receive any compensation, but the case before the employees compensation commission in Kerala is at an advanced stage.

“Since there is no work in our village, we had to come to Bhubaneswar to somehow survive. I go to a nearby square every day and if I’m lucky, I get hired. At best, I get work for about 15 days a month, with a daily salary of around INR 500. We pay rent of INR 4,000, including the electricity bill, and cover other expenses with the little money my son and I earn,” said Babi, from Bhubaneswar, as her children walked around her. In front of their house in a chawl at Champa Pokhari in Chintamaniswar.

The place the family calls home is actually a three-room, matchbox-like hut; Its interior is painted a dull blue, it has almost no ventilation, and is surrounded by similar makeshift houses and open sewers. The door opens into a spare room used as outdoor seating. chocolate gas cylinder on the floor and a few folded clothes in the wall cupboard. The bedroom is no different, with clothes hanging everywhere and the kitchen in the back.

The children are left alone in this house when their mother is not at work. And this usually happens after school and during holidays. Babi is unlikely to be willing to take time off from work to ensure their own safety without risking the food on their plate.

Unexpected medical expenses make an already precarious life even more difficult; When one of their daughters injured her leg earlier this week, ₹1,500 was drained from their fragile budget. Her younger daughter also suffers from a largely untreated skin disease.

When her husband died and their 15-year marriage ended, Babi was in shock and unable to think about compensation. “I signed some documents given to me by my relatives, and my husband’s employer called me and assured me that everything would be taken care of,” she recalled. But nothing was taken care of.

Compensation cases are pending before the Employees’ Compensation Commissioner, a quasi-judicial court-like body under the Employees’ Compensation Act. Ernakulam District Labor Officer Minoy James said, “Earlier, the Deputy Labor Commissioner used to handle compensation issues. Now the Labor Department has little role other than submitting relevant reports to the compensation commission.”

The Center for Migration and Inclusive Development (CMID), which launched the legal fight for compensation, observed that failure to respond by the parties involved often decides the fate of the case. “In this case, the case is at an advanced stage as we are keeping a close eye on the matter along with Gram Vikas (an Odisha-based NGO working for the welfare of migrants). But most of the time, the lack of response from the parties involved leads to deadlock in the case. The deceased rarely have relatives in Kerala to seek compensation and hence cases cannot be filed in most cases,” CMID director general Benoy Peter said.

(The reporter was in Odisha recently on the invitation of CMID and Gram Vikas as part of promoting the media to the Odisha-Kerala migrant corridor.)

It was published – 27 July 2026 12:44 IST