One of the major components of the worldwide Tamil diaspora has been the Tamil worker class, comprising of plantation workers, household helpers, construction workers and their descendants. The British took Tamil labourers from Tamil Nadu to Burma, Malaya and Singapore. The French took Tamil labourers from Pondicherry to Mauritius and Guadeloupe. Within India, the plantations of Kerala have a lot of Tamil workers. There are Tamil household helpers in Bangalore, Mumbai and the Middle East too.
But there are indications that the Tamil worker class is a dwindling phenomenon. According to this article, Tamil Nadu has a perennial shortage of manual labour, as more and more people graduate to better paying jobs, and this shortage is usually filled with Bihari labourers. This article claims that new roads and IT parks in Tamil Nadu are built by labourers from Bihar and Orissa. According to this article, certain industries in Kerala which were previously dependent on Tamil workers have now started recruiting workers from Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Orissa and West Bengal. There are still Tamil labourers, but they are attracted to places like Singapore and Malaysia where the pay is higher.
One of the main reasons for this is increased education in Tamil Nadu. Literacy rate in Tamil Nadu is higher than the national average, and the Tamil psyche generally enshrines education. Even an uneducated labourer tries to give his son a decent education, such that he becomes at least a semi-skilled plumber or electrician.
Another reason is effective population control in Tamil Nadu. The total fertility rate (TFR) in Tamil Nadu is the second lowest in the country (behind only Kerala), which means the population of Tamil Nadu has stabilized. Therefore Tamil Nadu does not contribute an alarmingly large number of people to the labour pool.
Over the next few decades, states with less education and less population control will contribute much more to the worker class. This is already happening, with Bihari construction workers migrating all over India and even causing social problems. With increasing literacy and tertiary education in Tamil Nadu, and a stabilized population, the day is not far when everyone in Tamil Nadu is a skilled or semi-skilled professional.
Tags: bihar, construction worker, education, guadeloupe, india, IT, kerala, labour pool, labourer, literacy, malaysia, orissa, population, singapore, tamil, tamil nadu, total fertility rate, uttar pradesh, west bengal, worker
