For 20 years, Sanjay Giri, 42, a native of Odisha, worked as a gardener in Kerala, earning around Rs 20,000 a month. Recently, he signed up as a salesman in a garments shop despite income dropping to Rs 15,000 a month because he is employed “on all days’’. Sanjay does not want to return to Odisha. He sends money to his family and visits them during holidays. “I came to Kerala in search of work as I was unemployed back home,’’ he says.Sanjay is one of the 24 lakh migrant workers who have flocked to Kerala in search of a livelihood in the past two decades. Unemployment back home is the common thread running through their tales of migration. In Kerala, jobs are as plenty as the wages are high — a farm hand earns as much as Rs 700-800 a day — and that has attracted thousands of people from UP, Odisha, West Bengal , Assam, Rajasthan, Jharkhand etc.Perumbavoor, about 40 kms from Kochi and a hub for plywood manufacturing, is the exemplar of migration to Kerala. There are around 1 lakh migrant workers in the small town, mostly from Assam, Odisha, West Bengal and Bihar. “Malayalis go to Gulf countries to make money. Kerala is the Gulf for these workers,’’ says MM Mujeeb Rahman, president of Saw Mill Owners and Plywood Manufacturers Association.R Mohan, a local resident, says 80% of the people he meets on the street on Sundays are migrant workers. They work as gardeners, casual labourers, shop assistants, waiters in hotels, construction workers etc. Of late, they are also entering new lines of work such as rubber tapping, coconut harvesting, kitchen hands etc.“My maid and gardener are migrant workers,” says Bindu Nair, a resident of Kochi. The house maid works in five houses and earns nearly Rs 20,000 a month while her husband, a gardener, makes another Rs 30,000 a month. “They live well, go to the upmarket Lulu mall for shopping and save a part of their income,” she says, adding that the couple has saved enough to buy a plot of farm land back in West Bengal.Skilled workers can hope to earn more. Says Wilson Jacob of Bridge Facilities, a company that facilitates labour contract, which has supplied 2,500 skilled workers from UP, Rajasthan and Assam to various infrastructure projects in the state, in specialised jobs like that of a crane operator, the salary is as high as Rs 2,000 a day. In a state synonymous with migration — the Malayali is ubiquitous across the world — Kerala’s transformation as a lodestar of migrant workers from other parts of India is causing profound changes in its social fabric. No doubt, Kerala has embraced this influx of workers. Buses in many parts of Kerala now ply with boards written in Hindi and Bengali. Theatres run movies from Bengal or the North East. One theatre near Perumbavoor now shows mainly films from Bengal, Assam and Orissa. Eateries that sell food items from Northern parts of the country have sprung in every nook and corner of Kerala. Some parishes even deliver sermons in Hindi and Bengali.Yet, in recent months, some anxieties have been gnawing at Kerala’s acceptance of migrant workers. One glaring cause for the turnabout is the wave of crime involving migrant workers, which has brought them under the scrutiny of officials. The most infamous incident was the gruesome murder of a woman named Jisha near Perumbavoor by a worker from Assam. In another instance of crime, an elderly couple and their son were found murdered in Kottayam district and the police finally arrested a man from UP, who was their employee. Many migrant workers involved in ganja smuggling have been arrested in recent months. The image of these workers among the local population has taken a beating after these incidents. “After the Jisha murder, we have asked labour contractors to maintain a registry of workers they supply with full details and photographs,’’ says DySP of Police VK Sanalkumar in Perumbavoor. “It is possible that those coming from Assam or West Bengal may have links with Bodo terrorists.’’In some cases illegal immigrants from Bangladesh have been spotted in Kerala. The overall sentiment though is that migrant workers are largely law abiding citizens.Still, the crowded and unhygienic living conditions of the workers have raised concern. Most of them live in temporary sheds provided by contractors. The rising incidence of different kind of fevers that were hitherto unheard of in the state has been linked to inward migration. The state government now has decided to launch a comprehensive health insurance scheme for workers, according to Labour Commissioner K Biju. “The workers will have to pay only a small portion of the premium.” Meanwhile, there are attempts to organise the migrant workers by political parties . “It is not easy as it is a floating population. They don’t stay at a place for a long time. But we have formed a union of migrant workers at BPCL Kochi refinery expansion site,’’ says P Rajeev, district secretary of CPI(M).In a state where there are a plethora of trade unions and the lingering memories of indefinite strikes, unions by migrant workers might be the last thing the state needs