Naradadatta Bhatt of Belauri Municipality-9 in the district works in Delhi, India. He has been working there for 12 years. He keeps coming back home every 6 months or a year. This time too, he came home on Phagan 18. He returned to work via Gaddachauki checkpoint on Saturday after coming home to vote.

‘I came to vote, we voted, the winner won, now we are going back to work,’ he said, ‘Our job is to vote, we voted, now we hope the winner will do something, let’s see.’

Bhatt is going to Delhi with three family members. All his brothers work there. They all came home to vote. They said that they will meet their families and return after voting.

‘If we could get employment in our own village, why would we go abroad?’ Bhatt said, ‘During elections, leaders make various promises, then forget, we have to go abroad to earn a living.’ He expects that the country will develop and create employment opportunities due to the change in the election results this time. He said that he returned home despite spending money for voting.

Tekendra Majhi from Tikapur, Kailali also returned to India on Saturday after voting. He worked as a wage laborer in Haridwar, Uttarakhand, and had come home to vote. ‘We used to come home for the New Year, but this time the elections came earlier,’ Majhi said, ‘We voted, now we are back to work.’

Majhi has been working in Haridwar for 10 years. He, who carries heavy loads and works as a wage laborer, also does not want to live in another country. He said that he had to go abroad because wage labor jobs were not available in the village. 

‘Change, change, now only the leaders will change or will there be any change for us too, let’s see,’ Majhi said, ‘If there is development, good governance and employment creation in the country, there is an expectation that we will be able to work with our families in the village.’ He said that he had come home to vote with this hope. 

Many Nepali workers who came home from India to vote are now returning to work, while some are in the process of returning.  Some are now planning to celebrate the New Year and return to work after bringing in wheat. 

Currently, two to two and a half hundred Nepalis are returning to India daily through the Gaddachauki border crossing.  They go to the hilly and mountainous regions of Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh in India, and some to big cities including Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore. 

Most Nepalis who go to Uttarakhand and Himachal work as porters, agricultural workers, and construction workers. Those who go to other areas work as watchmen and other workers in various companies.

‘A lot has changed in the country, we were hoping that we would find employment in our villages,’ said Naresh Chaudhary of Dhangadhi in Kailali, ‘but we are still hoping, there is still no hope.’ He has been working in Himachal for five years.

He is very distressed by the problems of being ignored and being ignored in India. Even if there is a problem, he cannot return home on time. He said that he does not get the full amount of wages he has worked for and that he gets very low wages. ‘There is also another problem in sending the wages he has received home,’ he said. ‘If we could find employment in our own country, we would have got rid of such problems.’