After 26 years, 55-year-old Laxu Rokaya of Punar­bas municipality-5 still misses her husband, and hopes he will return one day. Man Bahadur, who had gone to India in 1993 in search of work, had disappeared with­out a trace. Rokaya has since neither heard from him nor received any news about his whereabouts. Her father-in-law had gone in search of his son in India, but couldn’t locate him. Rokaya was eight months pregnant when her husband left. She found some solace after the birth of her son though. Before him, she had two daughters, Amrit and Janaki, both of whom are now married and taking care of their own homes.

There are hundreds of men from the far-west who have gone missing after they went to India looking for jobs

Rokaya raised her only son by herself, and expected him to take care of her in her old age. But when he was 17, her son suddenly fell sick and died. Rokaya now has no prop­erty and no family support. “I lost both my son and my life partner,” she says, sobbing.

We kept in touch for the first 2-3 months. But there was no contact thereafter Lali BK

Lali BK of the municipality has a similar story. It has been 27 years since her husband Pratap went to India in search of work. “We kept in touch for the first 2-3 months. But there was no contact thereafter,” she says. She still hopes for Pratap’s return. Their daugh­ter Saraswoti was just a year old when he left. BK, who was married when she was 20, recalls, “I had to suffer domestic abuse after he went missing. I bore all that and made sure my daughter got an education.”

BK says she did not get any property from her in-laws and so had to go work in Lebanon to ensure decent education for her daughter. Now, Saras­woti, who is her only support, works as a midwife in Laljhadi rural municipality.

There are hundreds of men from the far-west who have gone missing after they went to India looking for jobs. Their families are tense and this phenomena has created legal complications, too, say in divi­sion of property.

With the main breadwin­ner in the family missing, they are deprived of social security allowance and other state services as well. In case of those who died while working in India, their families back home have got­ten no compensations from the employers.

Prakash Madai, a senior program manager at the National Environment and Equity Development Society (NEEDS), who specializes in safe migration, says, “Since we do not know whether the missing people are dead, the families cannot register their death. This in turn gives rise to countless legal hassles.” According to a NEEDS project, 209 people have gone miss­ing in India from Kanchanpur and Doti districts alone. Madai says the government needs to work to make employment in India more systematic.

Deepak Chandra Bhatt, a professor at the Far-western University, also urges the government to gather data of missing people and to make employment in India safer for Nepalis.

“The state should treat those who go to work in India as being employed abroad, just like they treat those headed to the Middle East,” he says. There is an age-old tradition of people from Far-West and Kar­nali provinces going to India for employment. But there are no exact data on how many have gone.