बेबाक · Editorial
After Kulgam, the Republic Owes Its Migrant Workers More Than a Security Review
Two Chhattisgarh labourers killed at a Kulgam brick kiln test whether the state can protect citizens who travel far from home for work.
What happened
On Friday evening, suspected militants opened fire on labourers at a brick kiln in the Kellam area of Jammu and Kashmir's Kulgam district. By Saturday morning, the second injured worker had succumbed at a Srinagar hospital, News on AIR reported citing a senior police official, taking the toll to two. Both men had travelled from Chhattisgarh seeking work. According to an account carried by Times of India, the attackers allegedly questioned the victims about their caste and community before firing. The Lieutenant Governor chaired a high-level security review on Saturday, directing security agencies to intensify precise, high-impact anti-terror operations and to reassess protective measures for vulnerable non-local workers.
The core tension
The killing exposes a fault line the administration cannot treat as incidental. Migrant labourers travel to Kashmir for work, and their safety becomes a test of whether ordinary economic life can proceed under threat. Yet the same movement that takes a Chhattisgarh brick-kiln worker to Kulgam can also expose him if attackers read his presence as a symbol. The reported detail—that assailants asked caste and community before shooting—turns the incident into something graver than a random act of violence: an alleged targeting of the most defenceless, chosen because their deaths carry a message the perpetrators want amplified. Violence aimed at outsiders is violence aimed at India's shared civic and economic life.
Steel-manning both sides
The administration's defenders will note that vulnerable workers may be spread across work sites, that no force can shadow every kiln in every village, and that a review, intensified operations and a protocol reassessment are, on this reading, a responsible response. There is a further honest worry: over-securitising civilian spaces can deepen alienation, and Kashmir's people must not be collectively punished for crimes by suspected militants. The critics answer that the reporting itself says this incident echoes survivor accounts from a previous attack. Repetition is the problem. When the same vulnerability is exploited more than once, failure ceases to look like misfortune alone and begins to look like a gap that promises and reviews have not filled.
The evidence
The documented facts are narrow but damning. Two labourers dead after the Friday attack; both from Chhattisgarh; both attacked at a brick kiln in Kulgam's Kellam area; and, according to relatives' accounts reported by Times of India, the attackers allegedly asked about caste and community before opening fire. A senior police official confirmed the second death to News on AIR; Deccan Chronicle recorded a high-level review of security protocols, operational readiness and protective measures for vulnerable workers; Kashmir Reader reported the direction for precise, high-impact anti-terror operations. What the source record shows clearly is the post-attack review. What it does not set out is a durable, named protection mechanism that would reassure the worker reporting to a kiln next week.
The verdict
This is a matter for concern, not slogans. The state's obligation to a citizen does not shrink because he is poor, itinerant, or far from his home state; the Constitution he carried to Kulgam is the same one he left in Chhattisgarh. A security review after an attack is necessary, but without a durable protective architecture it risks treating the symptom while leaving the vulnerability in place. If the allegation that victims were questioned about caste and community before being shot is borne out, it points to a grave failure to protect exposed workers, not merely to bad luck. Precision operations against the perpetrators are necessary. They are not sufficient, and calling them sufficient would be a second failure.
The way forward
A concrete, feasible protection regime is overdue. The administration should maintain a live registry of non-local workers and their work sites, encourage secured group accommodation at vetted locations rather than isolated arrangements, and place migrant clusters within a defined rapid-response radius during high-risk periods. Employers who host outside-state labour should notify the nearest police post and share worker movement where safety requires it; police should brief workers in languages they understand and offer safe reporting channels. A single accountable nodal office, linked to the Lieutenant Governor's security review process, should own worker safety as a standing mandate, audited each season, not each tragedy. This guarantees no zero-attack utopia. It would mean the state's duty of care travels ahead of the next worker who leaves home for Kashmir.
A worker who crosses the country to work in a brick kiln carries the Constitution with him; the state's duty travels the same distance.
Your Constitutional Rights
What the Constitution guarantees in this storyTraffic in human beings, begar and other forms of forced labour are prohibited.
Fundamental RightThe State shall make provision for just and humane conditions of work and for maternity relief.
Directive PrincipleThe State shall, within its capacity, secure the right to work, education and public assistance in cases of unemployment, old age, sickness and disablement.
Directive PrincipleThe State shall not deny any person equality before the law or the equal protection of the laws. Like must be treated alike; the law cannot be arbitrary.
Fundamental RightWhat this editorial rests on
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