बेबाक · Editorial
Kulgam's Two Dead Labourers Are Every State's Concern
When terror targets poor workers who travel far for a wage, the republic's promise of safe internal movement and equal protection is on trial.
What happened
On Friday evening, suspected militants opened fire at a brick kiln in Kulgam, Jammu and Kashmir, killing two migrant labourers from Chhattisgarh. Reports carried across newsrooms in Odisha, Chhattisgarh and Jammu and Kashmir describe an attack on non-local workers at their place of work. Security agencies have identified Lashkar-e-Taiba commander Latif Bhat and his associate Waris Shah as the prime suspects behind recent targeted terror attacks in Jammu and Kashmir, including the killing of the two migrant workers. In response, the Lieutenant Governor's office ordered an all-out offensive and a high-level review of security protocols, operational readiness and protective measures for vulnerable workers. Two men who travelled far from home to lay bricks for a living did not return. That is the fact from which every judgment here must begin.
The core tension
A basic promise of the Union is that citizens should be able to move and work safely across State borders, and that promise is what carries a Chhattisgarh labourer to a Kulgam kiln. Terror that targets migrant workers is designed to break this compact: to make internal migration feel like exposure and to sow suspicion between regions. The tension is stark. The state must keep mobility open, yet the same openness can leave the poorest and least connected workers exposed to those who would weaponise their vulnerability. The soft target is not incidental to the strategy; it is the strategy. Any honest response must confront that design rather than treat this as random violence.
Steel-manning both sides
One view holds that security must now tighten around worksites employing non-local labour — registration, mapped accommodation, rapid response — because the attack has renewed concerns over a specific vulnerable group. The operational counterpoint is that static protection for every labourer across scattered worksites is difficult against assailants who choose the time and place. Another view warns that hardening workers into a visibly guarded, segregated class may mark them further, corrode ordinary trust between locals and outsiders, and strip the poor of dignity and economic agency. Both concerns are real. Protection that isolates can endanger; freedom without protection can kill. The ordered review must hold this tension rather than resolve it by reflex, weighing intelligence-led prevention against measures that would brand every labourer a target and every neighbour a suspect.
The evidence
The pattern is not abstract. Security agencies have identified a Lashkar-e-Taiba commander and his associate as prime suspects behind recent targeted terror attacks in Jammu and Kashmir, including the killing of the two migrant workers. The Lieutenant Governor's ordered review also acknowledged renewed concern over the safety of non-local workers. Two lives from Chhattisgarh were the price this week, at a brick kiln in Kulgam. That suspected militants could reach and kill unarmed labourers raises urgent questions about local intelligence and protective arrangements. The administration's response — an all-out offensive and a high-level review of protective measures — is the correct register. But its worth lies entirely in follow-through: whether the suspects are brought to law, and whether the review yields enforceable safeguards rather than a file that closes when the news cycle moves on.
The verdict
This is a moment for sober concern, not triumph or panic. The ordering of an offensive and a security review is the right instinct, and identifying Latif Bhat and Waris Shah signals investigative seriousness. But prevention, not only post-incident offensive, is the state's primary duty. The deeper test is quieter and longer: can a labourer from one State work safely in another without becoming a symbol to be shot at? The republic's answer cannot be to tell the poor to stay home. It must be to make their movement genuinely safe — through intelligence, prosecution and worksite protection that shields without stigmatising. Until then, two families in Chhattisgarh carry a loss the whole federation should feel as its own.
The way forward
Three concrete steps follow. First, the promised review of protective measures should become a standing protocol — mapped worksites, verified accommodation, defined response times and distress channels linked to the nearest security grid — and be audited regularly, not shelved. Second, investigation and prosecution of the named suspects must be pursued under existing law, because impunity is the true recruiter, and local civil society must unequivocally isolate terror operatives, since no grid succeeds without popular cooperation. Third, labour-sending and labour-receiving States should jointly maintain a registry and a compensation-and-repatriation channel, so a worker's home State is not a distant spectator to his death. Safe internal migration is federal infrastructure as vital as any road. Build it deliberately, and the kiln at Kulgam becomes a place of work again, not of fear.
A republic is measured not by how it guards its capitals but by whether a labourer can cross State lines for a day's wage and return home alive.
The republic's promise of safe internal movement and equal protection for all citizens is on trial.
Secure Worksites, Not Segregated Labourers
The Mudda proposes the establishment of a National Labour Safety and Security Fund to provide financial support for worksites employing non-local labour to implement robust security measures, such as registration, mapped accommodation, and rapid response systems, while ensuring that these measures do not compromise the dignity and economic agency of migrant workers. This fund will be managed by an independent oversight body comprising representatives from labour unions, industry associations, and state governments to ensure that the safety of workers is prioritized without compromising their rights and freedoms.
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
Drawn from our live multi-newsroom feed — read the reporting at source.
Join the movement
One fearless editorial at a time — in your language. Plus the constitutional Ask that must follow.
An editorial is the considered opinion of The Mudda desk, argued from the sourced reporting above and written under our published persona, बेबाक. We name institutions and actors; we do not endorse or attack any political party. "The Mudda's Ask" is a citizen's good-faith policy proposal, grounded in the Constitution — not the platform of any party. Translations are faithful — no fact is added in any language. If we are wrong, we will say so. How we work →