Bhubaneswar/Chennai, March 3 -- Ram Babu Singh, a human resources manager at Sri Kannapiran Mills, in Coimbatore, has a skill that helps him hire and retain migrant workers coming to Tamil Nadu-he can speak 10 languages.

Of the denim fabric maker's 2,200 workers, spread across six plants, more than 1,700 are from the eastern states of Odisha, Bihar, West Bengal and Assam.

The 52-year-old native of West Bengal has been in the human resources role for 13 years. He claims he can now understand the mindset of migrants really well. Those from Odisha are the most efficient, he vouches. "Most migrants work hard, but what sets workers from Odisha apart is their skills. They are well trained," he said.

The company, he explained, has benchmarks ...