The pictures of the migrant workers walking hundreds of kilometers with families and kids have become the defining images of India’s fight against corona. The lockdown enforced due to the coronavirus outbreak led to a mass exodus of migrant workers from the cities to villages.
It has exposed the extreme vulnerability of migrant laborers in times of crisis. The epidemic which is primarily a health issue has become a matter of economic survival for the already vulnerable migrant laborers. It is not a trade-off between lives vs livelihoods for people fearing starvation. It’s lives vs lives.
This article helps us understand the issues related to internal migration in India.
An Associate Professor at Vanderbilt University in an interview with Indian Express said that migration to cities in India is marked by 3 distinct traits
- Internal migration: The migrants usually come from within India. The total number of internal migrants in India, as per the 2011 census, is 45.36 crore or 37% of the country’s population. [This includes migrants within each state also]. Uttar Pradesh and Bihar account for the origin of 25 percent and 14 percent of the total inter-state migrants, followed by Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh, at 6 percent and 5 percent. The major destination for this internal migration is Delhi, Mumbai, and Surat.
- Informality: They are low-income workers who are informally employed. They do not have formal contracts. Many migrant workers perform daily wage labour or are self-employed (for example street vendors). They are majorly employed in the construction, manufacturing, trade, transport, and hospitality sectors. They sustain their life on daily income, and therefore, events such as lockdown have a disproportionate impact on them. They lose their jobs and have no savings to afford food and rent in the cities.
- Circularity: They do not permanently relocate to the city. They circulate between city and village several times a year and remain deeply rooted. Therefore, in an unprecedented crisis like this, it is obvious for them to want to go back to the security of their hometowns.
The migrants live in inhospitable conditions in cramped spaces. Some of them also sleep on footpaths. They do not even have access to subsidised food grains under the PDS as they are away from their native places.
Due to informality and circularity, the Government has no database of internal migrants. Therefore, the Government’s welfare measures for the vulnerable sections of society do not reach them.
To provide context, a large number of these workers belong to the construction sector. To support unorganized construction workers in light of the distress caused due to lockdown, the Central Government issued an advisory to all the states to transfer funds in the bank account of registered construction workers from the Cess fund (collected under the Building and Other Construction Worker BOCW cess Act.)
But, in late March 2020, Jan Sahas interviewed 3,196 migrant construction workers from North and Central India, many of whom were walking back to their homes after the lockdown was announced. The survey found that 94 percent of the respondents were not registered with BOWC, which ruled out their chances of accessing relief or welfare measures.
Migrant workers form the backbone of our economy. The main source of growth in the cities of the developing world has been the inexhaustible supply of cheap rural labour. According to the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, internal migrants contributes to 10 % of India’s GDP.
But, their contribution remains largely invisible. This is the reason why the massive exodus took state governments by surprise. They came to terms with the scale of the crisis only when people came out on the roads flouting the lockdown norms.
Though some states have provided free ration to people without ration cards and have set up additional relief camps, these are temporary measures and will do nothing to improve the lives of these poor migrants.
Instead, the pandemic has provided the government with an opportunity to take concrete steps to alleviate concerns of the transient population. It is important that it recognises their contribution in India’s growth and work towards expanding the rights of the migrants in the cities.
All states should maintain a database of migrant workers. There should be a system in place so that the worker can use his ration card in the cities. They should be able to avail of the benefits of other Government schemes also. Also, the state government and employers should share the responsibility of providing them with decent accommodation facilities.
Lastly, the migrants could be allowed to vote in the cities. If these poor workers had formed the voting base of politicians, they wouldn’t have been treated so callously by the administration. But, this should be implemented only if the states are on board.
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