The urban migrant and the ‘ritual’ tug of home

Context: When faced with an imminent threat to life, a family is much stronger for migrant labour than an urban occupation.

Insecurities of Migrant workers :

• Unemployment as part of life: The Indian labouring classes are much less rattled by joblessness and unemployment. 

• Unemployment does not send migrant workers to their villages.
• What brings them home is the dread of dying on alien soil without the necessary prayers.

• Informal economy: 93% of India’s economy is informal. Because the Industrial Disputes Act mandates employers to pay severance wages and other benefits for hired workers continuously for over 248 days.
• When faced with an imminent threat to life, a family is much stronger for migrant labour than an urban occupation.

• When demonetisation happened in 2016, only a few migrant workers left because this distress was primarily economic. 
• When COVID-19 started, men without families went home because they did not want to die alone.
• Latest pandemic exodus was also accompanied by an economic downturn. 

• Rural men migrate with tentative employment prospects and it will be a long time before they can imagine getting their families over. 

• Despite economic uncertainties, about 72% of slum dwellings are owned. This shows the overwhelming preference the poor have for family life, only if they could afford one.

• Fear of death: When urban workers rush to their rural homes, it is because they fear a death where nobody prays for them more than a life where nobody pays them.