Livelihoods Can Save Lives

Context: Given the poor employment status of migrants at their native place after reverse migration during the COVID 19 pandemic, the government should think out-of-the-box for a special package for migrants.

Poor status of migrants at the native place:

• Based on a survey by Inferential Survey Statistics and Research Foundation (ISS&RF) and Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations (ICRIER)
• Unemployment levels: 35% of the migrants who left cities and industrial towns for their native villages and small towns, had no employment.
  • Bihar migrants had the least unemployment (3.6%) while West Bengal migrants had the highest (54.9%).
• Nature of employment: 36% were involved in agriculture as Self-Employed (SE) labour on joint family farms,  10% worked as agriculture labour, 5% in Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) and other public works, and 12% as casuals in other non-agriculture work
• Outcomes
  • Reduction in average family monthly income: dropped from Rs 14,342 at the place of migration to just Rs 2,033 at the native place- a contraction of about 86%. 
  • Migrants moving back to cities in search of work:  more than 63% of reverse migrants had moved back to cities in search of work.

Reason for the poor state of migrants at the native place: Failure of existing government programmes to provide gainful employment opportunities.

• MGNREGA as a strategy to provide employment has not succeeded: because the migrants are not interested in MGNREGA work or MGNREGA has not reached their places in rural areas.
• Government loan schemes are not benefitting migrants: only 1% of migrants were benefitting.
  • This situation may have arisen because only 1.75% of migrants had Jan Dhan accounts and 28% had some other bank account.
• Low levels of skill development: less than 2 %.

Way forward: improve income at native place and back migrants to stay in cities.

• Create productive employment and protect livelihoods in native places: by engaging returning migrants in building new agri-value chains rather than employing them in already overcrowded agriculture.
• Create robust database on migrants: so as to provide facilities to migrants to stay in cities.
  • Scale up “one nation, one ration card” scheme, and make subsidised grains available at places of work in cities and industrial towns.
  • Extend financial assistance under the Garib Kalyan Yojana.