Labour on the move

Even though migration is increasingly becoming a part of livelihood strategy, it finds little recognition in policy circles.

Seasonal and circular migration has long been part of the livelihood portfolio of poor people across India. While it is increasingly recognised in academia that migration is a part of normal livelihood strategy, it finds little recognition in policy circles where the old fashioned view migration as mainly a symptom of rural distress - drought, floods, other emergencies - continues to hold sway. Although panel data on seasonal migration in India are lacking, a growing number of micro-studies have established that seasonal migration is growing.

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The National Commission on Rural Labour (1991) puts the number of circular migrants, in rural areas alone, at around ten million, a majority of who are employed in cultivation and plantations, brick-kilns, quarries, construction sites and fish processing. Additionally, there are large numbers of seasonal migrants in the urban informal sector who are employed as casual labourers, head-loaders, rickshaw pullers and hawkers.

Historically, largely poor and assetless communities, who were typically lower caste and tribals, would migrate. Some of them have now entered high-return migration streams. While these groups are still dominant, other castes have also started migrating because of the attraction of remunerative employment. For many other lower caste groups, however, migration has remained a low-return, coping activity because of prejudices against them and their inability to invest in remunerative migratory work.