Skip to main content

Lack of jobs: Uttarakhand's 68% 'returned migrants' want to go back, says survey

Returned migrants being tested at an entry point in Uttarakhand
A telephonic survey, conducted among 323 returned migrant workers in hill districts of Uttarakhand, has revealed that even though they have returned from the places they worked – mainly Mumbai, Delhi NCR, other districts of the state and Rajasthan – majority of the respondent (68%) would like go back to their destination places in the absence of employment opportunities in their native places of the state.
Revealing this, Prof IC Awasthi of the Institute for Human Development (IHD), Delhi, participating in a webinar, noting spatial and income disparities between hilly and plain districts in the state, said, of the of 323 the respondents, nearly two thirds were from the Kumaon region and one third from the Garhwal region, with majority of them being male migrants (90%) , and seven out of 10 in the age group 15-29 years.
Major of migration destinations, said the survey, was Maharashtra, mainly Mumbai (39%), followed by plain districts within the state (36%), Delhi NCR (10%), and Rajasthan (7%). Majority were engaged in informal low paid salaried jobs (81%) as cook and waiters, security guards in private companies etc., earning low wages and remunerations. The webinar was organized by the Delhi-based Impact and Policy Research Institute (IMPRI).
Prof Awasthi said, only a small proportion of respondents received benefits from the government, mainly due to lack of awareness of government relief schemes, even though the Palayan Aayog (Migration Commission) had been created by the Government of Uttarakhand to deal with the pandemic situation to rehabilitate the migrants who had returned by offering sustainable livelihood opportunities.
Participating in the webinar, Prof Balwant Singh Mehta, who is with IMPRI and IHD, said, over the last three decades, inter-state migration in the country has gone up almost twice from 27.3 million in 1991 to 42.3 million in 2001 and further gone up to 56.3 million in 2011. The Economic Survey 2016-17 estimated 80 million migrant workers, of which around 9 million workers migrate across states annually.
While pointing out that the state of origin of the migrants is mostly Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, with destination states mainly being relatively developed and industrialized Maharashtra, Delhi and Gujarat, Prof Mehta said, as for Uttarakhand, there existed a large number of what are called “ghost villages”. Referring to the official data, he revealed, as many as 734 hilly villages have become “uninhabited” after 2011.
Carved out from Uttar Pradesh in 2000 with an agenda to develop the hill regions of the erstwhile state, he said, even after 20 years of its creation, Uttarakhand’s majority of hill districts still lag behind their plain counterparts and there is huge economic disparity and inequality between the 10 hill districts and the three plain districts. As a result, a large number of people from hill districts out-migrate for better livelihood opportunities to either other parts of the states or places outside the state.
Prof Mehta said, during the on-going pandemic and lockdown, one saw the images of migrants carrying luggage on heads, starving and exhausted, marching relentlessly only to return to their native places. Two months after the political drama, around 62 millions migrants registered to return, and many of these, who have returned to their native places, face new challenges and uncertain future.
A depopulated village before lockdown
While Prof Mehta estimated that over 1 lakh migrants have returned to hill districts during the last one month, Prof RB Bhagat, head, Department of Migration and Urban Studies, International Institute for Population Sciences, Mumbai, said, government sources claimed, around four lakh migrants had returned to Uttarakhand, adding, majority of migration is temporary in nature. Around 80% of migrants are from the informal sector, who earned low wages and remuneration without any social security.
While two government officials – Bikash Kumar Malick, assistant director, Ministry of Labour and Employment, Government of India, and Dr Manoj Kumar Pant, additional CEO, Centre for Public Policy and Good Governance, Government of Uttarakhand – praised government efforts to deal with the migrants crisis, Dr Arjun Kumar, director, IMPRI, said the Prime Minister’s Gharib Kalyan Rozgaar Abhiyaan scheme, announced on June 20, 2020 with an outlay of Rs 50,000 crore in 116 districts in six states, has failed to take into account specificities of hill areas.
Dr Kumar said, the scheme converges and harnesses many existing schemes, even as offering 25 different kinds of work, but targets the districts which have minimum capacity of 25,000 returned migrants. This, regretfully, excludes the hill districts. He proposed that the minimum capacity should be reduced from 25,000 to 10,000 for hill and northeastern districts, and at least Rs 5000 crore should be provided for hill districts in the PM’s scheme.
Prof Wendy Olsen, head, Department of Social Statistics, University of Manchester, UK, said, going back to villages or hills appears to be some kind of rescue for migrant workers and the belief that they would be safe in such areas after observing the due period of quarantine. She was curious to know how return migrants were sharing the family responsibility, both in farm and home.
Prof Irudaya Rajan, Professor, Centre for Development Studies, Thiruvananthapuram, described it a young male-dominated sample survey, though pointing out that most of them were petty salaried persons had not get their dues from their employers during the lockdown period. He called lockdown a state failure with migrants becoming the main victims. 
Among others who participated in the webinar included Simi Mehta, CEO and editorial director, IMPRI; Ramesh Joshi, survey coordinator and secretary, Pandit Deendayal Upadhyaya Action and Research Society (DARS), Dehradun; Prof Utpal Kumar De, department of economics, North-Eastern Hill University (NEHU), Shillong; Prof Bharat Singh, department of economics, Satyawati College, University of Delhi; and Prof BS Butola, Centre for Study of Regional Development, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.

Comments

TRENDING

World Hijab Day? Ex-Muslim women observe Feb 1 as No Hijab Day, insist: 'Put it on a Man'

I didn't know that there could ever be a thing as World Hijab Day until I received an email alert from Maryam Namazie of the Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain (CEMB), stating that several ex-Muslim women's groups had observed the same day—February 1—as No Hijab Day! According to Namazie, the day "was created on February 1 as a direct response to World Hijab Day" to "illuminate the coercive and oppressive realities of the hijab as a pillar of sex apartheid and a war on women."

Google powered AI refuses to correct grammar of a 'balanced' piece on Trump sending chained immigrants to India!

This is a continuation of my blog on how, while the start-up-developed AI app DeepSeek is being criticized for consistently rejecting content related to China or Maoism, there appears to be no mention in Western media about why another app, developed by the powerful Google, Gemini, remains silent on Indian political issues.  

How the middle classes are returning to the BJP fold, be it Delhi or Gujarat: Mahakumbh, Sitharaman's budget

Whatever reasons may be offered for the Aam Aadmi Party's defeat in Delhi—whether it was the BJP's promises of more freebies than AAP, the shedding of ultra-nationalist slogans, or the successful demolition of Arvind Kejriwal's "Mr. Clean" image—my recent interaction with a group of middle-class individuals highlighted a notable trend. Those who had just begun to sit on the fence were now once again returning to the BJP fold.

Trump’s research cuts 'may mean' advantage China: But will India leverage global brain drain to its advantage?

When I heard from a couple of NRI professionals—currently on work visas and engaged in research projects at American universities—that one of President Donald Trump's major policy thrusts was to cut federal funding to the country's top educational institutions, I was instantly reminded of what Prof. Kaushik Basu had said while delivering a lecture in Ahmedabad.

Gujarat a police state? How top High Court advocate stunned a senior-most journalist

Rajdeep Sardesai, Anand Yagnik This is a continuation of my earlier blog on well-known journalist Rajdeep Sardesai's lecture in memory of the late Achyut Yagnik at the Ahmedabad Management Association (AMA). I was a little surprised when I received the intimation about the venue for the lecture.

Why burn Manusmriti? Why not preserve it to demonstrate, display historicity of casteism?

In a significant Facebook post, Rana Singh, former associate professor of English at Patna University, has revealed something that few seem to know. Titled "The Shudras in Manusmriti", Singh says,  because Manusmriti is discussed so often, he thought of reading it himself. “This book likely dates back to the 2nd or 3rd century BCE, and the presence of contradictory statements suggests that it is not the work of a single author,” he says in his Facebook post in Hindi, written in 2022 and recently reshared.

5% poor in India? Union govt claim debunked, '26.4% of population below poverty line'

A recent paper, referring to the Household Consumption Expenditure Survey (HCES) 2022-23 of the Government of India (GoI), has debunked the official claim that poverty has substantially declined. Titled "Poverty in India: The Rangarajan Method and the 2022–23 Household Consumption Expenditure Survey", the paper —authored by scholars CA Sethu, LT Abhinav Surya, and CA Ruthu—states that "more than a quarter of India’s population falls below the poverty line."

Talking of increased corporate control over news, Rajdeep Sardesai 'evades' alternative media

When I received an intimation that well-known journalist Rajdeep Sardesai was to speak at the Ahmedabad Management Association (AMA) on February 2, my instant reaction was: I know what he is going to say—his views are quite well known; he wouldn’t be saying anything new. Yet, I decided to go and listen to him to catch his mood at a time when the media, as he (and I) knew it, is changing fast due to the availability of new technological tools that were not accessible even a decade ago.

A Hindu alternative to Valentine's Day? 'Shiv-Parvati was first love marriage in Universe'

  The other day, I was searching on Google a quote on Maha Shivratri which I wanted to send to someone, a confirmed Shiv Bhakt, quite close to me -- with an underlying message to act positively instead of being negative. On top of the search, I chanced upon an article in, imagine!, a Nashik Corporation site which offered me something very unusual.  I don't know who owns this site, for there is nothing on it in the About Us link. It merely says, the Nashik Corporation  site   "is an educational and news website of the municipal corporation. Today, education and payment of tax are completely online." It goes on to add, "So we provide some of the latest information about Property Tax, Water Tax, Marriage Certificate, Caste Certificate, etc. So all taxpayer can get all information of their municipal in a single place.some facts about legal and financial issues that different city corporations face, but I was least interested in them."  Surely, this didn't intere...