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= 'im4change' $adminprix = 'admin' $rn = object(App\Model\Entity\Article) { 'id' => (int) 7, 'title' => 'Migration', 'subheading' => '', 'description' => '<p style="text-align:justify"><br /> <span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:medium">KEY TRENDS </span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><br /> • The new Cohort-based Migration Metric (CMM) shows that inter-state labor mobility averaged 5-6.5 million people between 2001 and 2011, yielding an inter-state migrant population of about 60 million and an inter-district migration as high as 80 million <strong>@*</strong><br /> <br /> • The first-ever estimates of internal work-related migration using railways data for the period 2011-2016 indicate an annual average flow of close to 9 million migrant people between the states. Both these estimates are significantly greater than the annual average flow of about 4 million suggested by successive Censuses and higher than previously estimated by any study <strong>@*</strong></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><br /> • Various studies show that the major reasons for migration have been work/employment, business, and education, marriage, moved at birth, and moved with family/household. Scholars argue that government data tends to underestimate the flows of seasonal/circular migration, a stream dominated by people belonging to socio-economically deprived groups with an extremely low asset base and poor educational attainments and skill sets. It is this floating segment of the migrant population, mostly comprising people working seasonally in brick kilns, construction, plantations, mines and factories that is most vulnerable to exploitation by labour contractors and faces relatively greater hurdles in participating in elections and politics <strong>$$</strong><br /> <br /> • Domestic migrants, especially so-called un-domiciled domestic migrants, suffer from a lack of formal residency rights; lack of identity proof; lack of adequate housing; low-paid, insecure or hazardous work; no access to state-provided welfare services including denial of rights to participate in elections even though elections in India have acquired the mythical status of ‘the greatest show in Earth’. Thus, these exclusionary practices lead to their disenfranchisement and treatment as second-class citizens <strong>$$</strong><br /> </p> <p style="text-align:justify">• In India, internal migration accounts for a large population of 309 million as per Census of India 2001, and by more recent estimates, 326 million (NSSO 2007-2008), nearly 30 percent of the total population. Internal migrants, of which 70.7 percent are women, are excluded from the economic, cultural, social and political life of society and are often treated as second-class citizens <strong>**</strong><br /> <br /> • Lead source states of internal migrants include Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Odisha, Uttarakhand and Tamil Nadu, whereas key destination areas are Delhi, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Haryana, Punjab and Karnataka. There are conspicuous migration corridors within the country: Bihar to National Capital Region, Bihar to Haryana and Punjab, Uttar Pradesh to Maharashtra, Odisha to Gujarat, Odisha to Andhra Pradesh and Rajasthan to Gujarat <strong>**</strong><br /> <br /> • 59 percent of women migrants from ST backgrounds and 41 percent of SC background were short term and circulatory migrants in comparison to just 18 percent of migrant women workers of upper caste origin. 39 percent of women migrants from Other Backward Classes (OBCs) backgrounds were also short term and circulatory migrants, although the majority (65 percent) were long-term and medium-term migrants in comparison to 43 percent of SC and 32 percent of ST women in these latter categories <strong>$</strong><br /> <br /> • While 5 percent of the female migrant workers and 9 percent of the male migrants reported having been targets of harassment by local people at destinations, 23 percent of the women and 20 percent of the men had experienced violence, threats and being forced to work in the course of migration. Interestingly, among male migrants, contractors were identified as the most common perpetrator, while more than half the women who had faced such harassment/ violence identified the principal employer and the supervisor as the perpetrators <strong>$</strong><br /> <br /> • 78 percent of rural and 59 percent of urban women migrant workers were working as unskilled manual labour; 16 percent and 18 percent were in skilled manual work in rural and urban areas respectively. A total of 6 percent of the rural and 23 percent of the urban women migrants were in a combination of clerical, supervisory, managerial jobs, or work requiring high professional/educational skills (highly skilled). Ten percent of the urban women migrants were in the last category of the highly skilled in comparison to just 1 percent of the rural women migrants <strong>$</strong><br /> <br /> • Across the board, the overwhelming majority of the workers – more than 93 percent in the case of rural women migrants and more than 84 percent in the case of urban – had no provident fund and no health insurance. The worst situation was, however, in relation to daycare/crèche facilities, to which only 3.4 percent of the rural women migrants and 4.4 percent of the urban had any access at all <strong>$</strong><br /> <br /> • Proportion of households migrated to rural areas was very low, nearly 1 percent. In urban areas, on the other hand, the migrated households constituted nearly 3 percent of all urban households <strong>¥ </strong><br /> <br /> • The migration rate (proportion of migrants in the population) in the urban areas (35 percent) was far higher than the migration rate in the rural areas (26 percent) <strong>¥</strong></p> <p style="text-align:justify"> </p> <p style="text-align:justify"><strong>@* </strong>Economic Survey 2016-17 (released in January, 2017) (please <a href="https://im4change.org/docs/641Economic-Survey-2016-17.pdf">click here</a> to access)</p> <p style="text-align:justify"> </p> <p style="text-align:justify"><strong>$$</strong> Concept Note prepared for the national seminar entitled: 'Contesting Spaces & Negotiating Development: A Dialogue on Domestic Migrants, State and Inclusive Citizenship in India’[/inside], to be held at Center for Public Policy, Habitat & Human Development, School of Development Studies, Tata Institute of Social Sciences (Mumbai) on 25-26 March 2016 (please <a href="tinymce/uploaded/Concept%20Note%20TISS.pdf" title="Concept Note TISS">click here</a> to access the Concept Note)</p> <p style="text-align:justify"> </p> <p style="text-align:justify"><strong>**</strong> Social Inclusion of Internal Migrants in India (2013), by UNICEF, UNESCO and Sir Dorabji Tata Trust (Please <a href="tinymce/uploaded/Social%20Inclusion%20of%20Internal%20Migrants%20in%20India%20UNESCO.pdf" title="Internal Migration">click here</a> to download the report)</p> <p style="text-align:justify"> </p> <p style="text-align:justify"><strong>$</strong> <a href="tinymce/uploaded/Migration_and_Gender_in_India_1.pdf" title="Migration">Migration and Gender in India </a>by Indrani Mazumdar, N Neetha and Indu Agnihotri, Economic and Political Weekly, March 9, 2013, Vol xlvIiI No 10<br /> <br /> <strong>¥ </strong>Migration in India, 2007-08, National Sample Survey, MOSPI, Government of India,<br /> <a href="http://mospi.nic.in/Mospi_New/upload/nss_press_note_533_15june10.pdf">http://mospi.nic.in/Mospi_New/upload/nss_press_note_533_15june10.pdf</a></p> <p style="text-align:justify"> </p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:medium">OVERVIEW </span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"> </p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:medium">Keeping track of mass migration is an enumerator’s nightmare. Even the Census of India can’t always get this accurately. Before a government agency is able to take note of distress or seasonal migration, people often come back for the harvest season or move elsewhere. Mass seasonal migration has become an almost fixed event for some industries like brick manufacturing or sugarcane farming. Distress and seasonal migration invariably means no education for children, no voting rights for adults, and missing out on BPL facilities at either place of birth or the site of work. </span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:medium">The worst sufferers of seasonal and distress migration are the poorest of poor, the tribals (STs) and the Dalits (SCs), who invariably have meager base of human or physical assets. This is particularly so in the most backward and mostly rain-fed districts of Andhra Pradesh, Rajasthan, Gujarat, MP, Karnataka and Maharashtra. It is quite common for migrant women to work as agricultural labourers and for men to seek employment in the unorganized sector. </span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:medium">Distress migration also fuels a chaotic growth of unorganized/ informal industries and haphazard expansion of urban slums. Owners of small and informal factories love migrant workers. For they are more willing to work for less wages, are less likely to be absent for trivial reasons, are dependent on labour contractors and are powerless compared to local workforce. Their vulnerability and low wages may be of short-term advantage to the industry, but in the long run they fail to participate in India’s growth story by earning more and consuming more. That is why it is often argued that rural-urban migration can lead to prosperity only when a ‘pull factor’ of better paid work replaces the push-factor of rural poverty. </span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:medium">Between 1991 and 2001, as many as 73 million rural people have migrated (displaced from their place of birth) to elsewhere. But the majority of these people (53 million) moved to other villages and less than a third (20 million) to urban areas and mostly in search of jobs. The number of seasonal or cyclic migration is around 2 crore but some experts believe that the actual number could be ten times the official figure. </span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"> </p> <p style="text-align:justify">**page**</p> <p style="text-align:justify">The main findings of the report titled [inside]Global Trends: Forced Displacement in 2021 (released in June 2022)[/inside], which has been prepared by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), are as follows (please click <a href="https://im4change.org/upload/files/Global%20Trends%20Report%202021.pdf">here</a> and <a href="/upload/files/UNHCR%C2%A0-%20Global%20Trends%202021.pdf">here</a> to access): </p> <p style="text-align:justify">• The main focus of this report is the analysis of statistical trends and changes in global forced displacement from January to December 2021 among populations for whom UNHCR has been entrusted with a responsibility by the international community. </p> <p style="text-align:justify">• At the end of 2021, the total number of forcibly displaced people (i.e., those who were forced to flee their homes due to conflicts, violence, fear of persecution and human rights violations) worldwide was 89.3 million, while the total population of concern to UNHCR stood at 94.7 million people. </p> <p style="text-align:justify">• The total population of concern to UNHCR relates to the people UNHCR is mandated to protect and assist. It includes those who have been forcibly displaced; those who have returned within the previous year; those who are stateless (most of whom are not forcibly displaced); and other groups to whom UNHCR has extended its protection or provided assistance on a humanitarian basis.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• People displaced inside their own countries due to armed conflicts, generalized violence or human rights violations continue to constitute the majority of the forcibly displaced population globally. Known as internally displaced people, or IDPs, they account for some 60 percent of all people displaced. </p> <p style="text-align:justify">• According to Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC) figures, in 2021 there were 23.7 million new internal displacements globally due to disasters (these are in addition to those internally displaced due to conflict and violence). This represented a decrease of seven million, or 23 per cent, compared to the previous year. </p> <p style="text-align:justify">• The largest displacements in the context of disasters in 2021 occurred in China (6.0 million), the Philippines (5.7 million) and India (4.9 million). Most disaster displacements during the year were temporary, allowing the majority of internally displaced people (IDPs) to return to their home areas, but 5.9 million people worldwide remained displaced at the end of the year due to disasters. </p> <p style="text-align:justify">• In 2021, UNHCR improved the recording of statistics relating to those asylum seekers who do not require Refugee Status Determination (RSD), with 9,400 of them arriving during the year. This compares with 81,700 new asylum applications that did require RSD in 2021, an increase from the 50,300 in 2020, principally in Malaysia, Libya, Egypt and India.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Over the span of the year, the number of refugees worldwide increased from 20.7 in 2020 to 21.3 million at the end of 2021, more than double the 10.5 million a decade ago.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• With millions of Ukrainians displaced and further displacement elsewhere in 2022, total forced displacement now exceeds 100 million people. This means 1 in every 78 people on earth has been forced to flee – a dramatic milestone that few would have expected a decade ago.<br /> </p> <p>**page**</p> <p style="text-align:justify"><br /> The key findings of the Periodic Labour Force Survey report titled [inside]Migration in India July 2020-June 2021 (released on June 14, 2022)[/inside], which has been prepared by National Statistical Office (NSO), Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI), are as follows (please <a href="/upload/files/Full%20report%20Migration%20in%20India%202020-21.pdf">click here</a> and <a href="/upload/files/3_Draft_press_note_Migration_PLFS_2020_21.docx1655189017846.pdf">here</a> to access): </p> <p style="text-align:justify">• The fieldwork of PLFS was suspended first time from 18.03.2020 due to COVID-19 pandemic, and was resumed in June 2020 with the pending samples for this period. This, therefore, had a spillover effect in completion of field work allotted for the survey period July 2020 to June 2021. Subsequently, there was another spill-over effect due to the 2nd wave of COVID-19 when the field work of PLFS was again suspended in April 2021 in most parts of the country. The field work was gradually resumed in the first week of June 2021 with COVID-19 related restrictions.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• The Periodic Labour Force Survey covered 59,019 migrants (rural male: 7,238 and rural female: 51,781) in rural areas and 54,979 migrants (urban male: 17,654 and urban female: 37,325) in urban areas. </p> <p style="text-align:justify">• The PLFS covered 1,550 temporary visitors in rural areas (rural male: 960 and rural female: 590) and 851 temporary visitors in urban areas (urban male: 450 and urban female: 401). For temporary visitors, the present place of residence (where he/she was residing temporarily) differed from their usual place of residence.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• The migration rate was higher in urban areas (34.9 percent) as compared to rural areas (26.5 percent). The rate of migration was higher among females (rural females: 48.0 percent; urban females: 47.8 percent) in comparison to males (rural males: 5.9 percent; urban males: 22.5 percent) in both rural and urban areas. <br /> <br /> • For male migrants in rural areas, the location of last usual place of residence was rural areas for 44.6 percent of them, urban areas for 51.6 percent of them, and another country for 3.9 percent of them. </p> <p style="text-align:justify">• For female migrants in rural areas, the location of last usual place of residence was rural areas for 88.8 percent of them, urban areas for 11.0 percent of them, and another country for 0.2 percent of them. </p> <p style="text-align:justify">• For male migrants in urban areas, the location of last usual place of residence was rural areas for 53.7 percent of them, urban areas for 44.1 percent of them, and another country for 2.3 percent of them. </p> <p style="text-align:justify">• For female migrants in urban areas, the location of last usual place of residence was rural areas for 54.0 percent of them, urban areas for 45.6 percent of them, and another country for 0.4 percent of them. </p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Around 46.4 percent of male internal migrants in rural areas came from rural areas and the rest i.e., 53.6 percent came from urban areas. </p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Roughly 89.0 percent of female internal migrants in rural areas came from rural areas and the rest i.e., 11.0 percent came from urban areas. </p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Almost 54.8 percent of male internal migrants in urban areas came from rural areas and the rest i.e., 45.2 percent came from urban areas. </p> <p style="text-align:justify">• About 54.3 percent of female internal migrants in urban areas came from rural areas and the rest i.e., 45.7 percent came from urban areas. </p> <p style="text-align:justify">• The main reasons for migration among male migrants were: in search of employment/ better employment (22.8 percent); for employment/ work -- to take up employment/ to take up better employment/ business/ proximity to place of work/ transfer (20.1 percent); migration of parent/ earning member of the family (17.5 percent); and loss of job/ closure of unit/ lack of employment opportunities (6.7 percent).</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• The main reasons for migration among female migrants were: marriage (86.8 percent); migration of parent/ earning member of the family (7.3 percent); housing problem (0.8 percent); and for employment/ work -- to take up employment/ to take up better employment/ business/ proximity to place of work/ transfer (0.7 percent).</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• The percentage share of male migrants who migrated after March 2020 in total migrants was 12.4 percent in rural areas, 5.6 percent in urban areas, and 8.3 at the national level.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• The percentage share of female migrants who migrated after March 2020 in total migrants was 1.8 percent in rural areas, 2.3 percent in urban areas, and 2.0 at the national level.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• The percentage share of migrants who migrated after March 2020 in total migrants was 3.0 percent in rural areas, 3.4 percent in urban areas and 3.1 at the national level.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• The percentage of temporary visitors in the population residing temporarily in a place different from usual place of residence was 0.7 percent -- 0.7 percent in rural areas (male: 0.9 percent; female: 0.5 percent) and 0.6 percent in urban areas (male: 0.6 percent; female: 0.6 percent).</p> <p style="text-align:justify"><strong><em>Important concepts</em></strong></p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Usual Place of Residence (UPR) of a person is the place (village/town) where the person has been staying continuously for at least six months. Even if a person was not staying in the village/town continuously for six but was found to be staying there during the survey with intention to stay there continuously for six months or more then that place was as his/her UPR.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Migrants are those whose last usual place of residence is different from the present place of enumeration. Usual place of residence is the place (village/town) where the person stayed continuously for a period of 6 months or more or intends to stay for 6 months of more.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Migration rate for any category of person (say, for rural or urban, male or female), is the percentage of migrants belonging to that category of persons.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• For the purpose of this survey, temporary visitors in the household are those persons who arrived after March 2020 and stayed in the household continuously for a period of 15 days or more but less than 6 months.</p> <p> </p> <p>**page**</p> <p style="text-align:justify"><br /> The key findings of the study titled [inside]Voices of the Invisible Citizens II: One year of COVID-19 -- Are we seeing shifts in internal migration patterns in India? (released on 25th June, 2021)[/inside], prepared by Migrants Resilience Collaborative (a Jan Sahas initiative) in collaboration with EdelGive Foundation and Global Development Incubator, are as follows (please <a href="/upload/files/Jan%20Sahas%202021%20report.pdf">click here</a> to access): </p> <p style="text-align:justify"><em>Methodology</em></p> <p style="text-align:justify">• For the present study, a rapid desk research was conducted on policy and programmatic responses by various states and the central government that addressed internal migration/ welfare of migrant households in the past one year. </p> <p style="text-align:justify">• For primary data, the study has relied on two sources -- (a) Computer-Assisted Personal Interviews (CAPI) were conducted during first week of April 2021 in 6 states, where Migrants Resilience Collaborative reached out to 2,342 workers (target sample 175 - 250 respondents per district) to inform them of the changes migrants have noticed in their own communities regarding various aspects of migration and labour. The surveys were conducted in 3 destination states (Delhi/ NCR, Mumbai, Hyderabad) and 7 source districts (Banda, Hazaribagh, Mahbubnagar, Tikamgarh) selected on basis of high-migration rate and on-ground presence of the organization; (b) Internal data on migrant workers from the Bundelkhand region (10 districts falling within Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh). To enable better comparison, Migrants Resilience Collaborative has used the data collected during two distinct 6-month periods – (1) September 2019 to March 2020, and (2) September 2020 to March 2021.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Convenience sampling method was used to identify respondents for the survey, with the stipulation that 35 percent of respondents should be women.</p> <p style="text-align:justify"><em>Patterns of migration</em></p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Three major points stand out in respect to broad level shifts in migration: Reporting of overall reduction in internal migration (with significant reduction in female labour migration and reduction in family migrating with the worker), reporting of an increase in shorter durations of migration cycles, and a strong preference for inter-state migration followed by intra-district migration (with female migration being high in intra-district migration). These shifts in patterns could be short-term in nature, however if read closely with the data point on lack of job opportunities at source, one observes a dismal state of affairs with potentially long-lasting adverse effects on migrant households.</p> <p style="text-align:justify"><em>What happened to migration?</em></p> <p style="text-align:justify">• A year after the lockdown, migrant workers still prefer to stay back in villages. The Jan Sahas survey shows that in the past one year, 57 percent migrants believe that the rate of migration has decreased.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• A majority of the workers mentioned fear of contracting the virus (71 percent), fear of lockdowns (47 percent) and lack of jobs at their destination (54 percent). These responses are consistent with the Action Aid survey, where similar reasons were cited for the strong preference to stay back at the source.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Only 8 percent (11 percent of women and 2 percent of men) of respondents reported that having found alternate employment at the source was the reason for decrease in migration, thus indicating the increasing distress of migrant households. </p> <p style="text-align:justify">• The survey conducted at the source locations at different periods in the past year shows a similar trend of unemployment too - either people have lost their jobs or now work for less hours than they used to before the pandemic. This could be indicators of worsening distress and poverty caused by disruption in migration and unemployment at the source.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Almost 55 percent of respondents reported that people are now moving for shorter durations than before. Around 9.5 of respondents reported that people are now moving for longer durations than before. Female workers are more likely to mention that movement is for shorter durations in the past one year. </p> <p style="text-align:justify"><em>Preference of destination: Where are they migrating for work?</em></p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Majority of survey respondents both at destination and source mentioned inter-state migration as their preference (45 percent and 54 percent, respectively). Workers from ST and OBC categories had a strong preference to move within their districts, i.e., intra-district movement. Further, 33 percent respondents at the source reported that people were moving within their districts for work.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Among the source districts, Bundelkhand districts of Banda (UP) and Tikamgarh (MP) showed negligible preference for intra-district movement (1 percent and 7 percent), and high preference for inter-state migration (94 percent and 77 percent). Possible reasons for interstate movement could be the historical socio-economic deprivation and agrarian crisis in the Bundelkhand region and ease of commute and proximity to Delhi.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Both Hazaribagh in Jharkhand (75 percent) and Mahbubnagar in Telangana (86 percent) that had a higher number of workers from ST and OBC categories showed higher preference for intra-district movements. Possible reasons for this preference of moving within the district in Mahbubnagar could be the availability of agricultural labour work in nearby cotton farms. And in Hazaribagh, the sample size included a high number of Adivasi migrants who have been moving locally to find work for generations.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Even though inter-state migration was reported as the most preferred by both women (44 percent) and men (53 percent), there was a clear gendered trend when it came to intra-district movement- 37 percent women reported people were moving within the district compared to 20 percent men. This trend calls for a deeper focus on rural-rural migration and short-distance migrations.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Given that female migration is highest in rural-rural streams, a shift in narrative from that of rural-urban migration to metropolitan cities would also make visible women’s labour and mobility trends. Such a narrative-shift would also bring to light the gender wage gap and understand the stark contrast in wages male migrants receive and the paltry amounts women agricultural labourers receive as daily wages.</p> <p style="text-align:justify"><em>Female migration</em></p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Delving deeper into the migration trend, the survey shows that women’s migration in particular has taken a hit in the last one year. Around 60 percent respondents reported that lesser number of women are migrating now compared to before the pandemic. Even though women’s migration has always been underestimated in the Census, NSSO and other macro-studies, various estimations from micro-studies points to the fact that women migrate in large numbers to sectors such as agriculture (in rural areas), construction, textiles, domestic work that engage considerable numbers of migrant women.</p> <p style="text-align:justify"><em>Dependents</em></p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Another aspect the survey probed was whether dependents (family members who do not contribute to the family income) accompany migrant workers like they used to do previously. The decrease in migration of dependents could be understood as a strategy to reduce costs at the destination, and also should be read along with the fear of sudden lockdown and contracting viruses. Further, through the field experience of Migrants Resilience Collaborative, it has been observed that young men (less than 45 years old) were now migrating without their families, in higher numbers. Almost 43 percent of respondents reported that people are moving without their families in the past one year. </p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Workers from SC/ST category are 2.7 percentage points more likely to mention that they migrate with dependents than workers from other categories, and the difference in means is statistically significant at the 90 percent confidence level (p-value= 0.060).</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Workers who continue to migrate are often landless and homeless at source, those without ration cards at source (who move as a family in order to minimize expenses of a split HH), elderly/ women with smaller children, women as helpers to husbands, etc. </p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Workers who are assured accommodation at the worksite also tend to move with their families.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• There is also a sectoral pattern when it comes to families migrating – in brick kilns, families continue to migrate as a unit, particularly owing to group recruitments, in comparison to construction and other sectors where recruitment is often on an individual basis.</p> <p style="text-align:justify"><em>Patterns of work</em></p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Two-thirds of the respondents mentioned they find it hard to find jobs, and the majority of daily wage workers at labour chowks head back home without work. While wages have largely remained stagnant, the number of work days have significantly reduced, which inevitably leads to reduced income. In the past decade or more, one has witnessed a shift in recruitment patterns with seasonal migrants moving independent of contractors – however, with the pandemic and rampant unemployment, one has begun to see a further shift with an increase in migrants who move with contractors.</p> <p style="text-align:justify"><em>Ease of finding work</em></p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Consistent with the reports on unemployment and lack of job opportunities, 73 percent of the respondents (75 percent of women; 72 percent of men) mentioned that it has become more difficult to find work at the destination compared to before the pandemic. Reports from labour chowks reveal that availability of work has plummeted post the lockdown, drastically shrinking the monthly earnings and workdays of migrant workers.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Nearly 85-87 percent of workers who preferred to move intra-state and intra-district mentioned that finding work has become harder, demonstrating lack of employment in source states.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Women are more likely to mention that it is harder to find jobs in comparison to men.</p> <p style="text-align:justify"><em>Recruitment pattern</em></p> <p style="text-align:justify">• The policy discourse around migration for the past 10-15 years or more has been centered around the complicated, multi-layered and often malevolent recruitment practices by contractors from source regions. However, data provided by Migrants Resilience Collaborative from the past 3 years attests to a different story particularly for seasonal migrants in construction. A majority of them migrate independent of source contractors and their movement and employment is instead facilitated by their social circles or destination contractors.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Around 91 percent of construction workers migrate independently. This shift in recruitment pattern is a significant opportunity for destination states, as they have control over the contractors who recruit workers from nakaas and community spaces.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• The 3-year long tracking system of Migrants Resilience Collaborative pertaining to employed construction workers indicates that there is a 16 percent increase in the use of contractors to find employment post-lockdown. It is important to note that since the 2020 lockdown and the employment crisis, there is a slow shift back to finding employment through destination or source contractors.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• There are regional differences in recruitment patterns: workers from West Bengal and other states where seasonal migration is less common, recruitment through source-based contractors or recruiters is higher.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Almost 41 percent of respondents reported that there was no change in the mode of recruitment, 26 percent of respondents felt that more workers were migrating independently to find work, and 29 percent of respondents reported that people were now migrating with contractors from source.</p> <p style="text-align:justify"><em>Bondage situation</em></p> <p style="text-align:justify">• More than a third of the respondents (37 percent) mentioned that incidence of bonded labour continues to be the same as before the pandemic, 28 percent of respondents mentioned that it has reduced while 14 percent of them reported that it has increased. Given the extent of unemployment and income-poverty, one should carefully read these signs of distress and constantly be agile to prevent incidence of bondage.</p> <p style="text-align:justify"><em>Situation of wages</em></p> <p style="text-align:justify">• About nine out of 25 workers reported a decrease in wages. Nearly 7 out of 25 female respondents reported an increase in wages. </p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Nearly 40 percent of respondents reported that the wage rate continues to be the same as before the pandemic. In this instance, it is important to read this data point along with the decrease in livelihood opportunities (73 percent of respondents mentioned finding work has become harder). Even though wages might remain the same, they are working fewer days, which essentially translates to lesser income.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Roughly 28 percent of female respondents as against 16 percent of male respondents mentioned that wages have increased.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• According to ILO, from 2010-2019, India’s labour productivity increased 5.5 percent annually on an average, while the growth in real minimum wage was 3.9 percent, implying denial of their fair entitlement to workers.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Around 41 percent of female workers reported working overtime with no benefits is the norm.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• In the absence of institutional support, workers have developed few strategies of their own to protect themselves from wage theft such as taking up daily wage jobs so as to avoid getting cheated of lump sums and taking advance amounts from contractors before starting work in order to avoid getting cheated of the full amount.</p> <p style="text-align:justify"><em>Access to social security</em></p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Compared to last year, about 88 percent of respondents seem to be aware of the schemes that were announced specifically for them. However, the concerning aspect is that its access seems to be limited to short-term emergency support schemes in comparison to livelihood schemes.</p> <p style="text-align:justify"><em>Registration of migrant workers</em></p> <p style="text-align:justify">• The lack of comprehensive data on migration due to the weak implementation of the Inter State Migrant Workmen (Regulation of Employment and Conditions of Service) Act, 1979, was cited as one of the most important barriers to reaching migrant households and ensuring their welfare. To address this gap, creation of a migrant registry has been recommended time and again.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Only 15 percent of the respondents surveyed at the destination (n=779) confirmed that they were registered prior to their last departure from source.</p> <p style="text-align:justify"><em>Information dissemination and coverage of welfare schemes</em></p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Several state governments especially took commendable action to implement these measures and support migrant households through livelihood-creation and extension of social security provisions.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Almost 62 percent of the respondents were not aware of the schemes at all and only a mere 5 percent confirmed that they were aware of the provisions and knew how to access them. However, after a year, there has been a notable shift. Only 12 percent of the total respondents reported that they were not informed about the schemes and provisions.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Nearly 50 percent of females and 66 percent of males got the information through TV/ radio/ newspaper; 11 percent of females and 16 percent of males got the information from whatsapp; 27 percent of females and 23 percent of males got the information from government representatives; 12 percent of females and 4 percent of males got the information from ASHA/ anganwadi workers; 34 percent of females and 28 percent of males got the information from friends/ relatives; 27 percent of females and 27 percent of males got the information from NGO/ other organisations; and 10 percent of females and 14 percent of males got no information.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Nearly 47 percent of females and 55 percent of males had access to emergency cash transfers; 23 percent of females and 12 percent of males had access to job card/ MGNREGA card; 32 percent of females and 31 percent of males had access to Building and Other Construction Workers (BOCW) card; 3 percent of females and 1 percent of males had access to Garib Kalyan Rojgar Yojana; 14 percent of females and 6 percent of males had access to work days under MGNREGA; 26 percent of females and 43 percent of males had access to extra ration at source; 28 percent of females and 15 percent of males had access to ration at destination; and 9 percent of females and 4 percent of males had access to health insurance.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• In May 2020, a website for online registration and renewal of BOCW cards was launched and material for applications were made available on the website. Through this facility, workers could directly set up appointments through the portal and get physically verified at the camps.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• In recent times, the Delhi BOCW for registration documentation has further allowed workers who are not in possession of employment certificates by employers/ contractors/ trade unions, to submit self-attested certificates in a prescribed format. The Delhi Government’s campaign for registration under the Building and Construction Workers Act (BOCW) ensured over 1.05 lakh workers getting registered under the board.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Chhattisgarh was one of the most successful states in terms of public distribution system (PDS) coverage with over 97.8 percent of respondents of the survey reported that they had received free or subsidized ration during the lockdown. Many private sector companies involved in both construction and gig economy are now vaccinating their workers. All these examples point towards the possibilities in protecting the informal sector workforce when private, state and civil society stakeholders come together to meet the immense challenges that face the nation.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Current efforts to ensure the portability of PDS under ONOR is commendable, however focus should be broadened to include portability of BOCW and its benefits that will directly impact more than 40 million migrant construction workers.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Evidence from Tamil Nadu suggests that universalization of PDS, along with contributing to food security, reduces leakages and minimizes exclusion errors.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">**page**</p> <p style="text-align:justify"><br /> The key findings of the report titled [inside]No Country for Workers: The COVID-19 Second Wave, Local Lockdowns and Migrant Worker Distress in India (released on 16th June, 2021)[/inside], prepared by Stranded Workers Action Network-SWAN, are as follows (please <a href="https://www.im4change.org/upload/files/SWAN%20report%202021_No%20Country%20For%20Workers.pdf">click here</a> to access):</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• As the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic rages on, almost 92 percent of the country’s workforce (who lack access to social safety nets) are experiencing a historic and unprecedented crisis. For the second time in a row in less than a year, the country witnessed a virtual lockdown. The effects of the restrictions in economic activity and the lack of any social security safeguards have hit the migrant and informal sector workers the hardest.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• In this report, SWAN has attempted to highlight the multiple dimensions of precarity experienced by migrant and informal workers during the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Taking note of the disquieting trends, Stranded Workers Action Network (SWAN), a voluntary effort that started in March 2020 to mobilise relief for stranded migrant workers, relaunched its helpline on 21st April, 2021. By 31st May 2021, SWAN had received over 8,023 requests for ration support, medical assistance, transport help, rent, and other basic needs. Out of the total number of workers whom SWAN team members have been able to interact with, 88 percent (7,050) have received money transfers and 6 percent of the group have received repeat transfers. SWAN has thus far transferred Rs. 3.3 million. Additionally, given the overwhelming level of need, SWAN has engaged in several advocacy initiatives aimed at raising awareness on the nature and extent of the crisis, highlighting the need for extending the coverage of social security benefits, and holding governments accountable for their proposed policy actions.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• The present report mentions that the current crisis (2nd wave) has been similar to 2020's in terms of the dimensions of distress experienced, but also exceptional as it has compounded the problems of workers who now have little savings and limited access to safety nets. Through SWAN team members' conversations with around 8,000 workers and their family members it has recorded the limited availability of food and rations, lack of access to basic healthcare, low levels of income and earnings, increasing levels of indebtedness, the struggles of surviving in the city, and the additional set of concerns with returning to life in the villages.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• The distress from accumulated debts and erratic employment started with the lockdown in 2020 and has been prolonged in 2021, severely impacting the economic status of the workers. In the absence of any social security benefits, approximately 76 percent of them had Rs. 200 or lesser than Rs. 200 left with them when they first contacted SWAN. This is somewhat similar to trends reported in 2020 during a similar period (one month into lockdown) when 74 percent of the workers had Rs. 200 or less than Rs. 200 with them. Added to these miseries is the mounting levels of debt, the uncertainty of surviving in the city, the dilemma of returning to the villages where there is no work even under the MGNREGA, and the continuing health challenges.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• In the context of these deeply alarming trends, the SWAN team juxtaposes and studies the Central and State Governments’ responses. The State Governments’ responses have definitely been inadequate. Many of the policy initiatives introduced thus far have been limited in terms of coverage, procedurally confusing and alienating, on the whole failing to account for the needs of migrant workers and their families.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• It has been found that the Central Government’s response to be the most disconcerting as it appears to have all but abdicated responsibility, instead expecting the states to respond to the crisis. There have been no budgetary extensions or policy announcements that cover migrant workers’ distress. In the context of the government’s feeble response, SWAN has proposed a set of recommendations, many of which align with the long standing demands made by workers’ unions, civil society organisations, labour activists, policy experts and academics. These specific recommendations have been arrived at in consultation with academics and civil society organisations. SWAN has actively participated in these consultations. They discuss the feasibility of these measures and underscore the urgent need for the government to provide a comprehensive policy response that alleviates the growing distress of migrant and informal workers — a group that has suffered disproportionately due to the impacts of the pandemic.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• The response of the Central and State Governments has been far from adequate and there has been little to no action taken to extend relief to migrant and informal sector workers, finds the report. The Central Government has deflected almost all responsibility towards the states, so much so that the judiciary has had to intervene. The Supreme Court, specifically, has taken an active role and issued orders directing states to introduce food security measures for migrant communities, including the distribution of dry rations via the Atma Nirbhar scheme (or any other state or central scheme) and the running of community kitchens for migrant workers. In states where some measures have been announced, there is a continuing trend of half-baked policy initiatives that either leave out or do not fully cater to the needs of migrant labourers. Most states have reiterated hackneyed promises that mostly provide relief to a section of the working class and leave out the majority.</p> <p style="text-align:justify"><strong>MAIN FINDINGS</strong></p> <p style="text-align:justify">• As on 20th April, 2021, partial lockdowns were found in 10 states across the country and complete lockdown was imposed in Delhi. As on 8th May, 2021, nearly the entire country was under complete lockdown as a result of either partial lockdowns and night curfews or complete lockdowns imposed by the states/ UTs.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Drawing on 2020’s experience, the process of responding to a distress call and mobilising relief was systematised by SWAN. A structured needs assessment questionnaire (similar to the one used last year) was employed to elicit the necessary information about workers’ circumstances and assess their level of need.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• SWAN received a few calls in April and only started systematically logging information from 1st May. This explains inflated calls on 1st and 2nd May, 2021. SWAN has adjusted the data from April for the rest of the figures. Of all the calls, needs were assessed for 76 percent (others did not require aid, were directly forwarded to an NGO or were subsequently unreachable). The present report is mainly based on data collected via distress calls between 1st and 31st of May, 2021.</p> <p style="text-align:justify"><strong>Coverage and migrant workers’ profiles</strong></p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Of the 8,371 workers and their families from whom SWAN was able to get some information, the majority of workers were concentrated in a few key states – Delhi (1,760), Maharashtra (1,507), West Bengal (692) and Uttar Pradesh (581). These trends are similar to those reported in 2020, with the exception of Delhi, where fewer calls were reported last year as compared to this year.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Most of the calls SWAN received were from stranded migrants, stuck in their places of work. But this time round, approximately 9 percent of the calls SWAN received were from migrants who had recently returned home as well as from those who were in their villages and hometowns without any savings and work.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• The workers who reached out to SWAN are among the poorest and most vulnerable, as revealed by their insecure economic status. More than half (60 percent) were daily wage factory workers and 6 percent were non-group based daily wage earners like drivers, domestic help etc. The median daily wages of workers was Rs. 308. Nearly 74 percent of the workers earned Rs. 200-400 per day and 14 percent earned less than Rs. 200 per day.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Notably, there is a much higher proportion of women and children in the groups of workers in 2021 as compared to 2020. While last year less than a quarter of those who reached out to SWAN included women and children, in 2021 84 percent of those calling in were with women and children.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• The concerns of the workers who stayed back in the city were many and there were no easy choices. The workers SWAN spoke to had to make tough choices on whether to spend on rent and food for themselves or send to their families back home; stay on in the city or travel back home; stay on in the hope of work resuming while worrying about catching the virus in the city, or go home to rising cases and no work. This year SWAN also received calls from large groups of migrant workers who were stranded in cities, particularly Delhi.</p> <p style="text-align:justify"><strong>Employment interrupted and wages lost</strong></p> <p style="text-align:justify">• A startling number of workers reported a range of challenges such as the cessation and intermittent availability of work, problems of pending wages and absconding contractors.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Interrupted or stopped work: Around 91 percent of the workers SWAN spoke to reported that work (daily and contractual) has stopped due to locally declared lockdowns. The number of days since work has stopped has also steadily risen in the later weeks of May, 2021.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Pending wages: About 66 percent of the workers (for whom SWAN has this information) reported that they had not received their full wages or had been paid only partial wages for the previous month. However, only 8 percent had received any money from their employer since the work had stopped.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Absconding contractors: SWAN's conversations with the workers revealed the levels of contravention and in some instances the complete absence of adherence to labour laws and standards. A few construction workers in Gurugram, Haryana, told SWAN of how they had been brought there from Bihar only a few days before the lockdown was announced. Their contractor had since abandoned them and had not even paid them for the days on which they had worked. Left without any income or support they were stranded in the city and had no means to return home. In another case, a group of factory workers in Gujarat were left with no money when their employer ran away without paying their dues.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• On 20th April 2021, the Ministry of Labour and Employment (MoLE), announced that 20 control rooms, set up during the 2020 lockdown and used by “lakhs of workers”, were being relaunched to address grievances of workers through coordination with officials of the Labour Department in different states. The list of “worker helplines” includes 20 states/ zones with the contact details of 100 Labour Commissioners, including their email addresses. To understand the support being offered, SWAN volunteers called 80 officers from across these 20 zones and enquired about the assistance being provided to migrant workers with regard to: non-payment of due wages, provision of rations or cooked food, financial assistance to meet basic needs, protection from eviction by landlords, and support for travel back to their home states. The responses from the worker helplines revealed that the helpline is not for any migrant or informal worker and is only for those who work on Central Government projects. There was variation in responses across helplines. There was a worker-unfriendly system for submitting complaints. There was no tracking method. There was no assistance provided to address hunger. There was no assistance given to protect migrant workers from eviction and harassment by landlords.</p> <p style="text-align:justify"><strong>Debt traps, cash struggles and dwindling food</strong></p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Debt traps: Given how interrupted work has been over the last year and a half, approximately 76 percent of people had Rs. 200 or lesser than Rs. 200 left with them when they spoke to SWAN. Many were unable to leave during the national lockdown in 2020 because of debts owed to landlords and shopkeepers. Those who were able to leave spent several months at home unable to find alternative employment even though several state governments promised work and loans to start small businesses. After their minimal savings were depleted, these workers were pushed to return to the cities once again in search of work. When the second wave and lockdowns hit, cash availability dipped precariously again.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• The precariousness of living without work and wages during this lockdown has led to accumulating debt. Debt burdens were also reported by workers who had more stable livelihoods and earned regular incomes.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Still no portability of access to PDS, no provision of rations to migrant workers: One of the key reasons why food distress amongst migrant workers became so acute during the 2020 lockdown and again in 2021 is because of their exclusion from the PDS system in the places they migrate to. This exclusion is not restricted to migrant workers alone. Although the NFSA is supposed to cover 67 percent of the population, in reality this coverage is closer to 60 percent. This was reflected in the information collected from migrant workers who called SWAN too. More than half the workers (62 percent) did not have access to ration cards in either their home states or in their current locations. Even if these workers and their families possess a ration card, these are linked to their home addresses and to a specific ration shop. Unless the entire family migrates, the ration card is left at home with family members.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Following the migrant worker crisis last year, the Central Government began to tout the One Nation One Ration Card (ONORC) scheme as a panacea to address food insecurity amongst migrant workers. According to the Finance Minister, by March 2021 “this system will enable migrant workers and their family members to access PDS benefits from any Fair Price Shop in the country.” The ONORC scheme was supposed to make PDS entitlements portable, which would be immediately advantageous to migrant workers. More than a year since this announcement, SWAN found that 93 percent of the migrant workers had a ration card but this was not functional in the place where they were stranded. In Delhi, for instance, one worker reported how he had tried to apply for a Delhi Government ration card but had not been issued one and therefore had been forced to borrow money to feed his family.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Access to the PDS at home was also erratic and there were issues related to exclusion from the system, distribution of inadequate quantities of ration, and authentication issues. As independent studies have pointed out, 100 million people are still excluded from the PDS. This was reflected in SWAN's conversations with workers as well — 62 percent of those who had returned home said they did not have a ration card. Quantity of ration too was an issue, whether in the cities or in the villages to which workers had returned. With no income, especially in places like Karnataka and Delhi where lockdowns had been imposed, the quantity of ration available through the PDS was inadequate, as one worker said, to meet a family’s food needs. Other issues, like exclusions due to failed biometric authentication, also persist, compounding the distress.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Given this level of exclusion from the food security net, the situation of food distress amongst migrant workers becomes extremely grim. More than half (82 percent) of the workers whom SWAN spoke to (and for whom SWAN has this data) had 2 or less than two days’ worth of ration. This is a staggering figure even if it is less than the figures reported last year when 72 percent of the workers reported that their rations would finish in two days. The percentage of people (worker groups and families) with less than two days of ration has consistently been around half during the month of May.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Scanty community kitchens and feeding centres: Unlike last year when some state governments opened feeding centres that provided cooked meals to stranded migrants, this year there were very few such initiatives by the government and civil society. The Delhi Government claims to have set up 265 feeding centres compared to 2,500 such centres set up in 2020. However, this list was not freely available to the public. Only in early May 2021 did SWAN come across a list of hunger relief centres (without any contact details) that were supposed to be operational across districts in Delhi.</p> <p style="text-align:justify"><strong>A health crisis that is not just COVID-19 related</strong></p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Migrant workers, in addition to the fear of contracting the virus, have had to deal with existing medical concerns in the absence of wages and depleted savings. Unlike last year when the rates of transmission were considerably lower, this year SWAN also asked workers about their medical status and specifically if they or members of their family were experiencing COVID-19 or similar symptoms. Hearteningly, most workers (86 percent) did not report experiencing any such symptoms. However, 12 percent did report other non-medical conditions that ranged from fever, chronic conditions, tuberculosis (TB), disability due to accidents, and so on. And while there may not have been any immediate health impacts on the workers, the fear of falling ill with the virus was palpable.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• The 12 percent non-COVID-19 related health issues were also wide ranging and underscored the precarious situation that many who reached out to SWAN were in. Accidents had left some unable to work even before the second wave had started, especially where the principal breadwinner of the family was the one who had suffered the injury.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Access to rural healthcare: While much of the public attention, particularly of the urban middle class, has been on the oxygen crisis in big cities, the coverage on the state of rural healthcare during this deadly second wave of the pandemic has been limited. There are notable exceptions in the English media, such as reports on the COVID-19 deaths in rural Uttar Pradesh, why people in rural India are hesitant to go to healthcare facilities even if COVID symptoms are detected, and misdiagnosis of COVID as typhoid in Jharkhand (Yadav, 2021, Masih, 2021, Angad, 2021). There is better coverage in the Hindi media.</p> <p style="text-align:justify"><strong>Compounding the vulnerability of the marginalised</strong></p> <p style="text-align:justify">• While the calls received reflect the extreme distress of workers across the country, the condition of vulnerable groups within the workforce was even worse. Some groups were more adversely affected than others, especially women, a group from whom SWAN received many calls. Some women who requested money/ ration had husbands at home but the latter had lost their jobs. Other women had husbands who were stranded in places they had migrated to for work and who then found themselves unable to send money home during the lockdown.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Single women especially faced the brunt of the loss of employment and wages. If the stress of the times was in itself a form of violence experienced by the families of workers struggling to make ends meet, there was also the looming worry of domestic violence that some callers addressed. Another group under stress were pregnant women and nursing mothers. The differently abled were another vulnerable group. Children too have not remained unaffected. They have been forced to work to make ends meet for the family.</p> <p style="text-align:justify"><strong>Journeying back and travel within the city: Both a struggle</strong></p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Like 2020 during the nationwide lockdown when many decided to trek back to their villages, this year too many migrants were trying to make their way back home. The sight of workers with weary children and meagre belongings trudging through the heat of the summer is still a recent memory. This year the localised lockdowns led to some hesitancy and confusion and many were unsure as to whether they should return to their villages or wait in the cities till the lockdown measures were lifted. However, it was increasingly clear that as the lockdown was extended week by week, more and more workers were desperate to make their way back to their villages. In all, 11 percent of the migrant workers and their families returned to their village (out of 6,693 people that SWAN has data for).</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Costs of travel were an issue as trains, the cheapest mode of transport, were not available to all destinations. In some instances the decision to travel back was the result of threat or force. One worker reported being coerced into making the choice to travel back home by his landlord who threatened them with eviction if they were unable to pay the rent. While movement between states was restricted, local movement within cities was subject to other kinds of risks. </p> <p style="text-align:justify"><strong>No roof over the head: The burden of rent and the threat of eviction</strong></p> <p style="text-align:justify">• With no earnings, rents were of concern as they constituted a considerable proportion of the family expenditure. Work-from-home is a much-used phrase during this lockdown. But for workers living a hand to mouth existence there was no work and they lived under constant fear of having no home either. Evictions, while a worry for some, were an immediate concern for others.</p> <p style="text-align:justify"><strong>No work in the city, no work back home in the village: Challenges of MGNREGA</strong></p> <p style="text-align:justify">• With intermittent work available and lockdown in effect in many cities, migrant workers were reluctant to return home because there were no employment opportunities in the village and securing work under MGNREGA had proved difficult for many last year. It has been widely reported that MGNREGA employment in May this year has seen a sharp decline. Last year when all alternative employment came to a standstill during the national lockdown, MGNREGA played a crucial role in providing income support to workers in rural India, many of whom were returned migrants. State Governments made efforts to ensure that recently returned migrants were provided job cards soon after they returned. Work was proactively opened, providing much needed financial relief. More than 11 million new families registered for MGNREGA and 20 million more families worked under MGNREGA in 2020 when compared to the previous year. However, this year MGNREGA has practically come to a standstill across states. None of the workers who were back home and reached out to SWAN had gotten any MGNREGA employment in April or May. This was corroborated by several civil society organisations SWAN has been in touch with as well.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• When team members receiving distress calls asked workers who reached out to SWAN about MGNREGA, they mentioned a range of issues with getting work back at home — many preferred to go to the cities in search of work.</p> <p style="text-align:justify"><strong>Vaccination Woes: Scarcity and Hesitancy</strong></p> <p style="text-align:justify">• The data is quite preliminary but SWAN finds that while there was some knowledge of vaccination for COVID-19, relatively few workers had been vaccinated. Then from 22nd May, SWAN began capturing some information on vaccinations and by 31st May had collected 452 responses from workers. In particular, SWAN asked the workers if they knew of the vaccination drive for COVID-19 and if they had been vaccinated or had tried to register for the vaccine. Of the 452, only 10 percent (45) of the workers who called us had been vaccinated. The majority of them had received their vaccination in a PHC or a camp held in their village, while 14 of them had received their vaccine in a private facility, either a clinic or a hospital.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Those who tried to get vaccinated but could not made up 18 percent (82). The reasons ranged from not having information, trying to register but failing, non-availability of vaccines and crowded PHCs. There were others who said that they had no knowledge about the vaccine or registration process or how to get the vaccine. While on the one hand there was scarcity, on the other there was also some hesitancy expressed.</p> <p style="text-align:justify"><strong>Recommendations</strong></p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Food: The extension of expanded food rations to PDS card holders till November 2021 is welcome. India should further leverage the 100 million tonnes of food grain (over three times the buffer stock norms) for:<br /> -Expanding PDS food distribution to non-PDS card holders till November 2021;<br /> -Specific expansions of ICDS delivery for families with children, and additions to rations as well as meals (including eggs) at schools and anganwadis</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Income: Undertaking crisis cash transfers of Rs. 3,000 per month for 6 months</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Work: Expanding NREGA work entitlements to 150 days; Initiating immediate public works programmes for urban employment</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• For income, the proposed crisis cash transfer must leverage existing direct benefit transfer systems (NREGA, PM-KISAN, PMJDY, NSAP) with new decentralised systems of direct distribution from ration shops, post offices, panchayats and other local institutions.</p> <p style="text-align:justify"><strong>---</strong></p> <p style="text-align:justify">Please click <a href="https://www.im4change.org/latest-news-updates/it-s-time-for-the-govt-to-ensure-social-security-of-returnee-migrants-provide-them-vaccination-asks-civil-society-group.html">here</a> and <a href="https://im4change.org/upload/files/SWAN%20Press%20Release_5th%20May%202021%20%28English%29.pdf">here</a> to access the [inside]Press release by Stranded Workers Action Network (SWAN) dated 5th May, 2021[/inside]. In its press statement, the civil society group has asked for provision of social security benefits to returnee migrants and informal workers in the wake of second wave of Covid-19 and local lockdowns imposed in many states. Kindly click <a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/1d_P0KH1ZasLP8WLLYWDJNR2ppuRBIWkHDorCcjmnHA8/edit">here</a> to access the note on the types of distress and testimonies that the workers shared with SWAN volunteers.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">**page**</p> <p style="text-align:justify">The <a href="https://www.im4change.org/upload/files/SSRN-id3834328.pdf">study titled</a> [inside]COVID-19: Emergence, Spread and Its Impact on the Indian Economy and Migrant Workers (released in April 2021)[/inside] by Ashok Gulati, Shyma Jose and BB Singh examines the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and the related nationwide lockdown on the Indian economy, particularly on food systems. It also takes up an important issue of millions of migrant workers in India who seem to have suffered the most during this period. The loss of their livelihood, incomes, and food insecurity are captured through a survey of 2917 migrant workers in six different states of India. At the end, the study gives recommendations on how to broaden the support for migrant workers nationwide. Due to the pandemic-induced lockdown, the Indian economy contracted 24 percent in the first quarter of the financial year (FY) 2020-21 (April-June). The worst affected sectors were construction, trade and hotel and other services, and manufacturing. Consequently, the unemployment rate surged to 23.5 percent in April 2020. Given the easing of lockdown and measures taken by the government in the wake of the first wave of the pandemic, the economic growth revived to -7.5 percent in the second quarter of FY 2020-21. The food processing industry particularly manufacture of grain milling products, dairy products and animal and vegetable oil, were resilient during the lockdown. However, the pandemic adversely impacted the processing and preservation of meat, fruits and vegetables. Notably, the agricultural sector is the only sector that recorded a positive growth rate of 3.4 percent during the first two quarters of FY 2020-21. Nevertheless, the disruption of the agri-food supply chain, particularly during the initial period of the lockdown, pushed food inflation from 8.8 percent in March 2020 to 11.7 percent in April 2020, but it came down to 3.4 percent by the end of the third quarter (December) of FY 2020-21. The unprecedented migrant crisis was one of the major catastrophes that emerged during the pandemic. The sudden imposition of the lockdown had a severe impact not only on employment but consequently on the earnings and savings of the migrants once they reached their villages. At their native place, with no proper employment opportunities, the household income of migrants fell by 85 percent during June-August 2020, as per the survey findings. With the revival of economic activities post-lockdown, the authors found that 63.5 percent of migrants have returned to the destination areas by February 2021, while 36.5 percent were still in their villages at their native places. Although the migrant’s household income has increased after remigration, there is still a contraction of 7.7 percent relative to the pre-lockdown level. The household income of the migrants who are still at their native place post-lockdown contracted more than 82 percent compared to pre-lockdown. To revive the economy and provide support to vulnerable populations, the central government announced a series of packages. These included an additional quantity of subsidised food-grains under the Public Distribution System (PDS), cash transfers through Jan Dhan Yojana, free gas supply under the Ujjwala scheme, an ex-gratia to widow/senior citizen as well as income transfer to farmers under PM-Kisan. Overall, the survey showed 84.7 percent of the migrants had access to subsidised cereals under PDS, while the percentage receiving pulses was much lower at 12 percent during November-December 2020. Moreover, only 7.7 percent of migrants in their native place reported being engaged in Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) or any other public work. The demand-driven skill training under GKRY reached only 1.4 percent of migrants at their native place in the survey done for the study. Many workers reported a fall in the quality of food consumed during the lockdown and post-lockdown compared to the pre-lockdown level. With no access to relief measures and entitlements, a quick recovery of the migrant workers seems grim.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">The survey for the <a href="https://www.im4change.org/upload/files/SSRN-id3834328.pdf">study</a> was conducted in three phases: Phase-1 between June and August 2020; Phase-2 between November and December 2020; and Phase-3 during the last week of February 2021, to capture the varying degrees of vulnerabilities among the migrants prior to, during, and after the first lockdown</p> <p style="text-align:justify">Overall, the survey showed that only 7.7 percent of migrants at native place reported being engaged in MGNREGA or any other public work during the Phase-2 survey. This suggests that various employment schemes, including Garib Kalyan Rozgar Yojana (GKRY), have either neglected most of these migrants or that migrants did not want to do MGNREGA work. Furthermore, the average days of employment per household under the MGNREGA scheme was 50.1 in FY 2020-21, 48.4 in FY 2019-20, 50.9 in FY 2018-19 (as of April 21st, 2021) (MoRD, GOI 2021). The employment guarantee of 100 days under MGNREGA or implementation of the GKRY in mission mode for 125 days has not been achieved. Besides, 55 percent of migrants at the native place are willing to return to the destination, of which 65.6 percent reported employment as the primary reason to return. The situation certainly warrants close monitoring to ensure no gap exists between measures announced and implementation on the ground.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">Moreover, the demand-driven skill training under GKRY, conducted under the component of Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Vikas Yojana, has not reached most of these migrants. For instance, only 1.4 percent of migrants reported getting any skill or training at the native place in our survey. The authors have recommended that the scale of permissible work under MGNREGA should be broadened to absorb the wide range of skilled and unskilled migrants. The skill mapping of the migrants could be done at Gram Panchayat or block levels to provide employment on a demand-driven basis under GKRY.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">**page**</p> <p style="text-align:justify"> </p> <p style="text-align:justify">The key findings of the study entitled [inside]Understanding the Effect of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Migrant Construction Workers in India (released in December 2020)[/inside], which has been prepared by Sattva Consulting and other organisations, are as follows (please click <a href="/upload/files/Sattva_GFEMS_Evidence-Learning-Booklet1.pdf">here</a> and <a href="/upload/files/www_sattva_co_in_publication_understanding_the_effect_of_the.pdf">here</a> to access):</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Between June 2020 and August 2020, NEEV – a multi-stakeholder consortium of partners working to improve worker welfare in the construction sector in India – conducted remote surveys with over 10,000 migrant construction workers (who migrated from the Bundelkhand region to Delhi NCR) to understand the impact of the COVID-19 lockdown on their lives, jobs and personal well-being. The surveys conducted were based on Longitudinal Migration Tracking or LMT i.e. prospective migrants were enrolled first, then their basic demographic information was collected and their seasonal journeys to work in the construction industry was tracked.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Although 59,129 participants were contacted at least once for the study, responses of 18 percent of the total participants (i.e. n=10,464) who completed the survey as per the LMT methodology were finally taken into account to get the survey results. Most respondents were male (97 percent; n=10,106), and belonged to either a Scheduled Caste (65 percent; n=6,999), Other Backward Caste (25 percent, n=2,549) or Scheduled Tribe (5 percent, n=528) community.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Nearly, one-third of respondents had no formal education (n=3,443; 33 percent), a further 18 percent had only completed primary education (n=1,912; 18 percent), 24% had attained secondary education (n=2,469), while a quarter of respondents had completed 12th grade (n=2,274; 25 percent).</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Ninety-five percent of workers surveyed (n=9,931) reported having a job in construction prior to March 2020, compared to only one-third (n=3,493) as of August 2020, indicating a 65 percent decrease in the number of participants employed in the construction sector during the pandemic.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• It was found that around 52 percent of — or one out of every two — participants (n=5,177) did not have a monthly household income.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Among participants who were working prior to the COVID-19 lockdown, 72 percent (n=7,421) had received payment for their work while 28 percent (n=2,839) had not.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Of the respondents who reported that they had not received any financial or in-kind assistance, approximately 58 percent were unaware of the welfare schemes and benefits they were entitled to receive, and a further 27 percent were unable to receive benefits despite having the necessary documents.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Of the migrant construction workers surveyed, 40 percent (4,241) reported that they had received some form of support (primarily in the form of food rations).</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Participants of this study borrowed money for meeting food requirements due to the pandemic at more than double the rate that existed prior to lockdown, reinforcing that food security is a critical concern for migrant workers in the construction sector at this time. Rising indebtedness among migrant workers in the construction industry increases the risk of modern slavery.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• A significant proportion of respondents reported that they had no savings (34 percent; n=3,536), which not only increases the severity of the COVID-19 lockdown, but also the potential for these individuals to be pressed toward riskier employment ventures.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• The study finds that the primary concern among migrant construction workers surveyed was food insecurity.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• While the amount of ration allocated to each ration-card holder covered under the National Food Security Act was expanded during the crisis through the PM Garib Kalyan Ann Yojana scheme, the study findings indicate that a significant portion (33 percent of construction workers who responded) were not in possession of a ration card that would allow them to avail these benefits. Additionally, for those migrant workers who have ration cards, the lack of portability of these benefits to destination locations still presents a challenge.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• The majority of migrant workers surveyed reported that they had not received any support from government welfare programmes.</p> <p style="text-align:justify"><strong><em>[Shivangini Piplani, who is doing her MA in Finance and Investment (1st year) from Berlin School of Business and Innovation, assisted the Inclusive Media for Change team in preparing the summary of the study by Sattva Consulting and others. She did this work as part of her winter internship at the Inclusive Media for Change project in December 2020.]</em></strong></p> <p style="text-align:justify">**page**</p> <p style="text-align:justify">Please <a href="/upload/files/Roadmap%20for%20developing%20a%20policy%20framework%20for%20inclusion%20of%20internal%20migrant%20workers%20in%20India.pdf">click here</a> to access the report entitled [inside]Road map for developing a policy framework for the inclusion of internal migrant workers in India (released in December, 2020)[/inside], which has been prepared by International Labour Organization (ILO), Aajeevika Bureau and Centre for Migration and Inclusive Development (CMID).</p> <p style="text-align:justify"><strong>---</strong></p> <p style="text-align:justify">Please click <a href="https://www.im4change.org/upload/files/Citizens_and_the_Sovereign.pdf">here</a> and <a href="https://www.im4change.org/latest-news-updates/the-migrant-worker-as-a-ghost-among-citizens-sampath-g.html">here</a> to access the report entitled [inside]Citizens and the Sovereign: Stories from the Largest Human Exodus in Contemporary Indian History (released in November 2020)[/inside], which has been brought out by Migrant Workers Solidarity Network (MWSN).</p> <p style="text-align:justify">---</p> <p style="text-align:justify">Please click <a href="https://www.im4change.org/upload/files/All-India-Report-on-Migrant-Workers.pdf">here</a> to access the report entitled [inside]Survey on Migrant Workers: A Study on their Livelihood after Reverse Migration due to Lockdown (released in October 2020)[/inside] by Inferential Survey Statistics and Research Foundation.</p> <p style="text-align:justify"><strong>---</strong></p> <p style="text-align:justify">Please click <a href="https://www.im4change.org/upload/files/SWAN%20Response%20to%20GoI%26%23039%3Bs%20Data%20on%20Migrant%20Workers%26%23039%3B%20Deaths.pdf">here</a>, <a href="https://www.im4change.org/latest-news-updates/although-govt-avoids-providing-data-on-the-impact-of-covid-19-lockdown-timely-intervention-by-a-civil-society-group-working-among-migrants-fills-the-info-gap.html">here</a> and <a href="https://www.im4change.org/upload/files/AU174.pdf">here</a> to access the [inside]Response by Stranded Workers Action Network (SWAN) dated 15th September, 2020[/inside] when the Government did not provide any data on the number of migrant workers who lost their lives during their return to the hometown (and the details), and also any data related to the assessment of job losses among migrant workers due to the COVID-19 crisis.</p> <p style="text-align:justify"><strong>---</strong></p> <p style="text-align:justify">Please <a href="https://www.im4change.org/upload/files/After_the_long_marches_-_WPC_.pdf">click here</a> to access the report entitled [inside]After the long marches: What do workers want? (released on 31st August, 2020)[/inside] by Working People’s Charter (WPC).</p> <p style="text-align:justify"><strong>---</strong></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><br /> The <a href="/upload/files/Garment-Workers-in-India%E2%80%99s-Lockdown1.pdf">report</a> entitled [inside]Garment Workers in India’s Lockdown Semi-Starvation and De-humanisation Lead to Exodus (released in June 2020)[/inside], which has been prepared by Society for Labour and Development – a Delhi-based NGO – examines how workers and their families coped with adversities during the lockdown despite not being provided any income support by either their employers or the government. The survey by SLD was carried out in the National Capital Region (i.e. in and around Delhi) and Tiruppur in Tamil Nadu. Telephonic interviews of about 100 garment workers, mostly migrants, were conducted during the second half of May, 2020. Almost 72 workers from National Capital Region and 28 workers from Tiruppur participated in the survey. Field-based investigations were also conducted among those workers who returned back to their villages in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. The major findings of the report are as follows (please <a href="https://im4change.org/upload/files/Garment-Workers-in-India%E2%80%99s-Lockdown1.pdf">click here</a> to access):</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Out of 100 garment workers interviewed 57 were women and 43 were men. There were 54 workers (23 men and 31 women) who were permanent and 44 workers were contractual (20 men and 24 women). Two women respondents were home workers. Most of the workers were inter-state migrants and some were intra-state migrants (28 workers). Nearly 69 percent of inter-state migrant workers were from the Northern belt of India, with 49 percent belonging to Bihar alone. The report finds that women in the sample consumed more food vis-à-vis men. It says that this might have happened due to the presence of more number of married females in the sample who had the support of their husbands as opposed to lower number of single male respondents.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• The report says that although the lockdown was imposed towards the last week of March, only one-fifth of workers (19 out of 100 workers) received any form of cash or advance payments. Cash or advance payment was given on the condition of deducting the same from the overtime work the workers would do in future. The payment they received was a meagre sum ranging between Rs. 1,800 and Rs. 10,969 per worker. The permanent workers failed to receive their dues from the garment/ apparel exporters. The contractors abandoned the workers by switching off their mobile phones. The report highlights that the government did not help the workers by providing them income support during the lockdown. During the lockdown crisis, the government only provided Rs. 500 to women who had bank accounts.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Please note that the government had on March 26th, 2020 declared that an ex-gratia <a href="https://im4change.org/upload/files/Garib%20Kalyan%20Yojana%2026%20March%202020.pdf">monthly payment of Rs. 500</a> would be given to <a href="https://im4change.org/upload/files/Garib%20Kalyan%20Yojana%2026%20March%202020.pdf">women</a> <a href="https://im4change.org/upload/files/Garib%20Kalyan%20Yojana%2026%20March%202020.pdf">Jan Dhan account holders</a> for the next three months, starting from April. This was part of Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Yojana.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• The garment workers were not provided any form of income support by either the employer or the government. Since most of the respondents were migrants, they did not have ration card which could have provided them access to subsidised foodgrains from the fair price shops of the Public Distribution System (PDS). The migrants did not possess any proof of their current residential address as they were not given identity cards by the factories where they worked. On top of that, they did not get any receipt from the landlords against the rents they paid. So, they were unable to produce any proof of their current local address. The survey results show that only 20 workers were able to get subsidised foodgrains from the government. Some trade unions and NGOs extended their helping hands and provided cooked food to the garment workers during the lockdown. Out of 97 workers who responded, six hardly had one meal a day while 69 had two meals a day during the lockdown. Two workers said that they had one meal a day usually and sometimes two meals a day. Thus, 82 percent of the workers could afford only two or less number of meals a day during the lockdown. In short, majority of garment workers and their families experienced starvation during that period.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• The reports by SLD finds that most intra-state migrants went back to their nearby villages while the inter-state migrants were stranded in cities or the place where they worked with no income. They faced hunger and starvation. Many used the last of their savings or borrowed money to finance their return back to native place. Estimates show that almost 40 percent of inter-state migrants in Tiruppur went back to their villages/ native place. The field investigation conducted in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh finds that the workers who went back had borrowed money from money lenders at exorbitant interest rate of around 20 percent per month. The migrant workers were afraid that the usurious interest rates might strip them of the meagre property they owned if they fail to repay back. The migrants who went back to their native place said that they felt helpless and were afraid of not being able to survive in their villages. The report states that the lockdown exposed the classist nature of the government since it arranged quick travel facilities for the middle and upper class students although migrants were provided those facilities much later.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• The report mentions that there were instances in which migrants in Tiruppur were kept in the dormitories against their will and were provided poor quality food. They were forced to stay there. There were protests in Tiruppur and some workers were arrested by the police for protesting. Some migrants said that they would not go back for work while others were of the view that they might go back since only a handful of opportunities are available in their villages/ native place. The report cautions that the garment industry might undergo automation and mechanisation due to rise in wages. Because of demand-supply mismatch in availability of skilled workforce in urban areas, wages are expected to increase. The report says that the lack of income support from employers as well as the government pushed garment workers to face hunger and destitution, besides de-humanising them. As a result, mass exodus of migrants from cities to villages could be observed when the lockdown was imposed.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• The report cites two surveys of garment exporters, which was conducted by the Apparel Export Promotion Corporation in May 2020. Almost 105 and 88 exporters were surveyed during those two surveys. Roughly 83 percent of the respondents said that their orders were either wholly or partially cancelled. On top of that, 72 percent of the respondents said that buyers were not taking responsibility for already purchased materials. About 52 percent of the respondents said that buyers were asking for discounts on already shipped goods. Among the respondents, almost 72 percent highlighted that buyers were asking for a discount of around 20 percent while another 27 percent said that buyers were asking for discounts as high as 40 percent or even more. Almost 88 percent of the exporters expressed their inability to pay wages to their employees.</p> <p style="text-align:justify"> </p> <p style="text-align:justify"><strong><em>[Balu N Varadaraj and Nabarun Sengupta, who are doing their MA in Development Studies (1st year) from Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Hyderabad, helped the Inclusive Media for Change team in preparing the summary of the report by Society for Labour and Development. They did this work as part of their summer internship at the Inclusive Media for Change project in June-July 2020.]</em></strong></p> <p style="text-align:justify">**page**</p> <p style="text-align:justify">Please click <a href="https://im4change.org/news-alerts-57/swan-third-report-outlines-the-perpetual-plight-of-migrants-in-terms-of-food-distress-income-insecurity-and-travel-difficulties-during-lockdown.html">here</a> and <a href="https://im4change.org/upload/files/To%20Leave%20or%20Not%20to%20Leave%20SWAN%20Report%2005%20June%202020.pdf">here</a> to access the key findings of report entitled [inside]To Leave or Not to Leave? Lockdown, Migrant Workers, and Their Journeys Home (released on 5th June, 2020)[/inside], which has been prepared by Stranded Workers Action Network (SWAN).</p> <p style="text-align:justify">---</p> <p style="text-align:justify">Please <a href="/upload/files/Unlocking%20the%20Urban%20English%20Summary.pdf">click here</a> to access the key findings of the report entitled [inside]'Unlocking the Urban: Reimagining Migrant Lives in Cities Post-COVID 19' (released on 1st May, 2020)[/inside]. Please <a href="https://im4change.org/docs/Unlocking-the-Urban.pdf">click here</a> to access the full report by Aajeevika Bureau.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">The report by Aajeevika Bureau, using findings from the pre-COVID period, examines the lives of migrant workers in Ahmedabad and Surat, across multiple work sectors and diverse castes, genders, language groups and source regions. Through the report, the authors of the report ask, “How do migrant workers access public provisioning – housing, water, sanitation, food, and healthcare – in urban areas?”</p> <p style="text-align:justify">The findings of the report suggest that the severe humanitarian crisis for over 100 million migrant workers is not unanticipated or caused solely by the COVID outbreak. It is rooted in India's urban and labour policies, and economic growth model, which excludes and alienates this vast group of workers while using them to boost industrial and infrastructural growth. For decades, migrant workers have relied on informal networks to access basic provisioning, which has severe implications for the cost, quality, and reliability of access to a basic, dignified survival.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">The report by Aajeevika Bureau entitled <a href="https://im4change.org/docs/Unlocking-the-Urban.pdf">Unlocking the Urban:</a> <a href="https://im4change.org/docs/Unlocking-the-Urban.pdf">Reimagining Migrant Lives in Cities Post-COVID 19</a> (released on May 1st, 2020) looks at the socio-economic and living conditions of circular migrants in cities of Ahmedabad and Surat (Gujarat) and attempts to find how they access basic facilities and services there, besides checking how migrant workers negotiate for these facilities and how urban planning and governance respond to the requirements of circular migrants in urban spaces.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">The Ahmedabad and Surat surveys were mainly conducted in the months of August, September and October during 2018 and in the months of February, August, September and October during 2019. The key findings from this report with respect to Ahmedabad and Surat surveys are summarised below.</p> <p style="text-align:justify"><strong>Key findings related to Ahmedabad survey:</strong></p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Of the 1.3 million circular migrant workers in Ahmedabad, 285 workers were surveyed across 32 locations and most of those surveyed were employed in five major sectors. Almost 80 respondents (28.07 percent) were working in the construction sector, 72 respondents (25.26 percent) in manufacturing, 47 respondents (16.49 percent) in hotel and dhaba, 44 respondents (15.44 percent) were head loaders and 42 respondents (14.73 percent) worked in the domestic help segment.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Roughly 174 respondents (61.05 percent) were males while 111 (38.94 percent) respondents were females. About 44.6 percent (127 respondents) of total respondents were Scheduled Tribes (STs), 23.5 percent (67 respondents) were Scheduled Castes (SCs), 12.3 percent (35 respondents) were from Other Backward Classes (OBCs) and 19.6 percent (56 respondents) were from general castes. Almost 176 respondents (61.75 percent) were family-based migrant workers and the rest 109 respondents (38.25 percent) were single workers. The migrant workers hailed mostly from the states of Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Odisha and Chhattisgarh.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Housing in the city of Ahmedabad for migrant workers was classified into rented rooms, worksite housing and settlement in open spaces. Of the migrants surveyed, 151 respondents (nearly 53 percent) lived in rented rooms, 79 respondents (27.7 percent) lived at worksite, 37 respondents (almost 13 percent) lived in open spaces and 18 (6.3 percent) respondents lived in some other forms of housing, mostly semi-permanent residences built by workers living for a long time period in Ahmedabad. For factory workers and domestic workers, rented house was the most preferred form of housing as is evident from the fact that 63.9 percent of the factory workers (46 out of 72 respondents) and 83.3 percent of the domestic workers (35 out of 42 respondents) stayed in rented accommodations. Almost 41.3 percent (33 out of 80 respondents) of construction workers stayed in open spaces. Roughly equal number of hotel workers lived in rented houses (24 out of 47 i.e. 51.1 percent) and worksite (23 out of 47 i.e. 48.9 percent).</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Although 62.1 percent of male respondents (108 out of 174) lived in rented rooms, only 38.7 percent of the female respondents (43 out of 111) stayed in rented rooms. Further, as compared to 21.8 percent of the male respondents (38 out of 174) staying at the worksite, 36.9 percent female respondents (41 out of 111) stayed at worksite. Of the 37 respondents living in open spaces, a whopping 32 migrants (86.5 percent) were STs, followed by three SC migrants (8.1 percent). On the contrary, out of 56 general category respondents, 35 respondents lived in rented rooms (62.5 percent).</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• For rented rooms, the monthly average for 10×10 sq. feet pucca room was found to be Rs. 3,022/-, which was too costly especially for unskilled ST (adivasi) workers. Instead rent per person arrangement was preferred by single workers on a 4-5 person sharing basis. Rental markets are unregulated without any written contracts. Facilities depended on tenant’s goodwill with landlord. Worksite housing is especially visible for construction workers, head loaders and hotel/ dhaba workers.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• In rented rooms, landlord determined the type of sanitation facilities for workers. Almost 15-20 individuals shared a toilet and they themselves were responsible for cleaning it. Workers living in worksites or open spaces either used pay and use or mobile toilets or resorted to open defecation. Some construction sites had separate toilets for women, but in case of gender neutral toilets, women had to wake up before 5 am in the morning to use them. For women in construction sector, 32 percent of the respondents had to use shared toilets while 68 percent resorted to open defecation. Nearly all women workers engaged in factories resorted to open defecation while all women workers working as domestic helps enjoyed access to individual toilets.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• For workers living in rented rooms, water facility was provided by landlords. For those living in worksites, either the employer provided it or workers fetched it from public stand posts. Only 9 percent of the respondents had access to water from taps installed by Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation (AMC). Almost 46 percent of workers relied on water from private buildings through goodwill with security guards/ local residents. Some of the construction site workers had access to 24 hours water since they used the water available for construction activities in household works as well. In case of migrants staying with their families, primary responsibility of water collection vested with the women of the household. Water usage is determined by the water available and not water actually needed. As against WHO’s mandated 100 litres water per person per day, people in the rented houses got only 85 litres per person per day. The situation was worst in open space settlements on government/ private land where people received only 39 litre per person per day. Nearly 70 percent of the respondents never treated the water and used it directly for consumption. Often there was a visible difference in between facilities being provided to local Gujarati speaking workers and migrant workers.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• None of the migrant workers had access to subsidised foodgrains through the Public Distribution System (PDS). Expenditure on food was the highest for those living in open spaces (about 53 percent of their income). Expenditure on food as a percentage of their income was the lowest for hotel/ dhaba workers (17 percent), followed by domestic workers (42 percent), factory workers (43 percent), head loaders (44 percent), and construction workers (48 percent). Often factory workers living in rented houses were forced to purchase ration from shops set up by their landlords. Adivasi families living in factories and working in hazardous conditions were found to spend just 29 percent of their income on food, because of the fact that continuous chewing of tobacco suppressed their hunger. For fuel, adivasi families staying in open areas collected different materials ranging from pieces of plastic to wood shavings. Buying firewood costs Rs. 100 per day on average, which is unaffordable for many.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• In the sphere of health care, only 14.7 percent respondents preferred public hospitals, 74.4 percent preferred private clinics, 14.4 percent preferred private hospitals, 5 percent preferred going back to their villages for treatment and 0.7 percent preferred urban health centres. Urban health centres remain open during 9am-6pm, which is the working hour for the migrants and hence visiting them might mean losing daily wage for a migrant. Public hospitals often insist on producing different kinds of domicile documents which are often not available with the workers. Hence they are unwilling to visit these hospitals. Even among the 40 respondents who said that they prefer public hospitals, 39 of them were living in Ahmedabad for more than 3 years. Almost 48 percent of them belonged to the general category and only one-fifth were adivasi workers. </p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Ahmedabad Urban Development Authority (AUDA) prepares static plans for 10 years, failing to take into consideration the changing nature of the cities. According to AUDA officials, housing for workers was never really a part of urbanisation plans. Open spaces almost always bear the brunt of evictions, whenever AMC took up expansion or land reclamation drives. Though AMC tried multiple times to send migrant workers from open spaces to night shelters built by the government, often those attempts were unsuccessful, owing to unfriendliness of such spaces and insufficient capacities.</p> <p style="text-align:justify"><strong>Key findings related to Surat survey:</strong></p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Surat, which is often boasted as world’s fastest growing city during the period 2019-35, has seen a boom in diamond polishing, textile, ship building and petrochemical industries post 1980s. This led to a massive influx of migrant workers. Presently, nearly 70 percent of wage workforce is constituted by migrants, which as a proportion of migrants to locals, is highest in the country. The survey in Surat was conducted among 150 migrant workers working in power loom industry across 12 different locations of the city. Out of total, 106 (70.7 percent) were single male migrant workers and 44 migrants (29.3 percent) lived with their families in the city. Almost 72 percent of the workers were from Odisha (mostly from Ganjam district), 16 percent were from Bihar, 10 percent were from Uttar Pradesh, and 1 percent each were from Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Nearly 56 percent respondents were OBCs, 26 percent belonged to general category, 10 percent belonged to ST category and 6 percent belonged to SC category.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• The housing for the workers was divided into three typologies – mess rooms where 25 respondents (16.7 percent) stayed, shared/ bachelor rooms where 81 respondents (54 percent) lived and rented family housing where 44 respondents (29.3 percent) resided. Thus, all the single male migrant workers stayed in some sort of shared facilities. In case of rented rooms, room rents are fixed in the range of Rs.2500-Rs.4000 and a common toilet facility is provided for a group of rooms. The number of persons sharing such a room varied in the range of 2 to 10. Mess rooms include long hallways having areas 500-1000 square feet, where around 100 workers stayed across two shifts. There are 2 toilets for a hall. Mess rooms come with a package of 2 meals per day. Migrants paid in the range of Rs.400-Rs.600 for room rent and Rs.1,800-Rs.2,200 for food. Most rooms were poorly ventilated, usually old power loom spaces converted as a mess and run by a mess manager. For families availing rented houses, rent was same in the range of Rs.1,800-Rs.3,800 for rooms of size between 80 sq. feet to 200 sq. feet. Finding an accommodation is highly dependent on social contacts in the city. Around 23 workers (15.3 percent of 150 respondents) said that they faced evictions at some point or other, and among them 20 had faced evictions from mess, thus, highlighting the highly insecure nature of rental arrangements for migrants in the city of Surat.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• All migrants had access to toilet facilities. Almost 83 percent of the respondents had access to shared toilets located inside or attached to their living spaces. Nearly one-third used shared bathrooms, 46 percent had access to kaccha bathrooms and one-fifth have access to private bathrooms. Roughly, 93 percent of the respondents said that they had a closed drainage system, but often it was clogged owing to no maintenance. Garbage collection by Surat Municipal Corporation (SMC) varied across locations, and often garbage is seen scattered around the roads.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Sources of water for the migrant workers include bore wells, pipe water and government tankers. Almost four-fifth (79 percent) of the respondents used SMC provided water for drinking. Further 76 percent of the respondents did not purify the water. Electricity was available to all workers and it rarely failed. Electricity costs were either included in the rent (for two-third of the respondents) or had to be separately paid to the landlords. Quality of facilities like water and electricity depended on the relationship of the tenant with the landlord. In case of fuel, all respondents had access to LPG cylinders and mess owners often resorted to buying cylinders from the black market for cooking. Families with 4-5 members shared a cylinder for a month.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Almost 92 percent of the respondents accessed private health care facilities like private hospitals, private clinics, quacks etc. Nearly 18 workers (12 percent of total respondents) reported having any accident in the previous year. Often, workers preferred going back to their native villages for treatment in case of any serious issue. Almost one-fourth (24 percent) of the respondents described immunisation as the only public health care facility availed by them. Requirement of domicile documents for availing subsidized health care in government facilities like Surat Municipal Institute of Medical Education and Research (SMIMER) prevented migrant workers from going there. ASHA workers did not visit areas inhabited by migrants frequently, especially if there are mostly single male migrants residing in the area. Further, only 31 percent of the respondents were aware about government schemes such as Ayushman Bharat.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• About 71 children of the migrant workers were recorded as a part of the survey. Amongst them 40 children were of school going age but 30 percent of them did not attend any kind of school. They instead were assisting their mothers in completing thread cutting work. Government schools were lacking across the areas where the survey took place. On top of that, dearth of documents and government schools mostly being Gujarati-medium prevented migrants from admitting their children there. Though a few Odiya medium schools were there, they had classes only upto 8th standard, thus, forcing children of migrants to enter the workforce after that. Roughly 15 percent children had attended anganwadis at some point. Approximately 14 percent of the children were not immunised at all.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Almost 36 percent of the respondents (55 respondents) earned in the income bracket of Rs.15,000-Rs.17000 per month. Single migrant workers remitted 40-60 percent of their incomes to their families back home. This remittance is done mostly informally by taking the help of local shopkeepers, who charge Rs.10 to Rs.20 for every Rs.1,000 transaction through net banking. Only 21 percent of the workers had Surat-based voter card and 31 percent had Surat-based Aadhaar card. Only 21 percent of the workers had access to a bank account. Often women in the family-based migrants took up the work of thread cutting for their husband’s employer, but earned a meagre and undervalued sum of Rs.1,500 to Rs.3,000 per month, despite working for 6 hours per day on average.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Around 98 percent of the workers never had any interaction with any government official in the area and only 8 respondents (5.3 percent) had been to a police station at some point or other. Even then, the police considered the workers as ‘mind dead people’ always under the influence of substance, ready to fight with each other over small issues.</p> <p style="text-align:justify"><strong>Status of migrants and response of the State</strong></p> <p style="text-align:justify">The sections mentioned above looked at the living conditions of migrants workers in Ahmedabad and Surat. The three research objectives for the study undertaken by Aajeevika Bureau are: 1) What is the state of access to basic facilities and services by cicular migrants in Ahmedabad and Surat?; 2) If there is an absence of access to these basic facilities, how do the circular migrants negotiate in order to access basic facilities and services?; and 3) How do urban planning, governance, policies and schemes respond to circular migrants and what implications does these policies have on their lives?</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• From the present report we come to know about the growth model these cities have pursued. The neo-liberal growth model which works on the sole principle of accumulation by dispossession is the reason why the circular migrants do not have access to the basic facilities. The neo-liberal growth path has kept the State outside the domain of welfare and has enabled employers to ignore their responsibilities towards the workers.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• The other reasons which prevent the migrants from accessing the basic facilities provided by the State include lack of information about the welfare measures provided by the State, neglect of circular migrants in many policies and fear of harassment when interfacing with the State. The employers who act according to the neo-liberal growth model and exploit workers to extract more surplus do not provide any basic facilities for the employees. This is a historic injustice done to the labour rights which were obtained after years of constant struggle. The neo-liberal growth model works through granting specific incentives to capital and weakening labour regulations. While semi-permanent migrants and settled urban poor are able to make demands through various mechanisms, it is circular migrants who are not able to make their claims for citizenship rights or labour rights.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• The study shows that in the absence of basic facilities, the migrants form a network of informal connections, often having urban poor as the main service providers, to negotiate for these facilities. This informal economy is location-specific and is rooted in unregulated relationships of simultaneous patronage and exploitation between workers and local actors. The informal economy along with the political economy in which it is embedded has two consequences. Firstly, the strong demand in the informal economy gives no space for negotiation and thus leads to arbitrary access to these facilities. Secondly, this also has high economic, physical and mental costs.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• This nature of informal economy often does not have any space for the migrant workers’ say and thus the space for negotiation is very small. An example for this is the fact that migrants are not able to have a written agreement for rent or electricity despite renting rooms from the same landlord over the years. The nature of informal economy is different and is often accompanied by local politics and power. This leads to varied experiences for the migrants and the costs of access and survival in the city is heavily determined by specific identities such as caste and gender.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• The experiences of migrants in the informal economy are different. The existing ethnic identities mediated by the social networks determine the experience of the migrant. The experience of SC and ST communities with that of the OBC communities in the city of Ahmedabad serves as a perfect example to highlight this point. The relatively stronger social networks and upward social mobility help the OBCs to have a consistent access to the basic facilities and services. The experiences of women migrants are also different. Women have to bear the costs associated with electricity charges, rent and safety of raw materials, besides unpaid domestic labour within the household, sometimes also extending to care work for their neighborhood.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Migrants are not considered as citizens but as consumers. This is due to the dual paradigm of capitalist growth and neo-liberal urbanism. Migrants are not able to demand any access due to the neo-liberal model of urban growth and also because of the negligence of their demands in the policies and schemes of the government. The migrants are not able to make demands to the State and employer through legal recourse and mobilizations. Everyday access to the basic facilities is largely transactional and costs are measured and paid in the various ways described in their narratives.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• The phenomena of intergenerational transfer of poverty is prevalent among circular migrants. Since the migrants are treated as consumers rather than citizens they often do not have much to invest for their children. Children often accompany their parents to the worksite or work in helping their mothers in home-based jobs. Often children start working as early as 14-15 years of age since their parents are not able to work beyond the age of 30-40 years owing to poor conditions of work and lack of proper access to healthcare facilities. Neither the State nor the employer provide childcare or primary education facilities for circular migrants.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• The report looks at the response of the State’s policies towards migrants and highlights the problems associated with these policies. The problems attached with the State has a major role in shaping the lives of migrants. These include: politics around enumeration constrains provisioning and eligibility, sedentary bias in urban policy design and implementation, pricing out by income criteria, static planning versus dynamic urban growth and labour flows, limited autonomy and budgetary powers for urban local bodies, dichotomy between urban governance and labour governance, limited recognition of their presence in cities and unique needs and lack of opportunity to assert their political agency.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Many policies use the Census data for its implementation, Due to definitional issues over last place of residence, migrants are often left out of the Census data collection. Census happen over large time gaps and thus is unable to capture the dynamic flow of migrants that has been characteristic of the informal economy. This means that since migrants are not placed in the Census data itself, they are often deprived of the government schemes.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Another factor that plays a role in the State policies is the sedentary bias of these policies. Many policies are available to an individual only if he/she is able to prove their domicile status. Many a time, the migrants are secluded from these policies as they cannot prove their domicile status. When permanence of residence become the primary determinant of access, migrants are the ones who are excluded from these policies. In some domains like health care, access to primary healthcare is determined on the basis of citizenship while access to welfare schemes is based on the domicile status. This often leads to a differential levels of access for the migrants.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• The income ceiling attached to many schemes make it very difficult for the migrants to access basic facilities. One striking example for this is the Affordable Housing Scheme of PMAY (Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana Scheme Guidelines, 2016). The beneficiary has to bear 50 percent of the costs to secure ownership of the housing units, which is almost Rs.3,00,000/- for even the cheapest housing units, which cost around Rs.6,00,000. This cost is very high for the migrants and thus they are denied access to a facility as basic as housing.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Another important factor that has an effect on the lives of migrants is the static nature of urban planning. For instance, it was in 2002 that Ahmedabad Development Plan was formulated and the next plan will be formulated in the year 2021. There is a gap of almost 20 years and a lot of demographic and other changes has happened over these years. This also implies that there is no feedback mechanism within the planning process to take into account the inflow of migrants.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Paucity of funds which is crucial for the decentralization process to have an impact is also a problem in the planning process. Majority of the development taking place in Ahmedabad and Surat is capital intensive and the local urban governments have very little stake in this compared to the State government. It is also noted that in some instances the local governments use this as an excuse to get away from the problems of marginalized sections. In effect, the urban governments are stripped of powers to have a meaningful impact due to the lack of institutional mechanisms.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• A major reason for the lack of welfare schemes for the migrants is due to the presence of a dichotomy between urban governance and labour governance. Although the exact nature of the dichotomy is not clear, the lack of clarity on the roles to be performed by different actors have huge implications on the lives of the migrants. For example, the Factory Act and the Shops and Establishments Act do not have any special provisions that take care of the housing needs of migrant workers. It is to be noted that many mid-sized hotels and restaurants are registered under the latter Act and many migrants are employed in that sector.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• The migrants are not able to assert themselves in the form of a political agency for their rights. The migrants are stripped of their voting rights and thus do not have any opportunity to assert their political agency. For example, no documentation is necessary to apply for the public stand post for water. However, these applications are often neglected by ward councilors/ an officials, since none of them are accountable to any migrant community. These things play a role and the lack of opportunity of migrants to assert their political agency makes it even worse.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• An important question is why migrants are not considered as citizens. This is because of their nature of to and fro movement between rural and urban areas. They do not have documents in the city and neither do they transfer the documents they have in the village to city as most of them consider village as their home. The formal state and the informal state do not treat circular migrants as legitimate actors who can make claims to the basic rights. There is also deep stigma towards migrants as they are viewed as outsiders and this gets reinforced through their different identities. It is in this context the idea of mobile citizenship captures our attention.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Permanent residence should not be the basis for any policy aimed to improve migrants’ access to basic facilities. A citizenship consistent with their temporary and dynamic presence in the city is mobile citizenship. This idea will help in accommodating multi-locality and flexible mobility between rural and urban areas. The claims of migrants to basic facilities should be based on their role in the participation of building the city rather than the current citizenship paradigm which is based on residence. It is to be noted that the idea of mobile citizenship should not harm a migrant’s desire to settle in the city. Rather it should be such that it is accommodative of migrants who want to retain their deep roots to the village and those who want to have permanent or semi-permanent ties to the city.</p> <p style="text-align:justify"><em><strong>[Balu N Varadaraj and Nabarun Sengupta, who are doing their MA in Development Studies (1st year) from Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Hyderabad, helped the Inclusive Media for Change team in preparing the summary of the report by Aajeevika Bureau. They did this work as part of their summer internship at the Inclusive Media for Change project in June-July 2020.]</strong></em></p> <p style="text-align:justify">**page**</p> <p style="text-align:justify">The economic crisis induced by COVID-19 could be long, deep, and pervasive when viewed through a migration lens. Lockdowns, travel bans, and social distancing have brought global economic activities to a near standstill.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">Host countries face additional challenges in many sectors, such as health and agriculture, that depend on the availability of migrant workers. Migrants face the risk of contagion and also the possible loss of employment, wages, and health insurance coverage.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">The Migration and Development Brief entitled '<a href="/upload/files/COVID-19-Crisis-Through-a-Migration-Lens%281%29.pdf">COVID-19 Crisis Through a Migration Lens</a>' provides a prognosis of how these events might affect global trends in international economic migration and remittances in 2020 and 2021. Considering that migrants tend to be concentrated in urban economic centers (cities), and are vulnerable to infection by the coronavirus, there is a need to include migrants in efforts to fight thecoronavirus. Migrant remittances provide an economic lifeline to poor households in many countries; a reduction in remittance flows could increase poverty and reduce households’ access to much‐needed health services. The crisis could exacerbate xenophobic, discriminatory treatment of migrants, which calls for greater vigilance against such practices.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">The policy brief is largely focused on international migrants, but governments should not ignore the plight of internal migrants. The magnitude of internal migration is about two-and-a-half times that of international migration. Lockdowns, loss of employment, and social distancing prompted a chaotic and painful process of mass return for internal migrants in India and many countries in Latin America. Thus, the COVID-19 containment measures might have contributed to spreading the epidemic. Governments need to address the challenges facing internal migrants by including them in health services and cash transfer and other social programs, and protecting them from discrimination.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">The key findings of the policy brief entitled [inside]COVID-19 Crisis Through a Migration Lens (released on 22nd April, 2020)[/inside], Migration and Development Brief no. 32, Global Knowledge Partnership on Migration and Development (KNOMAD), which is supported by the World Bank, European Commission, Germany’s Federal Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), and the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC), are as follows (please <a href="/upload/files/COVID-19-Crisis-Through-a-Migration-Lens.pdf">click here</a> to access):</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Remittances to India are projected to fall by about 23 percent to reach $64 billion in 2020 from $83 billion in 2019. Remittances grew by 5.5 percent in 2019.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• As the early phases of the crisis unfolded, many international migrants, especially from the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries, returned to countries such as India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh – until travel restrictions halted these flows.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• The number of recorded, primarily low-skilled emigrants from India rose in 2019 relative to the prior year but is expected to decline in 2020 due to the pandemic and oil price declines impacting the GCC countries. In India, the number of low-skilled emigrants seeking mandatory clearance for emigration rose slightly by 8 percent to 3,68,048 in 2019 (Ministry of External Affairs, India).</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• The lockdown in India has impacted the livelihoods of a large proportion of the country’s nearly 40 million internal migrants. Around 50,000–60,000 moved from urban centers to rural areas of origin in the span of a few days. The government set up camps with basic provisions to provide shelter to these migrants in cities and districts of destination, transit, and origin.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• The number of internal migrants is about two-and-a-half times that of international migrants. China and India each have over 100 million internal migrants. For the poorer sections of the population, especially from under‐developed rural areas, migration to urban economic centers provides an escape from poverty and unemployment. Remittances from these migrants, typically smaller amounts than those from international migrants, serve as a lifeline and insurance for families left behind.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Lockdowns, loss of employment, and social distancing prompted a chaotic and painful process of mass return for internal migrants in India and many countries in Latin America. Thus, the COVID-19 containment measures might have contributed to spreading the epidemic. Governments need to address the challenges facing internal migrants by including them in health services and cash transfer and other social programmes, and protecting them from discrimination.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Migrant workers tend to be vulnerable to the loss of employment and wages during an economic crisis in their host country, more so than native-born workers. Lockdowns in labor camps and dormitories can also increase the risk of contagion among migrant workers. Many migrants have been stranded due to the suspension of transport services.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Although the use of digital payment instruments for sending remittances is increasing, poorer and irregular migrants often lack access to online services. They require the origination and distribution of funds through banks, payment cards, or mobile money. Online transactions (like cash-based services) require remittance service providers to exercise vigilance against fraud and financial crime, to comply with anti-money laundering and countering the financing of terrorism (AML/CFT) regulations. However, such due diligence has become difficult amid staff shortages.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• The COVID-19 outbreak has placed many internal migrant workers in dire conditions, many losing their (mostly informal) jobs and unable to return home due to disruption to public transport services and movement restrictions. This is the reality for most migrant workers, especially those working in the informal sector and living in overcrowded slums.</p> <p style="text-align:justify"><img alt="" src="/upload/images/Remittances%20to%20India%202019.jpg" style="height:459px; width:814px" /></p> <p style="text-align:justify">• In India, the government has now set up camps with basic provisions to provide shelter to stranded migrants in cities and districts of destination, transit, and origin. Some countries are providing cash support to affected and vulnerable groups with a specific allocation for internal migrants and returned migrant workers.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">---</p> <p style="text-align:justify">Please <a href="/upload/files/Essays%20COVID-19.pdf">click here</a> to access the essay collection entitled [inside]Borders of an Epidemic: COVID-19 and Migrant Workers, edited by Prof. Ranabir Samaddar, Mahanirban Calcutta Research Group, 2020[/inside].</p> <p style="text-align:justify">**page**</p> <p style="text-align:justify">Stranded Workers Action Network (SWAN) -- comprising more than 70 volunteers mostly from the <a href="http://www.righttofoodcampaign.in/">Right-to-Food</a> and Right-to-Work civil society groups -- started working among migrant workers since the 27th of March, 2020. So far, SWAN volunteers have interacted with 640 groups of stranded migrants adding up to a total of 11,159 workers. All data collected in the rapid assessment action survey and provided in the report entitled [inside]21 Days and Counting: COVID-19 Lockdown, Migrant Workers, and the Inadequacy of Welfare Measures in India (released on 14 April, 2020)[/inside] is for the period 27th March, 2020 - 13th April, 2020.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">At the inception, the objective of SWAN volunteers was to receive distress calls made by the stranded migrants and help them out. However, a collective decision was soon taken to collect data from the migrants while simultaneously addressing their basic needs. </p> <p style="text-align:justify">In the study sample, majority of the migrant workers were found to be stranded in Maharashtra (39,923), followed by Karnataka (3,000) and then Uttar Pradesh (1,618). In Uttar Pradesh, almost all the calls to SWAN volunteers were received from Kanpur area with a few calls from Noida and Ghaziabad regions.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">Through their small initiative, based on assessment of needs, the SWAN initiative disbursed around Rs. 3.87 lakhs in the form of micro transfers (approximately Rs. 205 per person) to groups of migrants. So far, 203 people have made financial contributions in this endeavour. Several distressed people have re-approached the SWAN volunteers for more money since they were not able to access government supplies and exhausted all their resources. The responses of local administration in the states vary starkly.</p> <p style="text-align:justify"><strong>Profiling the stranded migrant workers:</strong></p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Out of 11,159 stranded migrant workers SWAN volunteers spoke with, 1,643 were women and children.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Roughly 79 percent were daily wage factory/ construction workers, 8 percent were non-group based daily wage earners like drivers, domestic help etc. and 8 percent were self-employed like vendors, zari workers etc. (This is out of 3,900 stranded workers for whom SWAN volunteers could collect this data).</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• The average daily wage in the sample was Rs. 402. The median daily wage was Rs. 400.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• About 28 percent of those who reached out to SWAN volunteers were originally from Jharkhand, about a quarter were from Bihar and about 13 percent were from Uttar Pradesh.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• A small percentage of those stranded had just recently migrated to a different state for work, and had barely started work when the lockdown was announced.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">Despite some meaningful state orders, the workers’ testimonies at the time they reached out to SWAN volunteers present a sombre picture, according to the present report.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">The key findings of the report entitled <a href="https://im4change.org/upload/files/swanreport_final.pdf">21 Days and Counting</a>: <a href="https://im4change.org/upload/files/swanreport_final.pdf">COVID-19 Lockdown</a>, <a href="https://im4change.org/upload/files/swanreport_final.pdf">Migrant Workers</a>, <a href="https://im4change.org/upload/files/swanreport_final.pdf">and the</a> <a href="https://im4change.org/upload/files/swanreport_final.pdf">Inadequacy of Welfare Measures</a> <a href="https://im4change.org/upload/files/swanreport_final.pdf">in India</a> are as follows (please <a href="https://im4change.org/upload/files/swanreport_final.pdf">click here</a> to access):</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Almost 50 percent of workers had rations left for less than 1 day.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Nearly 96 percent had not received rations from the government and 70 percent had not received any cooked food.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Roughly 78 percent of people had less than Rs. 300 left with them.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Around 89 percent had not been paid by their employers at all during the lockdown.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Approximately 44 percent of the calls received from stranded migrants were “SOS” with no money or rations left or had skipped previous meal.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• The rate of hunger exceeded the rate of relief. The percentage of people who said they have less than 1 day of rations increased from 36 percent to 50 percent in the third week of lockdown while the percentage of people who received government rations increased from 1 percent to only 4 percent in the third week of lockdown.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• The percentage of people who did not get cooked food from the government or any local organisation decreased from 80 percent to about 70 percent from the end of second week post lockdown to the end of third week post lockdown.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• The figures of 0.6 million migrants who are in relief shelters and 2.2 million migrants who have been provided food, mentioned in the status report filed by the government in the Supreme Court are just another indication of gross underprovisioning for migrants during the lockdown.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• There is a statutory obligation to record migrant labour in many legislations that is binding on the central and state governments such as the National Disaster Management Act (2005), the Interstate Migrant Worker Act (1979), and the Street Vendors Act (2014), among others. Further there are other wage laws which mandate that workers are entitled to the payment of full and timely wages, to displacement allowance, a home journey allowance including payment of wages during the journey. It is the government’s responsibility to ensure compliance of these laws for a safe and secure working environment for migrant workers.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">**page**</p> <p style="text-align:justify">The National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER) released the results of its first round of the Delhi National Capital Region Coronavirus Telephone Survey (DCVTS), on 12th April, 2020. The study, conducted by NCAER’s National Data Innovation Centre uses a scientifically designed rapid telephone survey in both the urban and rural parts of Delhi NCR to assess:</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• people’s knowledge of the Coronavirus</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• people’s attitudes and perceptions towards the risk of a Coronavirus infection</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• preventive and control measures, especially social distancing, and the feasibility of adhering to them</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• the impact of the Coronavirus pandemic on people’s livelihoods, income, social life, and access to essential items.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">The DCVTS interviewed a representative random sample of some 1,750 adults covering the entire Delhi NCR, comprising 31 districts spread across the four states of Delhi, Haryana, Rajasthan, and Uttar Pradesh, during 3rd-6th April, 2020.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">Please <a href="/upload/files/NCAER%201st%20round%20telephonic%20survey.pdf">click here</a> to access the key findings of the [inside]First Round of Delhi National Capital Region Coronavirus Telephone Survey conducted by NCAER (released on 12th April, 2020)[/inside].</p> <p style="text-align:justify">**page**</p> <p style="text-align:justify">Please <a href="https://im4change.org/upload/files/Voices%20of%20the%20invisible%20citizens_April_2020_JS.pdf">click here</a> to access the report entitled [inside]Voices of the Invisible Citizens: A Rapid Assessment of the Impact of COVID-19 Lockdown on Internal Migrant Workers -- Recommendations for the State, Industry & Philanthropies (released in April 2020)[/inside].</p> <p style="text-align:justify">The report prepared by the NGO Jan Sahas -- working with more than 1.20 lakh migrant workers -- is the result of telephonic interviews with 3,196 migrant construction workers from North and Central India (namely Madhaya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Delhi and other states). The data arrived at from the telephonic survey paints a gloomy picture reflecting negligence and apathy.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">The key findings of the report are as follows:</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Almost 55 percent of the workers surveyed earned between Rs. 200-Rs. 400 per day to support an average family size of four persons.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Nearly 42 percent of the workers mentioned that they had no ration left even for a day, let alone for the duration of 21-days lockdown.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• The telephonic survey demonstrates that 14 percent labourers did not have ration cards. So, the report writers have recommended immediate measures to be undertaken by the Centre and states to provide them ration to prevent hunger deaths.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Roughly 33 percent of the respondents interviewed said that they were still stuck in destination cities due to the lockdown with little or no access to food, water and money.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• A staggering 94 percent of the workers (viz. over 51 million labourers) did not have the Building and Other Construction Workers (BOCW) identity cards, which ruled out the possibility of availing any of the benefits that the states have declared from their Rs. 32,000 crore BOCW corpus.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• The present report highlights the structural flaws in the beneficiary identification systems that are probably going to get in the way of the subsidy and relief reaching migrant workers.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Telephonic interviews reveal that 17 percent of labourers did not have bank accounts. So, the report writers have recommended that the government should immediately explore multiple options of ensuring economic benefits reach migrants on time -- probably through flexibility in options of availing economic relief either through Jan Dhan accounts, Aadhaar identification and cash payment at doorstep using Gram Panchayat and postal offices.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Around 31 percent of workers in the telephonic survey mentioned that they had taken loans and they would find it difficult to repay that without being in jobs.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• The survey demonstrates that almost 90 percent of labourers had already lost their source of income in the last 1-3 weeks (just prior to the time when the present study was conducted i.e. 27th-29th March, 2020).</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Roughly 62 percent workers did not have any information about the emergency welfare measures announced by the government for them and nearly 37 percent workers did not know how to access the existing schemes. </p> <p style="text-align:justify">• The construction sector contributes to around 9 percent of the country's GDP and employs the highest number of migrant workers across India with 55 million daily-wage workers. Every year around nine million workers move from rural areas to urban cities in search of work within construction sites and factories.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">**page**</p> <p style="text-align:justify">Please <a href="tinymce/uploaded/Human%20Cost%20of%20Sugar_Maharashtra%20Case.pdf" title="Human Cost of Sugar_Maharashtra Case">click here</a> to access the Oxfam India Discussion Paper titled [inside]Human Cost of Sugar: Living and Workiing Conditions of Migrant Cane-cutters in Maharashtra (released in February 2020)[/inside].</p> <p style="text-align:justify"><strong>---</strong></p> <p style="text-align:justify">The India Migration Now’s [inside]Interstate Migrants Policy Index (IMPEX) 2019[/inside] is an index to rank and compare all the states/ UTs of India with respect to state policies on integration of interstate migrants. It uses a basket of indicators to evaluate state-level policies needed to facilitate the integration of interstate migrants. The index examines policies of states through the lens of migrant welfare.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">The IMPEX has been adapted from the Migrant Integration Policy Index (MIPEX) that was created by CIDOB-Barcelona Centre for International Affairs and MPG-Migration Policy Group, and is a variant of the same.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">The IMPEX is based on 8 policy areas: ‘Labour Market’, ‘Education’, ‘Children’ Rights’, ‘Social Benefits’, ‘Political Participation’, ‘Housing’, ‘Identity and Registration’, and ‘Health and Sanitation’. Each policy area is further broken down into policy dimensions, which are further broken down into policy indicators (total 63 policy indicators).</p> <p style="text-align:justify">The average score of all indicators per dimension gives a dimension score. The average score of all dimensions yields a policy area score and finally, the average score of all the policy areas gives the final state level score.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">Documents like State Legislations and Rules, Government Orders, Schemes/ Drives, Government Policy Documents, Reputed Secondary Sources and Directly Querying relevant Government Departments were used to evaluate the states’ policies towards interstate migrants.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">The key findings of the India Migration Now’s Interstate Migrants Policy Index (IMPEX) 2019 (released in 2019), are as follows (please click <a href="https://indiamigrationnow.org/impex-2019/">here</a>, <a href="https://im4change.org/latest-news-updates/how-state-governments-disenfranchise-interstate-migrants-in-india-varun-aggarwal-priyansha-singh-and-rohini-mitra-4687893.html">here</a>, <a href="/upload/files/Impex%20data%20for%20uploading%281%29.pdf">here</a>, <a href="/upload/files/IMPEX%202019%20Dashboard.jpg">here</a> and <a href="/upload/files/7%20State%20IMPEX%20evaluation.pdf">here</a> to access):</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• India Migration Now’s Interstate Migrants Policy Index (IMPEX) 2019 score is 37 on a scale of 0-100 for India.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Among states/ UTs, Kerala has the highest overall IMPEX score of 63, which is much higher than the national average. Kerala also ranks highest in 4 out of eight policy areas, namely ‘Education’ (85), ‘Children’s Rights’ (75), ‘Health and Sanitation’ (83), and ‘Social Benefits’ (54).</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Goa and Rajasthan both follow Kerala on the index with a score of 51 each (far lesser than Kerala, i.e. by 12 points).</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Manipur fares the worst in the index with a score of 19. The state scored the lowest in the policy areas ‘Social Benefits’ (zero), ‘Health and Sanitation’ (4) and ‘Identity and Registration’ (9).</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• States/ UTs like Maharashtra (44), Delhi (34) and Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat and Haryana (35 each), which have the highest interstate migration as per the migration data from Census 2011 (in the same order), did not fare well in terms of IMPEX 2019. Four of these states have a score lower than the national average (37). Policies of these states affect the welfare of most interstate migrants in India since they receive a large number of migrants every year.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Among the eight policy areas, India has scored <a href="https://im4change.org/upload/files/Impex%20data%20for%20uploading%281%29.pdf">poorly relative</a> to other policy areas in case of ‘Children’s Rights’ (average score of 25), ‘Social Benefits’ (average score of 25) and ‘Housing’ (average score of 27), whereas it performed <a href="https://im4change.org/upload/files/Impex%20data%20for%20uploading%281%29.pdf">relatively better</a> in case of ‘Identity and Registration’ (average score of 65) and ‘Labour Market’ (average score of 55).</p> <p style="text-align:justify"> </p> <p style="text-align:justify"><strong>Identity and Registration</strong></p> <p style="text-align:justify">• As compared to other policy areas, India has fared best in the policy area ‘Identity and Registration’ with a score of 65.<br /> <br /> • The ‘Identification and Registration’ policy area includes conditions for acquisition of status, security of status rights, and state residency status rights.<br /> <br /> • The 3 worst performers in the ‘Identification and Registration’ policy area are Manipur (9), Odisha (35) and Bihar (43), whereas the 3 best performers are Punjab (89), Uttar Pradesh (83) and Gujarat (81).</p> <p style="text-align:justify"> </p> <p style="text-align:justify"><strong>Labour Market</strong></p> <p style="text-align:justify">• In the policy area ‘Labour Market’, the country has an average score of 55.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• The policy area ‘Labour Market’ reflects the states’ policies on access to the labour market, facilitation of access and workers’ rights.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Uttarakhand (28) and Karnataka, Nagaland, Chhattisgarh and Manipur (33 each) are the 5 worst performing states in the policy area ‘Labour Market’. States/ UTs that have performed relatively better than the rest in the policy area 'Labour Market' are Sikkim (78) and Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Mizoram and Rajasthan (72 each).</p> <p style="text-align:justify"> </p> <p style="text-align:justify"><strong>Social Benefits</strong> </p> <p style="text-align:justify">• According to a paper written by India Migration Now and Migration Policy Group, social benefits are not accessible to persons who are mobile and are not staying at the place of their origin/ actual residence. The policy area ‘Social Benefits’ includes eligibility, facilitation of access and measures to achieve change.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• The states/ UTs that have performed better than the rest in the policy area ‘Social Benefits’ are Kerala (54), Madhya Pradesh (53) and Maharashtra (50). The states/ UTs that have performed poorer than the rest in the policy area ‘Social Benefits’ are Uttar Pradesh, Meghalaya and Manipur (zero each).</p> <p style="text-align:justify"> </p> <p style="text-align:justify"><strong>Children’s Rights</strong></p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Children are a vulnerable group during interstate migration as their access to social security and education is affected because of migrating from one place/ state to another place/ state. The policy area ‘Children’s Rights’ include facilitation of rights and policies, measures to achieve change and schemes/ policies.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• The states/ UTs that have performed worse than the rest in the policy area ‘Children’s Rights’ are Tripura (6), Jharkhand (6), Karnataka (8) and Chhattisgarh (8). The states/ UTs that have performed better than the rest in the policy area ‘Children’s Rights’ are Kerala (75), Goa (50) and Rajasthan (44). </p> <p style="text-align:justify"> </p> <p style="text-align:justify"><strong>Political Participation</strong></p> <p style="text-align:justify">• The policy area ‘Political Participation’ includes electoral rights, consultative bodies and implementation policies.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• The state that has performed better than the rest in the policy area ‘Political Participation’ is <a href="https://im4change.org/upload/files/IMPEX%202019%20Dashboard.jpg">Rajasthan (50)</a>. The state that has performed poorer than the rest in the policy area ‘Political Participation’ is <a href="https://im4change.org/upload/files/IMPEX%202019%20Dashboard.jpg">Mizoram (zero)</a>.</p> <p style="text-align:justify"> </p> <p style="text-align:justify"><strong>Education</strong><br /> <br /> • The policy area of ‘Education’ assesses the states’ policies on access to education, facilitation of access and measures to achieve change.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• India’s average score in the policy area ‘Education’ is 33.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• The states/ UTs that have performed better than the rest in the policy area ‘Education’ are Kerala (85), Andhra Pradesh (69) and Odisha (48). The states/ UTs that have performed poorer than the rest in the policy area ‘Education’ are Tripura (7), Delhi (8) and West Bengal (15).</p> <p style="text-align:justify"> </p> <p style="text-align:justify"><strong>Health and Sanitation</strong></p> <p style="text-align:justify">• The policy area of ‘Health and Sanitation’ assesses the states’ policies on entitlement to health and sanitation services, facilitation of access and measures to achieve change.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• The states/ UTs that have performed better than the rest in the policy area ‘Health and Sanitation’ are Kerala (83), Andhra Pradesh (79) and Tamil Nadu (71). The states/ UTs that have performed poorer than the rest in the policy area ‘Health and Sanitation’ are Manipur (4), Jharkhand (8) and Uttarakhand and Gujarat (17 each).</p> <p style="text-align:justify"> </p> <p style="text-align:justify"><strong>Housing</strong></p> <p style="text-align:justify">• The policy area ‘Housing’ covers access to housing, facilitation of access and measures to achieve change.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• India has an average score of 27 in the policy area ‘Housing’.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• The states/ UTs that have performed better than the rest in the policy area ‘Housing’ are Bihar (64) and Assam and Rajasthan (58 each). The state that has performed the worst in the policy area ‘Housing’ is Chhattisgarh (zero).</p> <p style="text-align:justify"> </p> <p style="text-align:justify"><strong><em>[Meghana Myadam, who is doing her MA in Development Studies (1st year) from Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Hyderabad, assisted the Inclusive Media for Change team in preparing the summary of the report by India Migration Now. She did this work as part of her summer internship at the Inclusive Media for Change project in July 2020.]</em></strong></p> <p style="text-align:justify">**page**</p> <p style="text-align:justify">Please <a href="/upload/files/Report%20of%20the%20Working%20Group%20on%20Migration%20released%20in%20January%202017.pdf">click here</a> to access the [inside]Report of the Working Group on Migration (released in January 2017)[/inside], prepared under the chairpersonship of Prof. Partha Mukhopadhyay (Centre for Policy Research), Ministry of Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation.</p> <p style="text-align:justify"><strong>----</strong><br /> According to the [inside]Economic Survey 2016-17 (released in January, 2017)[/inside] (please <a href="https://im4change.org/docs/641Economic-Survey-2016-17.pdf">click here</a> to access):<br /> <br /> • New estimates of labour migration in India have revealed that inter-state labor mobility is significantly higher than previous estimates.<br /> <br /> • The study based on the analyses of new data sources and new methodologies also shows that the migration is accelerating and was particularly pronounced for females. The data sources used for the study are the 2011 Census and railway passenger traffic flows of the Ministry of Railways and new methodologies including the Cohort-based Migration Metric (CMM) .<br /> <br /> • The new Cohort-based Migration Metric (CMM) shows that inter-state labor mobility averaged 5-6.5 million people between 2001 and 2011, yielding an inter-state migrant population of about 60 million and an inter-district migration as high as 80 million.<br /> <br /> • The first-ever estimates of internal work-related migration using railways data for the period 2011-2016 indicate an annual average flow of close to 9 million migrant people between the states. Both these estimates are significantly greater than the annual average flow of about 4 million suggested by successive Censuses and higher than previously estimated by any study.<br /> <br /> • The second finding from this new study is that migration for work and education is accelerating. In the period 2001-2011 the rate of growth of labour migrants nearly doubled relative to the previous decade, rising to 4.5 per cent per annum. Interestingly, the acceleration of migration was particularly pronounced for females and increased at nearly twice the rate of male migration in the 2000s. There is also a doubling of the stock of inter-state out migrants to nearly 12 million in the 20-29 year old cohort alone. One plausible hypothesis for this acceleration in migration is that the rewards (in the form of prospective income and employment opportunities) have become greater than the costs and risks that migration entails. Higher growth and a multitude of economic opportunities could therefore have been the catalyst for such an acceleration of migration.<br /> <br /> • Third, and a potentially exciting finding, for which there is tentative but no conclusive evidence, is that while political borders impede the flow of people, language does not seem to be a demonstrable barrier to the flow of people. For example, a gravity model indicates that political borders depress the flows of people, reflected in the fact that migrant people flows within states are 4 times than migrant people flows across states. However, not sharing Hindi as a common language appears not to create comparable frictions to the movement of goods and people across states.<br /> <br /> • Fourth, the patterns of flows of migrants found in this study are broadly consistent with what is expected - less affluent states see more out migration migrating out while the most affluent states are the largest recipients of migrants. A strong positive relationship between the CMM scores and per capita incomes at the state level could be found. Relatively poorer states such as Bihar and Uttar Pradesh have high net out-migration. Seven states take positive CMM values reflecting net in-migration: Goa, Delhi, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Karnataka.</p> <p style="text-align:justify"> </p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Fifth, the costs of moving for migrants are about twice as much as they are for goods – another confirmation of popular conception.<br /> <br /> • Policy actions to sustain and maximize the benefits of migration include: ensuring portability of food security benefits, providing healthcare and a basic social security framework for migrants – potentially through an inter-state self-registration process. While there do currently exist multiple schemes that have to do with migrant welfare, they are implemented at the state level, and hence require greater inter-state coordination. </p> <p style="text-align:justify"> </p> <p style="text-align:justify">**page**</p> <p style="text-align:justify">According to the [inside]Concept Note prepared for the national seminar entitled: 'Contesting Spaces & Negotiating Development: A Dialogue on Domestic Migrants, State and Inclusive Citizenship in India’ (25-26 March 2016)[/inside], to be held at Center for Public Policy, Habitat & Human Development, School of Development Studies, Tata Institute of Social Sciences (Mumbai) (please <a href="tinymce/uploaded/Concept%20Note%20TISS.pdf" title="Concept Note TISS">click here</a> to access the Concept Note):<br /> <br /> • Some estimates shows that there are around 100 million temporary domestic migrants in India.<br /> <br /> • According to Census of India 2001 and National Sample Survey Organization (NSSO) 2007-08 estimates, three out of ten Indians can be classified as domestic migrants who have moved across district or state lines. In 2001, 309 million persons were migrants based on place of last residence, which constituted about 30 percent of the total population of the country. (Data from the latest census is unavailable).<br /> <br /> • The major reasons for migration have been work/employment, business, and education, marriage, moved at birth, and moved with family/household. Scholars argue that government data tends to underestimate the flows of seasonal/circular migration, a stream dominated by people belonging to socio-economically deprived groups with an extremely low asset base and poor educational attainments and skill sets. It is this floating segment of the migrant population, mostly comprising people working seasonally in brick kilns, construction, plantations, mines and factories that is most vulnerable to exploitation by labour contractors and faces relatively greater hurdles in participating in elections and politics.<br /> <br /> • Domestic migrants, especially so-called un-domiciled domestic migrants, suffer from a lack of formal residency rights; lack of identity proof; lack of adequate housing; low-paid, insecure or hazardous work; no access to state-provided welfare services including denial of rights to participate in elections even though elections in India have acquired the mythical status of ‘the greatest show in Earth’. Thus, these exclusionary practices lead to their disenfranchisement and treatment as second-class citizens.<br /> <br /> **page**</p> <p style="text-align:justify"><br /> The document entitled “Social Inclusion of Internal Migrants in India” (2013) acts as an overview of existing innovative practices that increase the inclusion of internal migrants in society and act as a living document that would inspire and assist professionals and governments officials in their attempts to facilitate the social inclusion of migrants in India. Through this publication, UNESCO wishes to increase visibility and recognition of the internal migration phenomenon in India, disseminate evidence based experiences and practices, and provoke a paradigm shift in the perception and portrayal of migrants by addressing myths and misconceptions and creating awareness on the benefits of migrants’ inclusion in society.<br /> <br /> According to the report entitled: [inside]Social Inclusion of Internal Migrants in India (2013)[/inside], by UNICEF, UNESCO and Sir Dorabji Tata Trust (Please <a href="tinymce/uploaded/Social%20Inclusion%20of%20Internal%20Migrants%20in%20India%20UNESCO.pdf" title="Internal Migration">click here</a> to download the report):<br /> <br /> • The report focuses on ten key areas for a better social inclusion of migrants: Registration and Identity; Political and Civic Inclusion; Labour Market Inclusion; Legal Aid and Dispute Resolution; Inclusion of Women Migrants; Inclusion through Access to Food; Inclusion through Housing; Educational Inclusion; Public Health Inclusion and Financial Inclusion.<br /> <br /> <strong><em>Magnitude of Internal Migration </em></strong><br /> <br /> • In India, internal migration accounts for a large population of 309 million as per Census of India 2001, and by more recent estimates, 326 million (NSSO 2007-2008), nearly 30 per cent of the total population. Internal migrants, of which 70.7 per cent are women, are excluded from the economic, cultural, social and political life of society and are often treated as second-class citizens.<br /> <br /> • Marriage is given by women respondents as the most prominent reason for migrating: cited by 91.3 per cent of women in rural areas and 60.8 per cent of women in urban areas (NSSO 2007–08). Women’s migration for employment also remains under-reported due to cultural factors, which emphasize social rather than economic roles for women (Shanti, 2006), and contribute towards women becoming invisible economic actors of society.<br /> <br /> • About 30 per cent of internal migrants in India belong to the youth category in the 15-29 years age group (Rajan, 2013; Census, 2001). Child migrants are estimated at approximately 15 million (Daniel, 2011; Smita, 2011). Furthermore, several studies have pointed out that migration is not always permanent and seasonal and circular migration is widespread, especially among the socio-economically deprived groups, such as the Scheduled Castes (SCs), Scheduled Tribes (STs) and Other Backward Castes (OBCs), who are asset-poor and face resource and livelihood deficits (Deshingkar and Akter, 2009).<br /> <br /> • Lead source states of internal migrants include Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Odisha, Uttarakhand and Tamil Nadu, whereas key destination areas are Delhi, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Haryana, Punjab and Karnataka. There are conspicuous migration corridors within the country: Bihar to National Capital Region, Bihar to Haryana and Punjab, Uttar Pradesh to Maharashtra, Odisha to Gujarat, Odisha to Andhra Pradesh and Rajasthan to Gujarat.<br /> <br /> • Migration in India is primarily of two types: (a) Long-term migration, resulting in the relocation of an individual or household and (b) Short-term or seasonal/circular migration, involving back and forth movement between a source and destination. Estimates of short-term migrants vary from 15 million (NSSO 2007–2008) to 100 million (Deshingkar and Akter, 2009). Yet, macro surveys such as the Census fail to adequately capture flows of short-term migrants and do not record secondary reasons for migration.<br /> <br /> • Internal migrants constitute about one-third of India’s urban population, and this proportion has been increasing: from 31.6 per cent in 1983 to 33 per cent in 1999-2000, and to 35 percent in 2007-08 (NSSO 2007-08). The increase in the migration rate to urban areas has primarily occurred due to an increase in migration rate for females, which has been rising from 38.2 percent in 1993 to 41.8 per cent in 1999-2000 to 45.6 per cent in 2007-08.<br /> <br /> • Male migration rate in urban areas has remained constant over this period (between 26 and 27 per cent), but employment-related reasons for migration of males increased from 42 per cent in 1993 to 52 per cent in 1999-2000 to 56 per cent in 2007-08.<br /> <br /> • The rising contribution of cities to India’s GDP would not be possible without migration and migrant workers. Some of the important sectors in which migrants work include: construction, brick kiln, salt pans, carpet and embroidery, commercial and plantation agriculture and variety of jobs in urban informal sectors such as vendors, hawkers, rickshaw puller, daily wage workers and domestic work (Bhagat, 2012).<br /> <br /> <strong><em>Contribution of migrants to the economy</em></strong><br /> <br /> • An independent study examining the economic contribution of circular migrants* based on major migrant employing sectors in India revealed that they contribute 10 per cent to the national GDP (Deshingkar and Akter, 2009).<br /> <br /> • According to Tumbe (2011), estimates of the domestic remittance market were roughly USD 10 billion in 2007-08. With rising incomes, migrant remittances can encourage investment in human capital formation, particularly increased expenditure on health, and also to some extent education (Deshingkar and Sandi, 2012).<br /> <br /> <strong><em>Situation of women migrants</em></strong><br /> <br /> • Women migrants face double discrimination, encountering difficulties peculiar to migrants, coupled with their specific vulnerability as victims of gender-based violence, and physical, sexual or psychological abuse, exploitation and trafficking.<br /> <br /> • Women migrant workers' lack of education, experience and skills leaves them vulnerable to exploitation from illegal placement agencies and touts.<br /> <br /> • Estimates indicate that the number of domestic workers in India vary from 4.75 million (NSS 2004-05) to 6.4 million (Census 2001) (MoLE, 2011).<br /> <br /> • The National Commission for Enterprises in the Unorganised Sector has estimated that out of four million domestic workers, 92 per cent are women, girls and children, and 20 per cent are under 14 years of age. However, other sources suggest that these figures are underestimated and that the number of domestic workers in the country could be much higher. The sector is said to have grown by 222 percent since 1999-2000 and is the largest sector of female employment in urban India, involving approximately 3 million women (MoLE, 2011).<br /> <br /> • NSSO data (2007-08) indicates that nearly 60 per cent of female migrants in rural areas were self-employed and 37 per cent were casual workers, whereas in urban areas, 43.7 per cent of women migrants were self-employed and 37 per cent were engaged in regular jobs (Srivastava, 2012).<br /> <br /> <strong><em>Rights of migrants</em></strong><br /> <br /> • The constraints faced by migrants are many-lack of formal residency rights; lack of identity proof; lack of political representation; inadequate housing; low-paid, insecure or hazardous work; extreme vulnerability of women and children to trafficking and sex exploitation; exclusion from state-provided services such as health and education and discrimination based on ethnicity, religion, class or gender.<br /> <br /> • Most internal migrants are denied basic rights. Despite the fact that approximately three out of every ten Indians are internal migrants, internal migration has been accorded very low priority by the government, and existing policies of the Indian state have failed in providing legal or social protection to this vulnerable group. This can be attributed in part to a serious data gap on the extent, nature and magnitude of internal migration.<br /> <br /> • In the absence of proofs of identity and residence, internal migrants are unable to claim social protection entitlements and remain excluded from government sponsored schemes and programmes. Children face disruption of regular schooling, adversely affecting their human capital formation and contributing to the inter-generational transmission of poverty.<br /> <br /> • Internal migrants suffer from a high HIV burden (3.6 per cent), which is ten times the HIV prevalence among the general population (NACO, 2010). Their vulnerability has been attributed to personal isolation, enhanced loneliness and sexual risk taking, lack of HIV awareness and of social support networks at both source and destination (Borhade, 2012). In addition to the exclusion they face from the local community at destinations due to their ethnicity, linguistic differences, religious beliefs and socio-economic conditions, migrants living with HIV and AIDS face double discrimination and stigmatisation. Migrant women living with HIV suffer the most from multiple and intersectional vulnerabilities (IOM, 2009).<br /> <br /> • According to a study, Political Inclusion of Seasonal Migrant Workers in India: Perceptions, Realities and Challenges (Sharma et al, 2010), nearly 60 percent of respondents reported having missed voting in elections at least once because they were away from home in search of work. Additionally, 54 per cent of respondents claimed that they had returned to their home villages during elections with the intention of voting, of which 74 per cent returned specifically for elections of the panchayat (village level institution of local self-government).<br /> <br /> • Migrants do the dirty, dangerous and degrading jobs which the locals do not want to do. It is "different from stealing jobs. By not accepting migrants or providing facilities to them, governments are merely increasing the risk and costs of migration and reducing its development potential.<br /> <br /> <em><strong>Note: </strong>* The process of “circular migration” implies circularity, that is, a relatively open form of (cross-border) mobility. Such migration might involve seasonal stays or temporary work patterns.</em></p> <p style="text-align:justify">**page**</p> <p style="text-align:justify">According to the report titled: [inside]Migration and Gender in India by Indrani Mazumdar, N Neetha and Indu Agnihotri[/inside], Economic and Political Weekly, March 9, 2013, Vol xlvIiI No 10 (<a href="tinymce/uploaded/Migration_and_Gender_in_India_2_1.pdf" title="Migration and Gender">click here</a> to access):<br /> <br /> • This paper presents a sketch of the key findings of a research project on Gender and Migration at the Centre for Women’s Development Studies. The results of a series of primary surveys conducted between 2009 and 2011 across 20 states have been consolidated to present a summary meso-level view of types of migration, patterns of female labour migration, conditions of work and civic life of women migrant workers. The sectoral composition of paid migrant workers based on the latest available migration survey by the National Sample Survey Office is presented for contextual background, alongside a critical interrogation of the official data’s gender insensitive concepts. Rising rates of marriage migration juxtaposed against falling female work participation rates and the spread of dowry are also touched upon.<br /> <br /> • The Centre for Women’s Development Studies' (CWDS) meso-level consolidation of a series of primary micro-surveys conducted with a common pair of questionnaires between 2009 and 2011 (over consecutive as well as overlapping periods) spanned 20 of the country’s 28 states. It includes comprehensive surveys in 43 village sites in 17 of these states, combined with surveys in select sectors with concentrations of migrant women workers in both urban and rural areas, across all 20 states. Individual-based questionnaires covered 3,073 female migrant workers drawn from village and sector sites and 1,934 male migrant workers (mostly outmigrants) drawn only from village sites. Household characteristics/ details and brief profiles of household members were gathered separately for each of these migrants plus 673 households without any economic migrants from the village sites for comparison.<br /> <br /> <strong><em>Types of migration</em></strong><br /> <br /> • Strikingly, only 42% of the women migrants and 36% of the males were long-term migrants or in other words, 58% of female labour migration and even more of male labour migration appears to be of a temporary nature. (In contrast, the picture that emerges from the NSS (2007-08) indicates temporary migration definitively for only one-third of all labour migration in India, and perhaps a little more if return migrants are also added).<br /> <br /> • Twenty per cent of the migrating women and 23% of the migrating men were circular migrants (longer durations exceeding four months and shorter durations of less than four months in each spell), 9% were short-term seasonal migrants (distinguished from circular both in terms of duration as well as in spending the major part of the working year in their village/place of origin) for both males and females, 2% of the female and 3% of the male migrants were irregular short-term migrants (i.e, outside any established pattern or occupation and driven by abnormal contingencies/desperation). Since all of the above are forms of short-term migration, when taken together, the CWDS surveys suggest that the share of short-term migration at around one-third of labour migration is far greater than accounted for by the NSS.<br /> <br /> • After excluding pre-selected female migrant intensive sectors, the share of short-term migration was much higher at 41% among women migrants and 53% among male migrants, which highlights the reality of large-scale migration from village India beyond just the urbanisation paradigm and indeed a degree of pullback that is rarely touched upon in migration theories.<br /> <br /> • Six per cent of the women and 7% of the men were long distance commuters (across distances outside the perimeter of normal movement for work around any village or within any town/city), 4% of the women migrants and 2% of the men were migrants for family care (for unpaid care work separated from marriage migration with unspecified purposes). Medium-term migration (i.e, for a broadly fixed period of up to a few years in any particular industry/occupation) accounted for 16% of the women migrants and 18% among the men. It is interesting that when village sites alone constituted the universe, the proportions of medium-term migrants dropped sharply to 9% for women, but increased to 21% for men.<br /> <br /> <strong><em>Gendered Patterns of Labour Migration</em></strong><br /> <br /> • 59% of women migrants from STs backgrounds and 41% of SCs background were short term and circulatory migrants in comparison to just 18% of migrant women workers of upper caste origin.<br /> <br /> • 39% of women migrants from Other Backward Classes (OBCs) backgrounds were also short term and circulatory migrants, although the majority (65%) were long-term and medium-term migrants in comparison to 43% of SC and 32% of ST women in these latter categories.<br /> <br /> • After migration, 40% of the women workers were in more diversified industry and services in comparison to 51% of the male migrant workers.<br /> <br /> • In rural areas, occupational shifts through migration by women appear to be concentrating in circular migration for brick-making (bhatta workers) across the length and breadth of the country, even though agriculture is the most prominent destination for rural women migrants. The labouring units in brick-making and cane cutting (where female labour is involved) largely comprises male-female pairs (jodis) or family units and generally a cycle of advances and debt-based tying of such labour. Jodi-based wage labour combined with piece rated payment, leaves no scope for independent work/activity and income for women. It was striking that 42% of the rural women migrant workers were involved in such pair, family or ad hoc group-based employment.<br /> <br /> • In urban areas, close to one-third of the migrant women workers (31%) were either unemployed or engaged in only family domestic duties before migration (in comparison to 15% of rural women migrants). Only a small proportion of the urban women migrants had a pre-migration background in agricultural work (13%) and many were in service sector or other diverse jobs even before migration (20% were in paid domestic work and 30% in diversified services before migration). The process of concentration in paid domestic work (whose proportions almost trebled from around 10% before migration to 28% post-migration) was the most gender distinctive feature of urban wards labour migration by women.<br /> <br /> <strong><em>Other Migration Processes</em></strong><br /> <br /> • A little over half of the women migrant workers (rural and urban combined) identified poverty, debt, decline in income, lack of local employment or loss of such employment as their reason for migration. The majority, however (62%), bore their migration costs out of household savings. Women migrated more with family members (43%) while men migrated more alone (43%). Nevertheless, it is significant that close to a quarter of the women (23%) reported having migrated alone and 7% in all female groups, although this is substantially less than the 43% of the men who migrated alone and the 19% who had gone in all male groups. Further, while 25% of the rural and 6% of the urban women migrants were dependent/ mobilised by contractors, 81% of the urban and 63% of the rural women migrants said they migrated independently – whether with families or alone.<br /> <br /> • 72% of the female migrant workers with urban destinations were below 36 years of age in comparison to 63% of the male migrants to urban areas. Similarly 61% of the female migrant workers with rural destinations were below 36 in comparison to 56% of rural male migrants. Most striking was the higher proportion of women migrant workers in the age group 15-25. Thirty-four per cent of the urban female migrant workers were in the 15-25 age group in comparison to 22% of the urban male migrant workers and on a slightly lower scale of difference, 24% of the women with rural destinations were in this age group in comparison to 19% of the rural male migrant workers.<br /> <br /> • While 5% of the female migrant workers and 9% of the male migrants reported having been targets of harassment by local people at destinations, 23% of the women and 20% of the men had experienced violence, threats and being forced to work in the course of migration. Interestingly, among male migrants, contractors were identified as the most common perpetrator, while more than half the women who had faced such harassment/ violence identified the principal employer and the supervisor as the perpetrators.<br /> <br /> • While most women migrant workers migrated with their minor children (67%), only around a quarter of the male migrants (26%) of the male migrant workers took their minor children with them.<br /> <br /> <strong><em>Conditions of Work among Women Migrant Workers</em></strong><br /> <br /> • 78% of rural and 59% of urban women migrant workers were working as unskilled manual labour; 16% and 18% were in skilled manual work in rural and urban areas respectively. A total of 6% of the rural and 23% of the urban women migrants were in a combination of clerical, supervisory, managerial jobs, or work requiring high professional/educational skills (highly skilled). Ten per cent of the urban women migrants were in the last category of the highly skilled in comparison to just 1% of the rural women migrants.<br /> <br /> • Casual labour in the private sector was the most prominent form of pre-migration employment among rural women migrants (41%), whose share also increased post-migration (44%); but it was the share of contract labour that showed the most significant increase from pre to post-migration rising from 13% before migration to 26% after. Of rural female labour migration (i e, after migration), 70% was for casual and contract work.<br /> <br /> • Among urban migrant women workers, the share of regular employment for private employers showed the most striking and maximum increase post-migration (almost doubling from 21% before migration to reach 41% after), although the insecure nature of much of this “regular” employment was evident with 85% of the surveyed urban women migrants reporting they had no maternity leave and 80% had no medical leave.<br /> <br /> • Across the board, the overwhelming majority of the workers – more than 93% in the case of rural women migrants and more than 84% in the case of urban – had no provident fund and no health insurance. The worst situation was, however, in relation to daycare/crèche facilities, to which only 3.4% of the rural women migrants and 4.4% of the urban had any access at all.<br /> <br /> • In rural destinations, the majority of women workers (68%) worked for eight hours and below per day, but in peak season the majority (68%) worked well over eight hours with 41% working above 10 hours of which around half (20%) worked over 12 hours a day. In urban destinations, 78% worked eight hours and below in normal periods, but this dropped to 57% in peak seasons, with 21% working up to 10 hours, 15% from 10 to 12 hours, and 6% above 12 hours.<br /> <br /> <strong><em>Modes of Payment and Wages</em></strong><br /> <br /> • Around 20% of both rural and urban women migrants were on daily wages. The average daily wage/income for these women migrants in rural areas was Rs 136, and in urban areas, it was Rs 141. Prominent among women migrants with rural destinations who were daily wage/income earners were agricultural workers (47%), brick kiln workers (28%)13 and manufacturing workers (8%). In urban areas, construction accounted for 67% of daily wagers, vendors/petty traders for 9% and manufacturing for 7%.<br /> <br /> • In rural areas, 22% of the women migrant workers had monthly payment of wages – of an average amount of Rs 4,778. In urban areas, 64% of the women migrants received wages on a monthly basis – of an average amount of Rs 6,729. Of the women migrants in rural areas, 29% received payment at the end of contracted work periods (mostly brick kiln and agricultural workers).14 Only 4% of the urban women migrants were so paid.<br /> <br /> • Thirty-two per cent of the rural and 45% of the urban women migrants were paid at minimum wage rates, and only 5% of the rural and 11% of the urban received wages above the statutory minimum. Of the rural women migrants 64% and 44% of the urban women migrants received either below the minimum wage or did not know about minimum wages.<br /> <br /> • Among daily wager rural migrants – 13% of the women earned less than Rs 100 in comparison to just 3% of the men, while 23% of the men earned Rs 250 and above in comparison to a mere 0.2% of the women. The same pattern was visible among weekly earners in both rural and urban areas. However, among urban daily wagers, while 17% of the women migrants were earning less than Rs 100 in comparison to just 2% of the men, only 2% of the urban daily wager migrants – men and women – received wages/ incomes of Rs 250 and above. Twenty-eight per cent of the rural women migrants were paid on a weekly basis in comparison to 13% of the urban.<br /> <br /> <strong><em>Of Remittances and Civic Amenities</em></strong><br /> <br /> • Of the women migrants with rural destinations 32%, and 33% of those with urban destinations sent or brought no remittances to their source areas. At the other extreme 9% with rural destinations and 11% with urban destinations remitted their entire incomes.<br /> <br /> • At their destinations, 76% of all the women migrant workers (rural + urban) did not have any ration card, 16% had below poverty line (BPL) cards, less than half a per cent had Antyodaya cards and 7% had above poverty line (APL) cards. In comparison in their source areas, 34% of these migrants had no ration cards, 40% had BPL cards, 6% had Antyodaya cards and 20% had APL cards. Loss of public distribution system (PDS) entitlements through migration was thus quite widespread. It was found that 91% of the women migrant workers had never availed of any public housing scheme, 79% had no National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) job cards, and 96% had never been employed under any public employment programme or scheme.<br /> <br /> • 75% of all the women migrant workers did have electoral cards, but again the majority of them (almost three quarters) had their voting rights at area of origin and only around 28% of those with electoral cards had voting rights at destination areas. Of the women migrants 10% had voted in the last parliamentary elections at destination in comparison to 46% at area of origin. For state assembly elections 13% had voted at destination in comparison to 47% at area of origin. For panchayat/ municipality, again 13% had voted at destination but 52% at area of origin.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">**page**</p> <p style="text-align:justify"> </p> <p style="text-align:justify"> </p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:medium">According to [inside]Migration in India, 2007-08, National Sample Survey[/inside], MOSPI,<br /> Government of India, </span><br /> <a href="http://mospi.nic.in/Mospi_New/upload/nss_press_note_533_15june10.pdf"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:medium">http://mospi.nic.in/Mospi_New/upload/nss_press_note_533_15june10.pdf</span></a><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:medium">: </span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:medium"><em><strong>A. Household migration during last 365 days</strong></em></span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:medium">• Proportion of households migrated to rural areas was very low, nearly 1 per cent. In urban areas, on the other hand, the migrated households constituted nearly 3 percent of all urban households. </span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:medium">• Migration of households was largely confined within State: 78 percent of the migrant households in rural areas and 72 per cent of the migrant households in the urban areas had last usual place of residence within the State.</span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:medium">• Migration of households in both the rural and urban areas was dominated by the migration of households from rural areas. Nearly 57 per cent of urban migrant households migrated from rural areas whereas 29 per cent of rural migrant households migrated from urban areas.</span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:medium">• In both rural and urban areas, majority of the households migrated for employment related reasons. Nearly 55 per cent of the migrant households in rural areas and 67 per cent of the migrant households in the urban areas had migrated for employment related reasons.</span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-size:medium"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><em><strong>B. Migrants</strong></em><br /> <br /> • In India, nearly 29 per cent of the persons were migrants with significant rural-urban and male-female differentials.</span></span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:medium">• The migration rate (proportion of migrants in the population) in the urban areas (35 per cent) was far higher than the migration rate in the rural areas (26 per cent).</span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:medium">• Magnitude of male migration rate was far lower than female migration rate, in both rural and urban areas. In rural areas nearly 48 per cent of the females were migrants while the male migration rate was only 5 per cent, and in the urban areas, the male migration rate was nearly 26 per cent compared to female migration rate of 46 per cent.</span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:medium">• Migration rate in rural areas was lowest among the scheduled tribe (ST), nearly 24 per cent, and it was highest among those classified in the social group ‘others’, nearly 28 per cent.</span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:medium">• In urban areas, migration rate was lowest among other backward class (OBC) nearly 33 per cent, and it was highest among those classified in the social group ‘others’, nearly 38 per cent.</span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:medium">• Migration rate was found to be lowest for bottom MPCE decile class in both rural and urban areas and there is an increasing trend in rate of migration with the increase in level of living, with the migration rate attaining peak in top decile class. Migration rate, for rural male, for the bottom MPCE decile class was nearly 3 per cent and 17 per cent in the top decile class. For rural females, migration rate was 39 per cent in the bottom MPCE decile class and 59 per cent in top decile class.</span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:medium">• For urban males the migration rate for the bottom MPCE decile class was 10 per cent which reached to 46 per cent in top decile class and for urban females the migration rate for the bottom and top decile classes was 36 per cent and 56 per cent, respectively.</span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:medium">• For rural male, migration rate was lowest (nearly 4 per cent) among the ‘not literates’, and it was nearly 14 per cent among those with educational level ‘graduate and above’. For urban males also, it was lowest among the ‘not literates’ (17 per cent), and 38 per cent for those with educational level ‘graduate or above’ level.</span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:medium">• Among the migrants in the rural areas, nearly 91 per cent had migrated from the rural areas and 8 per cent had migrated from the urban areas, whereas among the migrants in the urban areas, nearly 59 per cent migrated from the rural areas and 40 per cent from urban areas.</span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:medium">• Nearly 60 per cent of urban male migrants and 59 per cent of urban female migrants had migrated from rural areas.</span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:medium">• The most prominent reason for female migration in both the rural and urban areas was marriage: for 91 per cent of rural female migrants and 61 per cent of the urban female migrants the reason was marriage.</span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:medium">• The reason for migration for male migrant, was dominated by employment related reasons, in both rural and urban areas. Nearly 29 per cent of rural male migrants and 56 per cent of urban male migrants had migrated due to employment related reasons.</span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:medium">• A higher percentage of the persons were found to be engaged in economic activities after migration: for males the percentage of workers increased from 51 per cent before migration to 63 per cent after migration in rural areas and from 46 per cent to 70 per cent in urban areas, while for females it increased from 20 per cent to 33 per cent in rural areas and from 8 per cent to 14 per cent in urban areas.</span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:medium">• For rural males, self-employment had emerged as main recourse to employment after migration. The share of self-employment in total migrants increased from 16 per cent before migration to 27 per cent after migration, while the shares of regular employees and casual labours remained almost stable, in both before and after migration.</span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:medium">• In case of urban males, the percentage of regular wage/salaried employees has shown a quantum jump (from 18 per cent before migration to 39 per cent after migration), besides an increase in the share of self-employment after migration (from 17 per cent to 22 per cent), and casual labour as a means of employment had reduced in importance after migration (from 11 per cent to 8 per cent).</span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:medium">• Rate of return migration (proportion of return migrants in the population) for males in rural areas was significantly higher than females: 24 per cent for males and 11 per cent for females.</span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:medium">• In the urban areas, the rate of return migration did not differ much for males and females: it was 12 per cent for males and 10 per cent for females.</span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:medium"><em><strong>C. Short-term Migrants</strong></em></span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:medium">• The rate of short-term migration (proportion of short-term migrants in the population) was 1.7 per cent in the rural areas and almost negligible (much less than 1 per cent) in the urban areas. Moreover, in the rural areas, the rate was nearly 3 per cent for the males and less than 1 per cent for females.</span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:medium">• In rural areas, for both males and females short-term migrants, more than half were casual workers in their usual principal activity status.</span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:medium">• The share of the rural self-employed males in total short-term male migration was also significant, nearly 32 per cent, and rural females who were out of labour force in the usual principal activity status, shared nearly 24 per cent of the total short-term female migration.</span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:medium"><em><strong>D. Out- Migrants</strong></em></span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:medium">• Out-migration rate (proportion of out-migration in the population) for males was nearly 9 per cent from rural areas and 5 per cent from urban areas. The rates for females were much higher compared to males in both the rural and urban areas. It was 17 per cent among rural females and 11 per cent among urban females.</span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:medium">• A relatively higher percentage of female out-migrants, from both the rural and urban areas, took up residence within the State: nearly 89 per cent for rural female out-migrants and 80 per cent for urban female out-migrants had residence within the State.</span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:medium">• Majority of the male from both the rural and urban areas had migrated out for employment related reasons which accounted for nearly 80 per cent of the outmigrants from the rural areas and 71 per cent of the out-migrants from the urban areas.</span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:medium">• For female out-migrants from both rural and urban areas, the reason for outmigration was predominantly for marriage, which accounted for nearly 84 per cent of female out-migrants from both the rural and urban areas.</span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:medium">• In case of rural male out-migrants, residing abroad, nearly 95 per cent were engaged in economic activities compared to 80 per cent of those residing in India and for male out-migrants from urban areas nearly 93 per cent of those residing abroad were engaged in economic activities compared to 73 per cent of those residing in India.</span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:medium"><em><strong>E. Out-migrant Remittances</strong></em></span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:medium">• Among the male out-migrants from the rural areas and residing abroad, nearly 82 per cent had sent remittances during the last 365 days, while only 58 per cent of those residing in India had sent remittances.</span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:medium">• Among male out-migrants from the urban areas, nearly 69 per cent of those residing abroad had sent remittances compared to only 41 per cent of those residing in India.</span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:medium">• On an average, during the last 365 days, a male out-migrant from rural areas and residing abroad had sent 4 times the amount of remittances sent by an out-migrant residing in India: while on an average nearly Rs. 52,000 was remitted by those residing abroad, the amount was nearly Rs. 13,000 for those residing in India.</span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:medium">• Out-migrants from the urban areas had remitted higher amount, during the last 365 days, to their former households compared to those from rural areas. On an average a male out-migrant from the urban areas, and residing abroad, had remitted nearly Rs. 73,000 during the last 365 days, which was higher by nearly Rs. 21000 of the amount remitted by a male out-migrant from rural areas and residing abroad. On an average, during the last 365 days, male out-migrants from urban areas and residing in India had remitted on an average nearly Rs. 28,000.</span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:medium">• The amount of remittances from the female out-migrants from both the rural and urban areas was lower compared to their male counterparts, irrespective of whether the female out-migrants are residing in India or abroad.</span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"> </p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:medium"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif">According to [inside]Managing the Exodus: Grounding Migration in India[/inside], which has been prepared by American India Foundation,</span><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif">(<a href="http://www.aifoundation.org/documents/Report-ManagingtheExodus.pdf">http://www.aifoundation.org/documents/Report-ManagingtheExodus.pdf</a>): </span><strong><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"> </span></strong> </span></span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"> </p> <p style="text-align:justify"> </p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:medium"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif">• Migration is defined as the displacement of a person who leaves their place of birth or of residence for another place, most often remaining in country. In 2001, 309 million persons were migrants based on place of last residence, which constitute about 30% of the total population of the country. This figure indicates an increase of around 37% from the 1991 census, which recorded 226 million migrants. It is estimated that 98 million people moved within the country between 1991 & 2001</span></span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"> </p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:medium"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif">• Traditional rural-urban migration has seen a gradual increase, with its share in total migration rising from 16.5% to 21.1% between 1971 and 2001.</span></span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"> </p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:medium"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif">• There has been an increase of urban to urban migration from 13.6% to 14.7% over three decades (1971-2001).</span></span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"> </p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:medium"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif">• In 2001, rural to rural migration (during the last decade) has accounted for 54.7% of total migration</span></span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"> </p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:medium"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif">• The last decade the urban to rural migration figure stands as 6.2 million people, i.e. approximately 6% of the population that moved between 1991-2001. </span></span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"> </p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:medium"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif">• 'Seasonal migration' has long been practiced in the rural areas, particularly among landless laborers and marginal farmers with limited livelihood options. Livelihood opportunities, its dearth in the rural and abundance in the urban areas are therefore responsible for the majority of migration. Media exposure and growth of the metros is another reason that allures people to move from rural to urban areas. In tribal regions, intrusion of outsiders, the pattern of settlement, displacement and deforestation, are significant to drive the phenomenon of migration. Marriage accounts for more than half of the migrants.</span></span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"> </p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:medium"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif">• In India, 73 million people in rural areas have migrated from 1991 – 2001; of which 53 million have moved to other villages and 20 million to urban areas – a majority of them in search of work. These figures do not include temporary or seasonal migration.</span></span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"> </p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:medium"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif">• Poor states such as Orissa, Bihar, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh that experienced rapid demographic growth in urban areas were also those that reported low productivity and high unemployment in agrarian sectors as well as heavy pressure on urban infrastructural facilities, suggesting the presence of push factors behind rural-urban migration.</span></span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"> </p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:medium"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif">• Caste, kinship bonds, and other kinds of village networks do help rural job seekers to arrange urban-based jobs.</span></span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"> </p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:medium"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif">• Migration is associated with rising informalisation of work and growth of urban slums. </span></span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"> </p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:medium"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif">• By 2021, India will have the largest concentration of mega-cities in the world; with a population exceeding 10 million people The UN projects that half of the world population will live in urban areas by the end of 2008, primarily due to urbanization and migration.</span></span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"> </p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:medium"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif">• National averages suggested that about 205 households live in each notified slum and 112 in each nonnotified slums.</span></span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"> </p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:medium"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif">• The total number of slums in urban India are approximately 52,000 with 51% of the slums being notified slums.</span></span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"> </p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:medium"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif">• It is estimated that every seventh person living in the urban areas is a slum dweller.</span></span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"> </p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:medium"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif">• About 65% of slums are built on public land, owned mostly by local bodies, state government etc.</span></span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"> </p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:medium"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif">• Maharashtra has the highest number of urban slums in the country totaling 173 – 113 notified and 60 non-notified</span></span><br /> <span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:medium"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-size:medium"><em><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"> </span></em></span></span></span></span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:medium"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-size:medium"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif">**page**</span></span></span></span></span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"> </p> <p style="text-align:justify"><br /> <span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:medium">According to [inside]Internal Displacement: Global Overview of Trends and Developments in 2009[/inside], produced by Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre and Norwegian Refugee Council, (<a href="http://www.internal-displacement.org/8025708F004BE3B1/%28httpInfoFiles%29/8980F134C9CF4373C1257725006167DA/$file/Global_Overview_2009.pdf">click here</a> to access)</span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><br /> <span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:medium">• Number of countries covered by this report is 54</span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:medium">• Number of people internally displaced by conflict or violence as of December 2009 is 27.1 million</span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:medium">• Over half of the world’s internally displaced persons (IDPs) were in five countries: Sudan, Colombia, Iraq, DRC and Somalia. The region with most IDPs was Africa, with 11.6 million.</span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:medium">• South and South-East Asia and the Americas accounted for most of the increase, with their respective totals 800,000 and 500,000 higher. These increases mirrored the year-on-year growth in the internally displaced populations of Pakistan and Colombia. </span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:medium">• Since 1997, the number of IDPs has steadily increased from around 17 million to over 27 million in 2009.</span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:medium">• In 21 countries, people had been born and grown to adulthood in displacement.</span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:medium">• Internal armed conflict, rather than international armed conflict, has caused most internal displacement in the last decade.</span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:medium">• Number of internally displaced persons (IDPs) in India is at least 500,000</span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:medium">• This figure includes those people displaced since 1990 by separatist violence targeting the Hindu minority in Jammu and Kashmir, and by shelling between Indian and Pakistani forces along Kashmir’s “line of control”; those displaced in states of the north-east by conflicts ongoing since 1947 between state and ethnic or secessionist groups, and by inter-ethnic and intra-ethnic violence; victims of the conflict between Naxalite insurgents and government security forces and armed vigilantes in Chhattisgarh State; victims of communal violence between the majority Hindu populations in Gujarat and Orissa States and the States’ respective Muslim and Christian minorities; and people displaced in West Bengal by violence related to a proposed development project. </span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:medium">• In 2009, people were newly displaced by armed conflict and violence in the north-east (Manipur, Assam, and Mizoram States) and in Orissa State.</span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:medium">• Causes of internal displacement in India are: armed conflict, generalized violence and human rights violations </span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:medium">• Tribal IDPs in camps in Chhattisgarh face the risk of attacks by both government forces and Naxalite insurgents. Muslim IDPs in Gujarat continue to endure very poor living conditions and they are increasingly at risk of losing their original homes and land, which have been taken over by Hindu extremist groups.</span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:medium">• Christian IDPs in Orissa risk being forced to convert to Hinduism if they return to their homes. Displaced women in Assam and Manipur have increasingly been forced into prostitution in order to support their families in the absence of husbands who have left in search of work.</span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:medium">• After living in displacement for more than 15 years, displaced Kashmiri Pandit families risk losing their cultural identity, while the government refers to them as “migrants”. </span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:medium">• Conflict-induced IDPs enjoy no recognition under India’s national laws. The responsibility to protect them is generally left to state authorities, who are often unaware of their rights or reluctant to offer support, particularly in cases where they played a role in causing the displacement.</span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"> </p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:medium"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-size:medium"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif">According to the [inside]11<sup>th</sup> Five Year Plan, Planning Commission[/inside]</span></span></span></span></span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:medium"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-size:medium"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><a href="http://www.planningcommission.nic.in/plans/planrel/fiveyr/11th/11_v3/11v3_ch4.pdf">http://www.planningcommission.nic.in/plans/planrel/fiveyr/11th/11_v3/11v3_ch4.pdf</a>: </span><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"> </span></span></span></span></span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"> </p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:medium"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-size:medium"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif">The fact that the numbers of the poor have declined in rural areas, and increased in urban areas over the last three decades suggests that to escape rural poverty, the poor migrate to urban areas. In fact, the total number of <em>migrant workers </em>in India in 1999–2000 was 10.27 crore—a staggering number. The number of seasonal or cyclical migrants in India may be 2 crore or so.</span> </span></span></span></span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:medium"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-size:medium"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"> </span></span></span></span></span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif">According to the [inside]National Commission for Enterprises in the Unorganised Sector--NCEUS (2007)[/inside], Report on Conditions of Work and Promotion of Livelihoods in the Unorganised Sector, please <a href="https://im4change.org/nceus_reports/NCEUS-2007-Report-on-conditions-of-work-and-promotion-of-livelihoods-in-the-unorganised-sector.pdf">click here</a> to access:</span> </span></span></span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><br /> <span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif">• The National Commission on Rural Labour-NCRL (1991) report suggests that labourers and land-poor farmers have a high propensity to migrate as seasonal labourers. These migrants are highly disadvantaged as they are poverty ridden with very little bargaining power. They are employed in the unorganized sector, where the lack of regulation compounds their vulnerability. They are largely ignored by the government and NGO programmes and labour laws dealing with them are weakly implemented. </span></span></span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"> </span></span></span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif">• Women migration for employment was most prominent among agricultural labourers, while male migrants were mainly the non-agricultural workers Seasonality of agricultural operations is one of the factors that lead to migration of agricultural labourers in search of employment during lean periods. </span></span></span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"> </span></span></span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif">• The NCRL (1991) indicates that uneven development of agriculture across different states of the country has led to the migration of labourers from low wage regions/states to states and regions where both the demand and wages are higher. </span></span></span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"> </span></span></span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif">• This is particularly so after the Green Revolution when higher agricultural development led to migration of labour from states such as Bihar to Punjab, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh. </span></span></span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"> </span></span></span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif">• Low rate of public investment in agricultural infrastructure in the less-developed regions has resulted in highly uneven development of agriculture between different regions of the country. </span></span></span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"> </span></span></span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif">• As per the NCRL there were more than 10 million seasonal/circular rural migrant labourers in the country. Growth of input intensive agriculture and commercialisation of agriculture since the late 1960s has led to peak periods of labour demand, often also coinciding with a decline in local labour deployment. </span></span></span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"> </span></span></span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif">• Migration also takes place when workers in source areas lack suitable options for employment/ livelihood. This may be particularly true when there has been stagnancy in employment generation in agriculture during the nineties along with a slow pace of diversification to non-farm employment in rural areas. </span></span></span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"> </span></span></span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif">• Mass migration by socially and economically relegated groups such as SCs/STs who have poor physical and human asset base in states like Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Maharashtra are noted<br /> <em><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"> </span></em> </span></span></span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif">[inside]Large Dam Projects and Displacement in India[/inside], produced by South Asia Network on Dams, Rivers and People (SANDRP), <a href="http://www.sandrp.in/dams/Displac_largedams.pdf">http://www.sandrp.in/dams/Displac_largedams.pdf</a> show: </span><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"> </span> </span></span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><br /> <span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif">• In India, the government, which is the planner, financier, developer and owner of numerous large dam projects, does not have figures of people displaced by large dams, either since independence in 1947 or in toto. </span></span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"> </span></span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif">• India is the third largest dam builder country in the world. It now has over 3600 large dams and over 700 more under construction. </span></span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"> </span></span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif">• The World Bank notes that though large dams constitute only 26.6% of the total WB funded projects causing displacement, the resulting displacement makes up 62.8% of the total number of people displaced </span></span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"> </span></span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif">• It is also apparent that project authorities do not consider the problems of displacement and rehabilitation as important parts of the project. The primary concerns are engineering specifications and electricity and irrigation benefits. </span></span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"> </span></span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif">• The number of persons displaced by the Hirakud dam was between 1.1 lakh and 1.6 lakh, while the official figures are only 1.1 lakh. </span></span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"> </span></span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif">• The latest figures of government estimates over 41,000 families will get displaced due to reservoir constructed under the Sardar Sarovar Project (SSP). About 24,000 khatedaars (land-holding families, meaning thereby, a much larger number of families, since one joint land holder generally represents many more families) will be seriously affected by canals under the SSP. Similarly, over 10,000 fisherfolk families will lose their livelihood in downstream areas due to complete stoppage of riverflow in non-monsoon months due to the dam. </span></span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"> </span></span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif">• A survey of 54 projects estimated the people displaced by large dams in last 50 years to be 33 million. </span></span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"> </span></span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif">• According to the World Bank, an average of 13,000 people are displaced by each new large dam constructed currently </span></span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"> </span></span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif">• According to conservative estimates of the Government of India, less than a quarter of estimated 40 million people displaced by large dams in fifty years have been resettled in India </span></span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"> </span></span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif">According to [inside]In the Name of National Pride (2009)[/inside], which has been prepared by the People's Union for Democratic Rights (PUDR), </span><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><a href="http://www.pudr.org/index.php?option=com_docman&task=doc_details&Itemid=63&gid=179">http://www.pudr.org/index.php?option=com_docman&task=doc_details&Itemid=63&gid=179</a><strong>: </strong></span><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"> </span> </span></span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><br /> <span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif">• Severe violation of labour laws could be found at the sites of Commonwealth Games </span></span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"> </span></span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif">• According to union sources, there are 6,000 workers employed at the Commonwealth Games Village (CWGV) site. According to the Regional Labour Commissioner (Central), there were 4,106 workers in all, out of which 229 were skilled, 833 were semi skilled and 3,004 were unskilled. As per some of the workers, there were up to 15,000 workers on site at one point. Maintaining ambiguity in the number of contract workers is one of the methods by which contractors escape accountability. </span></span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"> </span></span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif">• Workers at the Commonwealth Games Village (CWGV) site claim that 70 to 200 labourers have died at this site due to work related mishaps. Union representatives, however, said that there have been about 20 fatal accidents, a much lower number, but nevertheless an alarming one. </span></span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"> </span></span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif">• The workers at the Commonwealth Games Village (CWGV) site are from Bihar, Jharkhand, Orissa, Madhya Pradesh, eastern Uttar Pradesh, and West Bengal. Some of the workers are from Punjab as well. There are Bihari workers from Maharastra as well who left Pune after the anti-Bihari (anti North-Indian) movement was launched by Raj Thackaray </span></span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"> </span></span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif">• Most of the contractors or sub-contractors at the Commonwealth sites have not obtained licenses under Section 8 of the Inter-state Migrant Workmen (Regulation of Employment and Conditions of Service) Act 1979 (ISMW Act). </span></span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"> </span></span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif">• Most of the infrastructure development work of the Central Public Works Department (CPWD), the Delhi Development Authority (DDA), the New Delhi Municipal Corporation (NDMC), and the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) have been contracted out to multinational real estate and construction companies, having severe implications for the rights of contract workers employed. </span></span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"> </span></span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif">• The unskilled workers at this site are getting Rs.85 to Rs.100 per day for 8 hours of work as against the stipulated minimum wages of Rs. 142 till February 09. </span></span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"> </span></span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif">• About 5% of the unskilled workers at site are women and they are paid slightly lower than their male counterparts for the same kind of work. </span></span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"> </span></span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif">• The workers at Commonwealth sites seem to know very little about the company that employs them. Most of the workers do not possess an identity card. They only get a gate pass, which does not have the name of the company or of the contractor they are associated with or their date of joining or any other details. </span></span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"> </span></span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif">• The mode and schedule of payment is also absolutely arbitrary and exploitative. Full payment of wages is never made to any worker. Workers do not get any pay slips or receipts for the wages paid to them. They are made to sign in a register that the contractor maintains, which does not include details such as the amount paid or the number of days and hours of work completed. 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= 'im4change' $adminprix = 'admin' $rn = object(App\Model\Entity\Article) { 'id' => (int) 7, 'title' => 'Migration', 'subheading' => '', 'description' => '<p style="text-align:justify"><br /> <span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:medium">KEY TRENDS </span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><br /> • The new Cohort-based Migration Metric (CMM) shows that inter-state labor mobility averaged 5-6.5 million people between 2001 and 2011, yielding an inter-state migrant population of about 60 million and an inter-district migration as high as 80 million <strong>@*</strong><br /> <br /> • The first-ever estimates of internal work-related migration using railways data for the period 2011-2016 indicate an annual average flow of close to 9 million migrant people between the states. Both these estimates are significantly greater than the annual average flow of about 4 million suggested by successive Censuses and higher than previously estimated by any study <strong>@*</strong></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><br /> • Various studies show that the major reasons for migration have been work/employment, business, and education, marriage, moved at birth, and moved with family/household. Scholars argue that government data tends to underestimate the flows of seasonal/circular migration, a stream dominated by people belonging to socio-economically deprived groups with an extremely low asset base and poor educational attainments and skill sets. It is this floating segment of the migrant population, mostly comprising people working seasonally in brick kilns, construction, plantations, mines and factories that is most vulnerable to exploitation by labour contractors and faces relatively greater hurdles in participating in elections and politics <strong>$$</strong><br /> <br /> • Domestic migrants, especially so-called un-domiciled domestic migrants, suffer from a lack of formal residency rights; lack of identity proof; lack of adequate housing; low-paid, insecure or hazardous work; no access to state-provided welfare services including denial of rights to participate in elections even though elections in India have acquired the mythical status of ‘the greatest show in Earth’. Thus, these exclusionary practices lead to their disenfranchisement and treatment as second-class citizens <strong>$$</strong><br /> </p> <p style="text-align:justify">• In India, internal migration accounts for a large population of 309 million as per Census of India 2001, and by more recent estimates, 326 million (NSSO 2007-2008), nearly 30 percent of the total population. Internal migrants, of which 70.7 percent are women, are excluded from the economic, cultural, social and political life of society and are often treated as second-class citizens <strong>**</strong><br /> <br /> • Lead source states of internal migrants include Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Odisha, Uttarakhand and Tamil Nadu, whereas key destination areas are Delhi, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Haryana, Punjab and Karnataka. There are conspicuous migration corridors within the country: Bihar to National Capital Region, Bihar to Haryana and Punjab, Uttar Pradesh to Maharashtra, Odisha to Gujarat, Odisha to Andhra Pradesh and Rajasthan to Gujarat <strong>**</strong><br /> <br /> • 59 percent of women migrants from ST backgrounds and 41 percent of SC background were short term and circulatory migrants in comparison to just 18 percent of migrant women workers of upper caste origin. 39 percent of women migrants from Other Backward Classes (OBCs) backgrounds were also short term and circulatory migrants, although the majority (65 percent) were long-term and medium-term migrants in comparison to 43 percent of SC and 32 percent of ST women in these latter categories <strong>$</strong><br /> <br /> • While 5 percent of the female migrant workers and 9 percent of the male migrants reported having been targets of harassment by local people at destinations, 23 percent of the women and 20 percent of the men had experienced violence, threats and being forced to work in the course of migration. Interestingly, among male migrants, contractors were identified as the most common perpetrator, while more than half the women who had faced such harassment/ violence identified the principal employer and the supervisor as the perpetrators <strong>$</strong><br /> <br /> • 78 percent of rural and 59 percent of urban women migrant workers were working as unskilled manual labour; 16 percent and 18 percent were in skilled manual work in rural and urban areas respectively. A total of 6 percent of the rural and 23 percent of the urban women migrants were in a combination of clerical, supervisory, managerial jobs, or work requiring high professional/educational skills (highly skilled). Ten percent of the urban women migrants were in the last category of the highly skilled in comparison to just 1 percent of the rural women migrants <strong>$</strong><br /> <br /> • Across the board, the overwhelming majority of the workers – more than 93 percent in the case of rural women migrants and more than 84 percent in the case of urban – had no provident fund and no health insurance. The worst situation was, however, in relation to daycare/crèche facilities, to which only 3.4 percent of the rural women migrants and 4.4 percent of the urban had any access at all <strong>$</strong><br /> <br /> • Proportion of households migrated to rural areas was very low, nearly 1 percent. In urban areas, on the other hand, the migrated households constituted nearly 3 percent of all urban households <strong>¥ </strong><br /> <br /> • The migration rate (proportion of migrants in the population) in the urban areas (35 percent) was far higher than the migration rate in the rural areas (26 percent) <strong>¥</strong></p> <p style="text-align:justify"> </p> <p style="text-align:justify"><strong>@* </strong>Economic Survey 2016-17 (released in January, 2017) (please <a href="https://im4change.org/docs/641Economic-Survey-2016-17.pdf">click here</a> to access)</p> <p style="text-align:justify"> </p> <p style="text-align:justify"><strong>$$</strong> Concept Note prepared for the national seminar entitled: 'Contesting Spaces & Negotiating Development: A Dialogue on Domestic Migrants, State and Inclusive Citizenship in India’[/inside], to be held at Center for Public Policy, Habitat & Human Development, School of Development Studies, Tata Institute of Social Sciences (Mumbai) on 25-26 March 2016 (please <a href="tinymce/uploaded/Concept%20Note%20TISS.pdf" title="Concept Note TISS">click here</a> to access the Concept Note)</p> <p style="text-align:justify"> </p> <p style="text-align:justify"><strong>**</strong> Social Inclusion of Internal Migrants in India (2013), by UNICEF, UNESCO and Sir Dorabji Tata Trust (Please <a href="tinymce/uploaded/Social%20Inclusion%20of%20Internal%20Migrants%20in%20India%20UNESCO.pdf" title="Internal Migration">click here</a> to download the report)</p> <p style="text-align:justify"> </p> <p style="text-align:justify"><strong>$</strong> <a href="tinymce/uploaded/Migration_and_Gender_in_India_1.pdf" title="Migration">Migration and Gender in India </a>by Indrani Mazumdar, N Neetha and Indu Agnihotri, Economic and Political Weekly, March 9, 2013, Vol xlvIiI No 10<br /> <br /> <strong>¥ </strong>Migration in India, 2007-08, National Sample Survey, MOSPI, Government of India,<br /> <a href="http://mospi.nic.in/Mospi_New/upload/nss_press_note_533_15june10.pdf">http://mospi.nic.in/Mospi_New/upload/nss_press_note_533_15june10.pdf</a></p> <p style="text-align:justify"> </p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:medium">OVERVIEW </span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"> </p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:medium">Keeping track of mass migration is an enumerator’s nightmare. Even the Census of India can’t always get this accurately. Before a government agency is able to take note of distress or seasonal migration, people often come back for the harvest season or move elsewhere. Mass seasonal migration has become an almost fixed event for some industries like brick manufacturing or sugarcane farming. Distress and seasonal migration invariably means no education for children, no voting rights for adults, and missing out on BPL facilities at either place of birth or the site of work. </span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:medium">The worst sufferers of seasonal and distress migration are the poorest of poor, the tribals (STs) and the Dalits (SCs), who invariably have meager base of human or physical assets. This is particularly so in the most backward and mostly rain-fed districts of Andhra Pradesh, Rajasthan, Gujarat, MP, Karnataka and Maharashtra. It is quite common for migrant women to work as agricultural labourers and for men to seek employment in the unorganized sector. </span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:medium">Distress migration also fuels a chaotic growth of unorganized/ informal industries and haphazard expansion of urban slums. Owners of small and informal factories love migrant workers. For they are more willing to work for less wages, are less likely to be absent for trivial reasons, are dependent on labour contractors and are powerless compared to local workforce. Their vulnerability and low wages may be of short-term advantage to the industry, but in the long run they fail to participate in India’s growth story by earning more and consuming more. That is why it is often argued that rural-urban migration can lead to prosperity only when a ‘pull factor’ of better paid work replaces the push-factor of rural poverty. </span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:medium">Between 1991 and 2001, as many as 73 million rural people have migrated (displaced from their place of birth) to elsewhere. But the majority of these people (53 million) moved to other villages and less than a third (20 million) to urban areas and mostly in search of jobs. The number of seasonal or cyclic migration is around 2 crore but some experts believe that the actual number could be ten times the official figure. </span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"> </p> <p style="text-align:justify">**page**</p> <p style="text-align:justify">The main findings of the report titled [inside]Global Trends: Forced Displacement in 2021 (released in June 2022)[/inside], which has been prepared by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), are as follows (please click <a href="https://im4change.org/upload/files/Global%20Trends%20Report%202021.pdf">here</a> and <a href="/upload/files/UNHCR%C2%A0-%20Global%20Trends%202021.pdf">here</a> to access): </p> <p style="text-align:justify">• The main focus of this report is the analysis of statistical trends and changes in global forced displacement from January to December 2021 among populations for whom UNHCR has been entrusted with a responsibility by the international community. </p> <p style="text-align:justify">• At the end of 2021, the total number of forcibly displaced people (i.e., those who were forced to flee their homes due to conflicts, violence, fear of persecution and human rights violations) worldwide was 89.3 million, while the total population of concern to UNHCR stood at 94.7 million people. </p> <p style="text-align:justify">• The total population of concern to UNHCR relates to the people UNHCR is mandated to protect and assist. It includes those who have been forcibly displaced; those who have returned within the previous year; those who are stateless (most of whom are not forcibly displaced); and other groups to whom UNHCR has extended its protection or provided assistance on a humanitarian basis.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• People displaced inside their own countries due to armed conflicts, generalized violence or human rights violations continue to constitute the majority of the forcibly displaced population globally. Known as internally displaced people, or IDPs, they account for some 60 percent of all people displaced. </p> <p style="text-align:justify">• According to Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC) figures, in 2021 there were 23.7 million new internal displacements globally due to disasters (these are in addition to those internally displaced due to conflict and violence). This represented a decrease of seven million, or 23 per cent, compared to the previous year. </p> <p style="text-align:justify">• The largest displacements in the context of disasters in 2021 occurred in China (6.0 million), the Philippines (5.7 million) and India (4.9 million). Most disaster displacements during the year were temporary, allowing the majority of internally displaced people (IDPs) to return to their home areas, but 5.9 million people worldwide remained displaced at the end of the year due to disasters. </p> <p style="text-align:justify">• In 2021, UNHCR improved the recording of statistics relating to those asylum seekers who do not require Refugee Status Determination (RSD), with 9,400 of them arriving during the year. This compares with 81,700 new asylum applications that did require RSD in 2021, an increase from the 50,300 in 2020, principally in Malaysia, Libya, Egypt and India.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Over the span of the year, the number of refugees worldwide increased from 20.7 in 2020 to 21.3 million at the end of 2021, more than double the 10.5 million a decade ago.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• With millions of Ukrainians displaced and further displacement elsewhere in 2022, total forced displacement now exceeds 100 million people. This means 1 in every 78 people on earth has been forced to flee – a dramatic milestone that few would have expected a decade ago.<br /> </p> <p>**page**</p> <p style="text-align:justify"><br /> The key findings of the Periodic Labour Force Survey report titled [inside]Migration in India July 2020-June 2021 (released on June 14, 2022)[/inside], which has been prepared by National Statistical Office (NSO), Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI), are as follows (please <a href="/upload/files/Full%20report%20Migration%20in%20India%202020-21.pdf">click here</a> and <a href="/upload/files/3_Draft_press_note_Migration_PLFS_2020_21.docx1655189017846.pdf">here</a> to access): </p> <p style="text-align:justify">• The fieldwork of PLFS was suspended first time from 18.03.2020 due to COVID-19 pandemic, and was resumed in June 2020 with the pending samples for this period. This, therefore, had a spillover effect in completion of field work allotted for the survey period July 2020 to June 2021. Subsequently, there was another spill-over effect due to the 2nd wave of COVID-19 when the field work of PLFS was again suspended in April 2021 in most parts of the country. The field work was gradually resumed in the first week of June 2021 with COVID-19 related restrictions.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• The Periodic Labour Force Survey covered 59,019 migrants (rural male: 7,238 and rural female: 51,781) in rural areas and 54,979 migrants (urban male: 17,654 and urban female: 37,325) in urban areas. </p> <p style="text-align:justify">• The PLFS covered 1,550 temporary visitors in rural areas (rural male: 960 and rural female: 590) and 851 temporary visitors in urban areas (urban male: 450 and urban female: 401). For temporary visitors, the present place of residence (where he/she was residing temporarily) differed from their usual place of residence.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• The migration rate was higher in urban areas (34.9 percent) as compared to rural areas (26.5 percent). The rate of migration was higher among females (rural females: 48.0 percent; urban females: 47.8 percent) in comparison to males (rural males: 5.9 percent; urban males: 22.5 percent) in both rural and urban areas. <br /> <br /> • For male migrants in rural areas, the location of last usual place of residence was rural areas for 44.6 percent of them, urban areas for 51.6 percent of them, and another country for 3.9 percent of them. </p> <p style="text-align:justify">• For female migrants in rural areas, the location of last usual place of residence was rural areas for 88.8 percent of them, urban areas for 11.0 percent of them, and another country for 0.2 percent of them. </p> <p style="text-align:justify">• For male migrants in urban areas, the location of last usual place of residence was rural areas for 53.7 percent of them, urban areas for 44.1 percent of them, and another country for 2.3 percent of them. </p> <p style="text-align:justify">• For female migrants in urban areas, the location of last usual place of residence was rural areas for 54.0 percent of them, urban areas for 45.6 percent of them, and another country for 0.4 percent of them. </p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Around 46.4 percent of male internal migrants in rural areas came from rural areas and the rest i.e., 53.6 percent came from urban areas. </p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Roughly 89.0 percent of female internal migrants in rural areas came from rural areas and the rest i.e., 11.0 percent came from urban areas. </p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Almost 54.8 percent of male internal migrants in urban areas came from rural areas and the rest i.e., 45.2 percent came from urban areas. </p> <p style="text-align:justify">• About 54.3 percent of female internal migrants in urban areas came from rural areas and the rest i.e., 45.7 percent came from urban areas. </p> <p style="text-align:justify">• The main reasons for migration among male migrants were: in search of employment/ better employment (22.8 percent); for employment/ work -- to take up employment/ to take up better employment/ business/ proximity to place of work/ transfer (20.1 percent); migration of parent/ earning member of the family (17.5 percent); and loss of job/ closure of unit/ lack of employment opportunities (6.7 percent).</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• The main reasons for migration among female migrants were: marriage (86.8 percent); migration of parent/ earning member of the family (7.3 percent); housing problem (0.8 percent); and for employment/ work -- to take up employment/ to take up better employment/ business/ proximity to place of work/ transfer (0.7 percent).</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• The percentage share of male migrants who migrated after March 2020 in total migrants was 12.4 percent in rural areas, 5.6 percent in urban areas, and 8.3 at the national level.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• The percentage share of female migrants who migrated after March 2020 in total migrants was 1.8 percent in rural areas, 2.3 percent in urban areas, and 2.0 at the national level.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• The percentage share of migrants who migrated after March 2020 in total migrants was 3.0 percent in rural areas, 3.4 percent in urban areas and 3.1 at the national level.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• The percentage of temporary visitors in the population residing temporarily in a place different from usual place of residence was 0.7 percent -- 0.7 percent in rural areas (male: 0.9 percent; female: 0.5 percent) and 0.6 percent in urban areas (male: 0.6 percent; female: 0.6 percent).</p> <p style="text-align:justify"><strong><em>Important concepts</em></strong></p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Usual Place of Residence (UPR) of a person is the place (village/town) where the person has been staying continuously for at least six months. Even if a person was not staying in the village/town continuously for six but was found to be staying there during the survey with intention to stay there continuously for six months or more then that place was as his/her UPR.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Migrants are those whose last usual place of residence is different from the present place of enumeration. Usual place of residence is the place (village/town) where the person stayed continuously for a period of 6 months or more or intends to stay for 6 months of more.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Migration rate for any category of person (say, for rural or urban, male or female), is the percentage of migrants belonging to that category of persons.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• For the purpose of this survey, temporary visitors in the household are those persons who arrived after March 2020 and stayed in the household continuously for a period of 15 days or more but less than 6 months.</p> <p> </p> <p>**page**</p> <p style="text-align:justify"><br /> The key findings of the study titled [inside]Voices of the Invisible Citizens II: One year of COVID-19 -- Are we seeing shifts in internal migration patterns in India? (released on 25th June, 2021)[/inside], prepared by Migrants Resilience Collaborative (a Jan Sahas initiative) in collaboration with EdelGive Foundation and Global Development Incubator, are as follows (please <a href="/upload/files/Jan%20Sahas%202021%20report.pdf">click here</a> to access): </p> <p style="text-align:justify"><em>Methodology</em></p> <p style="text-align:justify">• For the present study, a rapid desk research was conducted on policy and programmatic responses by various states and the central government that addressed internal migration/ welfare of migrant households in the past one year. </p> <p style="text-align:justify">• For primary data, the study has relied on two sources -- (a) Computer-Assisted Personal Interviews (CAPI) were conducted during first week of April 2021 in 6 states, where Migrants Resilience Collaborative reached out to 2,342 workers (target sample 175 - 250 respondents per district) to inform them of the changes migrants have noticed in their own communities regarding various aspects of migration and labour. The surveys were conducted in 3 destination states (Delhi/ NCR, Mumbai, Hyderabad) and 7 source districts (Banda, Hazaribagh, Mahbubnagar, Tikamgarh) selected on basis of high-migration rate and on-ground presence of the organization; (b) Internal data on migrant workers from the Bundelkhand region (10 districts falling within Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh). To enable better comparison, Migrants Resilience Collaborative has used the data collected during two distinct 6-month periods – (1) September 2019 to March 2020, and (2) September 2020 to March 2021.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Convenience sampling method was used to identify respondents for the survey, with the stipulation that 35 percent of respondents should be women.</p> <p style="text-align:justify"><em>Patterns of migration</em></p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Three major points stand out in respect to broad level shifts in migration: Reporting of overall reduction in internal migration (with significant reduction in female labour migration and reduction in family migrating with the worker), reporting of an increase in shorter durations of migration cycles, and a strong preference for inter-state migration followed by intra-district migration (with female migration being high in intra-district migration). These shifts in patterns could be short-term in nature, however if read closely with the data point on lack of job opportunities at source, one observes a dismal state of affairs with potentially long-lasting adverse effects on migrant households.</p> <p style="text-align:justify"><em>What happened to migration?</em></p> <p style="text-align:justify">• A year after the lockdown, migrant workers still prefer to stay back in villages. The Jan Sahas survey shows that in the past one year, 57 percent migrants believe that the rate of migration has decreased.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• A majority of the workers mentioned fear of contracting the virus (71 percent), fear of lockdowns (47 percent) and lack of jobs at their destination (54 percent). These responses are consistent with the Action Aid survey, where similar reasons were cited for the strong preference to stay back at the source.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Only 8 percent (11 percent of women and 2 percent of men) of respondents reported that having found alternate employment at the source was the reason for decrease in migration, thus indicating the increasing distress of migrant households. </p> <p style="text-align:justify">• The survey conducted at the source locations at different periods in the past year shows a similar trend of unemployment too - either people have lost their jobs or now work for less hours than they used to before the pandemic. This could be indicators of worsening distress and poverty caused by disruption in migration and unemployment at the source.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Almost 55 percent of respondents reported that people are now moving for shorter durations than before. Around 9.5 of respondents reported that people are now moving for longer durations than before. Female workers are more likely to mention that movement is for shorter durations in the past one year. </p> <p style="text-align:justify"><em>Preference of destination: Where are they migrating for work?</em></p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Majority of survey respondents both at destination and source mentioned inter-state migration as their preference (45 percent and 54 percent, respectively). Workers from ST and OBC categories had a strong preference to move within their districts, i.e., intra-district movement. Further, 33 percent respondents at the source reported that people were moving within their districts for work.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Among the source districts, Bundelkhand districts of Banda (UP) and Tikamgarh (MP) showed negligible preference for intra-district movement (1 percent and 7 percent), and high preference for inter-state migration (94 percent and 77 percent). Possible reasons for interstate movement could be the historical socio-economic deprivation and agrarian crisis in the Bundelkhand region and ease of commute and proximity to Delhi.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Both Hazaribagh in Jharkhand (75 percent) and Mahbubnagar in Telangana (86 percent) that had a higher number of workers from ST and OBC categories showed higher preference for intra-district movements. Possible reasons for this preference of moving within the district in Mahbubnagar could be the availability of agricultural labour work in nearby cotton farms. And in Hazaribagh, the sample size included a high number of Adivasi migrants who have been moving locally to find work for generations.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Even though inter-state migration was reported as the most preferred by both women (44 percent) and men (53 percent), there was a clear gendered trend when it came to intra-district movement- 37 percent women reported people were moving within the district compared to 20 percent men. This trend calls for a deeper focus on rural-rural migration and short-distance migrations.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Given that female migration is highest in rural-rural streams, a shift in narrative from that of rural-urban migration to metropolitan cities would also make visible women’s labour and mobility trends. Such a narrative-shift would also bring to light the gender wage gap and understand the stark contrast in wages male migrants receive and the paltry amounts women agricultural labourers receive as daily wages.</p> <p style="text-align:justify"><em>Female migration</em></p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Delving deeper into the migration trend, the survey shows that women’s migration in particular has taken a hit in the last one year. Around 60 percent respondents reported that lesser number of women are migrating now compared to before the pandemic. Even though women’s migration has always been underestimated in the Census, NSSO and other macro-studies, various estimations from micro-studies points to the fact that women migrate in large numbers to sectors such as agriculture (in rural areas), construction, textiles, domestic work that engage considerable numbers of migrant women.</p> <p style="text-align:justify"><em>Dependents</em></p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Another aspect the survey probed was whether dependents (family members who do not contribute to the family income) accompany migrant workers like they used to do previously. The decrease in migration of dependents could be understood as a strategy to reduce costs at the destination, and also should be read along with the fear of sudden lockdown and contracting viruses. Further, through the field experience of Migrants Resilience Collaborative, it has been observed that young men (less than 45 years old) were now migrating without their families, in higher numbers. Almost 43 percent of respondents reported that people are moving without their families in the past one year. </p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Workers from SC/ST category are 2.7 percentage points more likely to mention that they migrate with dependents than workers from other categories, and the difference in means is statistically significant at the 90 percent confidence level (p-value= 0.060).</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Workers who continue to migrate are often landless and homeless at source, those without ration cards at source (who move as a family in order to minimize expenses of a split HH), elderly/ women with smaller children, women as helpers to husbands, etc. </p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Workers who are assured accommodation at the worksite also tend to move with their families.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• There is also a sectoral pattern when it comes to families migrating – in brick kilns, families continue to migrate as a unit, particularly owing to group recruitments, in comparison to construction and other sectors where recruitment is often on an individual basis.</p> <p style="text-align:justify"><em>Patterns of work</em></p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Two-thirds of the respondents mentioned they find it hard to find jobs, and the majority of daily wage workers at labour chowks head back home without work. While wages have largely remained stagnant, the number of work days have significantly reduced, which inevitably leads to reduced income. In the past decade or more, one has witnessed a shift in recruitment patterns with seasonal migrants moving independent of contractors – however, with the pandemic and rampant unemployment, one has begun to see a further shift with an increase in migrants who move with contractors.</p> <p style="text-align:justify"><em>Ease of finding work</em></p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Consistent with the reports on unemployment and lack of job opportunities, 73 percent of the respondents (75 percent of women; 72 percent of men) mentioned that it has become more difficult to find work at the destination compared to before the pandemic. Reports from labour chowks reveal that availability of work has plummeted post the lockdown, drastically shrinking the monthly earnings and workdays of migrant workers.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Nearly 85-87 percent of workers who preferred to move intra-state and intra-district mentioned that finding work has become harder, demonstrating lack of employment in source states.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Women are more likely to mention that it is harder to find jobs in comparison to men.</p> <p style="text-align:justify"><em>Recruitment pattern</em></p> <p style="text-align:justify">• The policy discourse around migration for the past 10-15 years or more has been centered around the complicated, multi-layered and often malevolent recruitment practices by contractors from source regions. However, data provided by Migrants Resilience Collaborative from the past 3 years attests to a different story particularly for seasonal migrants in construction. A majority of them migrate independent of source contractors and their movement and employment is instead facilitated by their social circles or destination contractors.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Around 91 percent of construction workers migrate independently. This shift in recruitment pattern is a significant opportunity for destination states, as they have control over the contractors who recruit workers from nakaas and community spaces.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• The 3-year long tracking system of Migrants Resilience Collaborative pertaining to employed construction workers indicates that there is a 16 percent increase in the use of contractors to find employment post-lockdown. It is important to note that since the 2020 lockdown and the employment crisis, there is a slow shift back to finding employment through destination or source contractors.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• There are regional differences in recruitment patterns: workers from West Bengal and other states where seasonal migration is less common, recruitment through source-based contractors or recruiters is higher.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Almost 41 percent of respondents reported that there was no change in the mode of recruitment, 26 percent of respondents felt that more workers were migrating independently to find work, and 29 percent of respondents reported that people were now migrating with contractors from source.</p> <p style="text-align:justify"><em>Bondage situation</em></p> <p style="text-align:justify">• More than a third of the respondents (37 percent) mentioned that incidence of bonded labour continues to be the same as before the pandemic, 28 percent of respondents mentioned that it has reduced while 14 percent of them reported that it has increased. Given the extent of unemployment and income-poverty, one should carefully read these signs of distress and constantly be agile to prevent incidence of bondage.</p> <p style="text-align:justify"><em>Situation of wages</em></p> <p style="text-align:justify">• About nine out of 25 workers reported a decrease in wages. Nearly 7 out of 25 female respondents reported an increase in wages. </p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Nearly 40 percent of respondents reported that the wage rate continues to be the same as before the pandemic. In this instance, it is important to read this data point along with the decrease in livelihood opportunities (73 percent of respondents mentioned finding work has become harder). Even though wages might remain the same, they are working fewer days, which essentially translates to lesser income.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Roughly 28 percent of female respondents as against 16 percent of male respondents mentioned that wages have increased.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• According to ILO, from 2010-2019, India’s labour productivity increased 5.5 percent annually on an average, while the growth in real minimum wage was 3.9 percent, implying denial of their fair entitlement to workers.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Around 41 percent of female workers reported working overtime with no benefits is the norm.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• In the absence of institutional support, workers have developed few strategies of their own to protect themselves from wage theft such as taking up daily wage jobs so as to avoid getting cheated of lump sums and taking advance amounts from contractors before starting work in order to avoid getting cheated of the full amount.</p> <p style="text-align:justify"><em>Access to social security</em></p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Compared to last year, about 88 percent of respondents seem to be aware of the schemes that were announced specifically for them. However, the concerning aspect is that its access seems to be limited to short-term emergency support schemes in comparison to livelihood schemes.</p> <p style="text-align:justify"><em>Registration of migrant workers</em></p> <p style="text-align:justify">• The lack of comprehensive data on migration due to the weak implementation of the Inter State Migrant Workmen (Regulation of Employment and Conditions of Service) Act, 1979, was cited as one of the most important barriers to reaching migrant households and ensuring their welfare. To address this gap, creation of a migrant registry has been recommended time and again.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Only 15 percent of the respondents surveyed at the destination (n=779) confirmed that they were registered prior to their last departure from source.</p> <p style="text-align:justify"><em>Information dissemination and coverage of welfare schemes</em></p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Several state governments especially took commendable action to implement these measures and support migrant households through livelihood-creation and extension of social security provisions.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Almost 62 percent of the respondents were not aware of the schemes at all and only a mere 5 percent confirmed that they were aware of the provisions and knew how to access them. However, after a year, there has been a notable shift. Only 12 percent of the total respondents reported that they were not informed about the schemes and provisions.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Nearly 50 percent of females and 66 percent of males got the information through TV/ radio/ newspaper; 11 percent of females and 16 percent of males got the information from whatsapp; 27 percent of females and 23 percent of males got the information from government representatives; 12 percent of females and 4 percent of males got the information from ASHA/ anganwadi workers; 34 percent of females and 28 percent of males got the information from friends/ relatives; 27 percent of females and 27 percent of males got the information from NGO/ other organisations; and 10 percent of females and 14 percent of males got no information.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Nearly 47 percent of females and 55 percent of males had access to emergency cash transfers; 23 percent of females and 12 percent of males had access to job card/ MGNREGA card; 32 percent of females and 31 percent of males had access to Building and Other Construction Workers (BOCW) card; 3 percent of females and 1 percent of males had access to Garib Kalyan Rojgar Yojana; 14 percent of females and 6 percent of males had access to work days under MGNREGA; 26 percent of females and 43 percent of males had access to extra ration at source; 28 percent of females and 15 percent of males had access to ration at destination; and 9 percent of females and 4 percent of males had access to health insurance.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• In May 2020, a website for online registration and renewal of BOCW cards was launched and material for applications were made available on the website. Through this facility, workers could directly set up appointments through the portal and get physically verified at the camps.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• In recent times, the Delhi BOCW for registration documentation has further allowed workers who are not in possession of employment certificates by employers/ contractors/ trade unions, to submit self-attested certificates in a prescribed format. The Delhi Government’s campaign for registration under the Building and Construction Workers Act (BOCW) ensured over 1.05 lakh workers getting registered under the board.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Chhattisgarh was one of the most successful states in terms of public distribution system (PDS) coverage with over 97.8 percent of respondents of the survey reported that they had received free or subsidized ration during the lockdown. Many private sector companies involved in both construction and gig economy are now vaccinating their workers. All these examples point towards the possibilities in protecting the informal sector workforce when private, state and civil society stakeholders come together to meet the immense challenges that face the nation.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Current efforts to ensure the portability of PDS under ONOR is commendable, however focus should be broadened to include portability of BOCW and its benefits that will directly impact more than 40 million migrant construction workers.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Evidence from Tamil Nadu suggests that universalization of PDS, along with contributing to food security, reduces leakages and minimizes exclusion errors.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">**page**</p> <p style="text-align:justify"><br /> The key findings of the report titled [inside]No Country for Workers: The COVID-19 Second Wave, Local Lockdowns and Migrant Worker Distress in India (released on 16th June, 2021)[/inside], prepared by Stranded Workers Action Network-SWAN, are as follows (please <a href="https://www.im4change.org/upload/files/SWAN%20report%202021_No%20Country%20For%20Workers.pdf">click here</a> to access):</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• As the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic rages on, almost 92 percent of the country’s workforce (who lack access to social safety nets) are experiencing a historic and unprecedented crisis. For the second time in a row in less than a year, the country witnessed a virtual lockdown. The effects of the restrictions in economic activity and the lack of any social security safeguards have hit the migrant and informal sector workers the hardest.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• In this report, SWAN has attempted to highlight the multiple dimensions of precarity experienced by migrant and informal workers during the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Taking note of the disquieting trends, Stranded Workers Action Network (SWAN), a voluntary effort that started in March 2020 to mobilise relief for stranded migrant workers, relaunched its helpline on 21st April, 2021. By 31st May 2021, SWAN had received over 8,023 requests for ration support, medical assistance, transport help, rent, and other basic needs. Out of the total number of workers whom SWAN team members have been able to interact with, 88 percent (7,050) have received money transfers and 6 percent of the group have received repeat transfers. SWAN has thus far transferred Rs. 3.3 million. Additionally, given the overwhelming level of need, SWAN has engaged in several advocacy initiatives aimed at raising awareness on the nature and extent of the crisis, highlighting the need for extending the coverage of social security benefits, and holding governments accountable for their proposed policy actions.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• The present report mentions that the current crisis (2nd wave) has been similar to 2020's in terms of the dimensions of distress experienced, but also exceptional as it has compounded the problems of workers who now have little savings and limited access to safety nets. Through SWAN team members' conversations with around 8,000 workers and their family members it has recorded the limited availability of food and rations, lack of access to basic healthcare, low levels of income and earnings, increasing levels of indebtedness, the struggles of surviving in the city, and the additional set of concerns with returning to life in the villages.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• The distress from accumulated debts and erratic employment started with the lockdown in 2020 and has been prolonged in 2021, severely impacting the economic status of the workers. In the absence of any social security benefits, approximately 76 percent of them had Rs. 200 or lesser than Rs. 200 left with them when they first contacted SWAN. This is somewhat similar to trends reported in 2020 during a similar period (one month into lockdown) when 74 percent of the workers had Rs. 200 or less than Rs. 200 with them. Added to these miseries is the mounting levels of debt, the uncertainty of surviving in the city, the dilemma of returning to the villages where there is no work even under the MGNREGA, and the continuing health challenges.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• In the context of these deeply alarming trends, the SWAN team juxtaposes and studies the Central and State Governments’ responses. The State Governments’ responses have definitely been inadequate. Many of the policy initiatives introduced thus far have been limited in terms of coverage, procedurally confusing and alienating, on the whole failing to account for the needs of migrant workers and their families.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• It has been found that the Central Government’s response to be the most disconcerting as it appears to have all but abdicated responsibility, instead expecting the states to respond to the crisis. There have been no budgetary extensions or policy announcements that cover migrant workers’ distress. In the context of the government’s feeble response, SWAN has proposed a set of recommendations, many of which align with the long standing demands made by workers’ unions, civil society organisations, labour activists, policy experts and academics. These specific recommendations have been arrived at in consultation with academics and civil society organisations. SWAN has actively participated in these consultations. They discuss the feasibility of these measures and underscore the urgent need for the government to provide a comprehensive policy response that alleviates the growing distress of migrant and informal workers — a group that has suffered disproportionately due to the impacts of the pandemic.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• The response of the Central and State Governments has been far from adequate and there has been little to no action taken to extend relief to migrant and informal sector workers, finds the report. The Central Government has deflected almost all responsibility towards the states, so much so that the judiciary has had to intervene. The Supreme Court, specifically, has taken an active role and issued orders directing states to introduce food security measures for migrant communities, including the distribution of dry rations via the Atma Nirbhar scheme (or any other state or central scheme) and the running of community kitchens for migrant workers. In states where some measures have been announced, there is a continuing trend of half-baked policy initiatives that either leave out or do not fully cater to the needs of migrant labourers. Most states have reiterated hackneyed promises that mostly provide relief to a section of the working class and leave out the majority.</p> <p style="text-align:justify"><strong>MAIN FINDINGS</strong></p> <p style="text-align:justify">• As on 20th April, 2021, partial lockdowns were found in 10 states across the country and complete lockdown was imposed in Delhi. As on 8th May, 2021, nearly the entire country was under complete lockdown as a result of either partial lockdowns and night curfews or complete lockdowns imposed by the states/ UTs.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Drawing on 2020’s experience, the process of responding to a distress call and mobilising relief was systematised by SWAN. A structured needs assessment questionnaire (similar to the one used last year) was employed to elicit the necessary information about workers’ circumstances and assess their level of need.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• SWAN received a few calls in April and only started systematically logging information from 1st May. This explains inflated calls on 1st and 2nd May, 2021. SWAN has adjusted the data from April for the rest of the figures. Of all the calls, needs were assessed for 76 percent (others did not require aid, were directly forwarded to an NGO or were subsequently unreachable). The present report is mainly based on data collected via distress calls between 1st and 31st of May, 2021.</p> <p style="text-align:justify"><strong>Coverage and migrant workers’ profiles</strong></p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Of the 8,371 workers and their families from whom SWAN was able to get some information, the majority of workers were concentrated in a few key states – Delhi (1,760), Maharashtra (1,507), West Bengal (692) and Uttar Pradesh (581). These trends are similar to those reported in 2020, with the exception of Delhi, where fewer calls were reported last year as compared to this year.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Most of the calls SWAN received were from stranded migrants, stuck in their places of work. But this time round, approximately 9 percent of the calls SWAN received were from migrants who had recently returned home as well as from those who were in their villages and hometowns without any savings and work.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• The workers who reached out to SWAN are among the poorest and most vulnerable, as revealed by their insecure economic status. More than half (60 percent) were daily wage factory workers and 6 percent were non-group based daily wage earners like drivers, domestic help etc. The median daily wages of workers was Rs. 308. Nearly 74 percent of the workers earned Rs. 200-400 per day and 14 percent earned less than Rs. 200 per day.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Notably, there is a much higher proportion of women and children in the groups of workers in 2021 as compared to 2020. While last year less than a quarter of those who reached out to SWAN included women and children, in 2021 84 percent of those calling in were with women and children.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• The concerns of the workers who stayed back in the city were many and there were no easy choices. The workers SWAN spoke to had to make tough choices on whether to spend on rent and food for themselves or send to their families back home; stay on in the city or travel back home; stay on in the hope of work resuming while worrying about catching the virus in the city, or go home to rising cases and no work. This year SWAN also received calls from large groups of migrant workers who were stranded in cities, particularly Delhi.</p> <p style="text-align:justify"><strong>Employment interrupted and wages lost</strong></p> <p style="text-align:justify">• A startling number of workers reported a range of challenges such as the cessation and intermittent availability of work, problems of pending wages and absconding contractors.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Interrupted or stopped work: Around 91 percent of the workers SWAN spoke to reported that work (daily and contractual) has stopped due to locally declared lockdowns. The number of days since work has stopped has also steadily risen in the later weeks of May, 2021.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Pending wages: About 66 percent of the workers (for whom SWAN has this information) reported that they had not received their full wages or had been paid only partial wages for the previous month. However, only 8 percent had received any money from their employer since the work had stopped.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Absconding contractors: SWAN's conversations with the workers revealed the levels of contravention and in some instances the complete absence of adherence to labour laws and standards. A few construction workers in Gurugram, Haryana, told SWAN of how they had been brought there from Bihar only a few days before the lockdown was announced. Their contractor had since abandoned them and had not even paid them for the days on which they had worked. Left without any income or support they were stranded in the city and had no means to return home. In another case, a group of factory workers in Gujarat were left with no money when their employer ran away without paying their dues.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• On 20th April 2021, the Ministry of Labour and Employment (MoLE), announced that 20 control rooms, set up during the 2020 lockdown and used by “lakhs of workers”, were being relaunched to address grievances of workers through coordination with officials of the Labour Department in different states. The list of “worker helplines” includes 20 states/ zones with the contact details of 100 Labour Commissioners, including their email addresses. To understand the support being offered, SWAN volunteers called 80 officers from across these 20 zones and enquired about the assistance being provided to migrant workers with regard to: non-payment of due wages, provision of rations or cooked food, financial assistance to meet basic needs, protection from eviction by landlords, and support for travel back to their home states. The responses from the worker helplines revealed that the helpline is not for any migrant or informal worker and is only for those who work on Central Government projects. There was variation in responses across helplines. There was a worker-unfriendly system for submitting complaints. There was no tracking method. There was no assistance provided to address hunger. There was no assistance given to protect migrant workers from eviction and harassment by landlords.</p> <p style="text-align:justify"><strong>Debt traps, cash struggles and dwindling food</strong></p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Debt traps: Given how interrupted work has been over the last year and a half, approximately 76 percent of people had Rs. 200 or lesser than Rs. 200 left with them when they spoke to SWAN. Many were unable to leave during the national lockdown in 2020 because of debts owed to landlords and shopkeepers. Those who were able to leave spent several months at home unable to find alternative employment even though several state governments promised work and loans to start small businesses. After their minimal savings were depleted, these workers were pushed to return to the cities once again in search of work. When the second wave and lockdowns hit, cash availability dipped precariously again.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• The precariousness of living without work and wages during this lockdown has led to accumulating debt. Debt burdens were also reported by workers who had more stable livelihoods and earned regular incomes.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Still no portability of access to PDS, no provision of rations to migrant workers: One of the key reasons why food distress amongst migrant workers became so acute during the 2020 lockdown and again in 2021 is because of their exclusion from the PDS system in the places they migrate to. This exclusion is not restricted to migrant workers alone. Although the NFSA is supposed to cover 67 percent of the population, in reality this coverage is closer to 60 percent. This was reflected in the information collected from migrant workers who called SWAN too. More than half the workers (62 percent) did not have access to ration cards in either their home states or in their current locations. Even if these workers and their families possess a ration card, these are linked to their home addresses and to a specific ration shop. Unless the entire family migrates, the ration card is left at home with family members.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Following the migrant worker crisis last year, the Central Government began to tout the One Nation One Ration Card (ONORC) scheme as a panacea to address food insecurity amongst migrant workers. According to the Finance Minister, by March 2021 “this system will enable migrant workers and their family members to access PDS benefits from any Fair Price Shop in the country.” The ONORC scheme was supposed to make PDS entitlements portable, which would be immediately advantageous to migrant workers. More than a year since this announcement, SWAN found that 93 percent of the migrant workers had a ration card but this was not functional in the place where they were stranded. In Delhi, for instance, one worker reported how he had tried to apply for a Delhi Government ration card but had not been issued one and therefore had been forced to borrow money to feed his family.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Access to the PDS at home was also erratic and there were issues related to exclusion from the system, distribution of inadequate quantities of ration, and authentication issues. As independent studies have pointed out, 100 million people are still excluded from the PDS. This was reflected in SWAN's conversations with workers as well — 62 percent of those who had returned home said they did not have a ration card. Quantity of ration too was an issue, whether in the cities or in the villages to which workers had returned. With no income, especially in places like Karnataka and Delhi where lockdowns had been imposed, the quantity of ration available through the PDS was inadequate, as one worker said, to meet a family’s food needs. Other issues, like exclusions due to failed biometric authentication, also persist, compounding the distress.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Given this level of exclusion from the food security net, the situation of food distress amongst migrant workers becomes extremely grim. More than half (82 percent) of the workers whom SWAN spoke to (and for whom SWAN has this data) had 2 or less than two days’ worth of ration. This is a staggering figure even if it is less than the figures reported last year when 72 percent of the workers reported that their rations would finish in two days. The percentage of people (worker groups and families) with less than two days of ration has consistently been around half during the month of May.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Scanty community kitchens and feeding centres: Unlike last year when some state governments opened feeding centres that provided cooked meals to stranded migrants, this year there were very few such initiatives by the government and civil society. The Delhi Government claims to have set up 265 feeding centres compared to 2,500 such centres set up in 2020. However, this list was not freely available to the public. Only in early May 2021 did SWAN come across a list of hunger relief centres (without any contact details) that were supposed to be operational across districts in Delhi.</p> <p style="text-align:justify"><strong>A health crisis that is not just COVID-19 related</strong></p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Migrant workers, in addition to the fear of contracting the virus, have had to deal with existing medical concerns in the absence of wages and depleted savings. Unlike last year when the rates of transmission were considerably lower, this year SWAN also asked workers about their medical status and specifically if they or members of their family were experiencing COVID-19 or similar symptoms. Hearteningly, most workers (86 percent) did not report experiencing any such symptoms. However, 12 percent did report other non-medical conditions that ranged from fever, chronic conditions, tuberculosis (TB), disability due to accidents, and so on. And while there may not have been any immediate health impacts on the workers, the fear of falling ill with the virus was palpable.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• The 12 percent non-COVID-19 related health issues were also wide ranging and underscored the precarious situation that many who reached out to SWAN were in. Accidents had left some unable to work even before the second wave had started, especially where the principal breadwinner of the family was the one who had suffered the injury.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Access to rural healthcare: While much of the public attention, particularly of the urban middle class, has been on the oxygen crisis in big cities, the coverage on the state of rural healthcare during this deadly second wave of the pandemic has been limited. There are notable exceptions in the English media, such as reports on the COVID-19 deaths in rural Uttar Pradesh, why people in rural India are hesitant to go to healthcare facilities even if COVID symptoms are detected, and misdiagnosis of COVID as typhoid in Jharkhand (Yadav, 2021, Masih, 2021, Angad, 2021). There is better coverage in the Hindi media.</p> <p style="text-align:justify"><strong>Compounding the vulnerability of the marginalised</strong></p> <p style="text-align:justify">• While the calls received reflect the extreme distress of workers across the country, the condition of vulnerable groups within the workforce was even worse. Some groups were more adversely affected than others, especially women, a group from whom SWAN received many calls. Some women who requested money/ ration had husbands at home but the latter had lost their jobs. Other women had husbands who were stranded in places they had migrated to for work and who then found themselves unable to send money home during the lockdown.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Single women especially faced the brunt of the loss of employment and wages. If the stress of the times was in itself a form of violence experienced by the families of workers struggling to make ends meet, there was also the looming worry of domestic violence that some callers addressed. Another group under stress were pregnant women and nursing mothers. The differently abled were another vulnerable group. Children too have not remained unaffected. They have been forced to work to make ends meet for the family.</p> <p style="text-align:justify"><strong>Journeying back and travel within the city: Both a struggle</strong></p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Like 2020 during the nationwide lockdown when many decided to trek back to their villages, this year too many migrants were trying to make their way back home. The sight of workers with weary children and meagre belongings trudging through the heat of the summer is still a recent memory. This year the localised lockdowns led to some hesitancy and confusion and many were unsure as to whether they should return to their villages or wait in the cities till the lockdown measures were lifted. However, it was increasingly clear that as the lockdown was extended week by week, more and more workers were desperate to make their way back to their villages. In all, 11 percent of the migrant workers and their families returned to their village (out of 6,693 people that SWAN has data for).</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Costs of travel were an issue as trains, the cheapest mode of transport, were not available to all destinations. In some instances the decision to travel back was the result of threat or force. One worker reported being coerced into making the choice to travel back home by his landlord who threatened them with eviction if they were unable to pay the rent. While movement between states was restricted, local movement within cities was subject to other kinds of risks. </p> <p style="text-align:justify"><strong>No roof over the head: The burden of rent and the threat of eviction</strong></p> <p style="text-align:justify">• With no earnings, rents were of concern as they constituted a considerable proportion of the family expenditure. Work-from-home is a much-used phrase during this lockdown. But for workers living a hand to mouth existence there was no work and they lived under constant fear of having no home either. Evictions, while a worry for some, were an immediate concern for others.</p> <p style="text-align:justify"><strong>No work in the city, no work back home in the village: Challenges of MGNREGA</strong></p> <p style="text-align:justify">• With intermittent work available and lockdown in effect in many cities, migrant workers were reluctant to return home because there were no employment opportunities in the village and securing work under MGNREGA had proved difficult for many last year. It has been widely reported that MGNREGA employment in May this year has seen a sharp decline. Last year when all alternative employment came to a standstill during the national lockdown, MGNREGA played a crucial role in providing income support to workers in rural India, many of whom were returned migrants. State Governments made efforts to ensure that recently returned migrants were provided job cards soon after they returned. Work was proactively opened, providing much needed financial relief. More than 11 million new families registered for MGNREGA and 20 million more families worked under MGNREGA in 2020 when compared to the previous year. However, this year MGNREGA has practically come to a standstill across states. None of the workers who were back home and reached out to SWAN had gotten any MGNREGA employment in April or May. This was corroborated by several civil society organisations SWAN has been in touch with as well.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• When team members receiving distress calls asked workers who reached out to SWAN about MGNREGA, they mentioned a range of issues with getting work back at home — many preferred to go to the cities in search of work.</p> <p style="text-align:justify"><strong>Vaccination Woes: Scarcity and Hesitancy</strong></p> <p style="text-align:justify">• The data is quite preliminary but SWAN finds that while there was some knowledge of vaccination for COVID-19, relatively few workers had been vaccinated. Then from 22nd May, SWAN began capturing some information on vaccinations and by 31st May had collected 452 responses from workers. In particular, SWAN asked the workers if they knew of the vaccination drive for COVID-19 and if they had been vaccinated or had tried to register for the vaccine. Of the 452, only 10 percent (45) of the workers who called us had been vaccinated. The majority of them had received their vaccination in a PHC or a camp held in their village, while 14 of them had received their vaccine in a private facility, either a clinic or a hospital.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Those who tried to get vaccinated but could not made up 18 percent (82). The reasons ranged from not having information, trying to register but failing, non-availability of vaccines and crowded PHCs. There were others who said that they had no knowledge about the vaccine or registration process or how to get the vaccine. While on the one hand there was scarcity, on the other there was also some hesitancy expressed.</p> <p style="text-align:justify"><strong>Recommendations</strong></p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Food: The extension of expanded food rations to PDS card holders till November 2021 is welcome. India should further leverage the 100 million tonnes of food grain (over three times the buffer stock norms) for:<br /> -Expanding PDS food distribution to non-PDS card holders till November 2021;<br /> -Specific expansions of ICDS delivery for families with children, and additions to rations as well as meals (including eggs) at schools and anganwadis</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Income: Undertaking crisis cash transfers of Rs. 3,000 per month for 6 months</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Work: Expanding NREGA work entitlements to 150 days; Initiating immediate public works programmes for urban employment</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• For income, the proposed crisis cash transfer must leverage existing direct benefit transfer systems (NREGA, PM-KISAN, PMJDY, NSAP) with new decentralised systems of direct distribution from ration shops, post offices, panchayats and other local institutions.</p> <p style="text-align:justify"><strong>---</strong></p> <p style="text-align:justify">Please click <a href="https://www.im4change.org/latest-news-updates/it-s-time-for-the-govt-to-ensure-social-security-of-returnee-migrants-provide-them-vaccination-asks-civil-society-group.html">here</a> and <a href="https://im4change.org/upload/files/SWAN%20Press%20Release_5th%20May%202021%20%28English%29.pdf">here</a> to access the [inside]Press release by Stranded Workers Action Network (SWAN) dated 5th May, 2021[/inside]. In its press statement, the civil society group has asked for provision of social security benefits to returnee migrants and informal workers in the wake of second wave of Covid-19 and local lockdowns imposed in many states. Kindly click <a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/1d_P0KH1ZasLP8WLLYWDJNR2ppuRBIWkHDorCcjmnHA8/edit">here</a> to access the note on the types of distress and testimonies that the workers shared with SWAN volunteers.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">**page**</p> <p style="text-align:justify">The <a href="https://www.im4change.org/upload/files/SSRN-id3834328.pdf">study titled</a> [inside]COVID-19: Emergence, Spread and Its Impact on the Indian Economy and Migrant Workers (released in April 2021)[/inside] by Ashok Gulati, Shyma Jose and BB Singh examines the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and the related nationwide lockdown on the Indian economy, particularly on food systems. It also takes up an important issue of millions of migrant workers in India who seem to have suffered the most during this period. The loss of their livelihood, incomes, and food insecurity are captured through a survey of 2917 migrant workers in six different states of India. At the end, the study gives recommendations on how to broaden the support for migrant workers nationwide. Due to the pandemic-induced lockdown, the Indian economy contracted 24 percent in the first quarter of the financial year (FY) 2020-21 (April-June). The worst affected sectors were construction, trade and hotel and other services, and manufacturing. Consequently, the unemployment rate surged to 23.5 percent in April 2020. Given the easing of lockdown and measures taken by the government in the wake of the first wave of the pandemic, the economic growth revived to -7.5 percent in the second quarter of FY 2020-21. The food processing industry particularly manufacture of grain milling products, dairy products and animal and vegetable oil, were resilient during the lockdown. However, the pandemic adversely impacted the processing and preservation of meat, fruits and vegetables. Notably, the agricultural sector is the only sector that recorded a positive growth rate of 3.4 percent during the first two quarters of FY 2020-21. Nevertheless, the disruption of the agri-food supply chain, particularly during the initial period of the lockdown, pushed food inflation from 8.8 percent in March 2020 to 11.7 percent in April 2020, but it came down to 3.4 percent by the end of the third quarter (December) of FY 2020-21. The unprecedented migrant crisis was one of the major catastrophes that emerged during the pandemic. The sudden imposition of the lockdown had a severe impact not only on employment but consequently on the earnings and savings of the migrants once they reached their villages. At their native place, with no proper employment opportunities, the household income of migrants fell by 85 percent during June-August 2020, as per the survey findings. With the revival of economic activities post-lockdown, the authors found that 63.5 percent of migrants have returned to the destination areas by February 2021, while 36.5 percent were still in their villages at their native places. Although the migrant’s household income has increased after remigration, there is still a contraction of 7.7 percent relative to the pre-lockdown level. The household income of the migrants who are still at their native place post-lockdown contracted more than 82 percent compared to pre-lockdown. To revive the economy and provide support to vulnerable populations, the central government announced a series of packages. These included an additional quantity of subsidised food-grains under the Public Distribution System (PDS), cash transfers through Jan Dhan Yojana, free gas supply under the Ujjwala scheme, an ex-gratia to widow/senior citizen as well as income transfer to farmers under PM-Kisan. Overall, the survey showed 84.7 percent of the migrants had access to subsidised cereals under PDS, while the percentage receiving pulses was much lower at 12 percent during November-December 2020. Moreover, only 7.7 percent of migrants in their native place reported being engaged in Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) or any other public work. The demand-driven skill training under GKRY reached only 1.4 percent of migrants at their native place in the survey done for the study. Many workers reported a fall in the quality of food consumed during the lockdown and post-lockdown compared to the pre-lockdown level. With no access to relief measures and entitlements, a quick recovery of the migrant workers seems grim.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">The survey for the <a href="https://www.im4change.org/upload/files/SSRN-id3834328.pdf">study</a> was conducted in three phases: Phase-1 between June and August 2020; Phase-2 between November and December 2020; and Phase-3 during the last week of February 2021, to capture the varying degrees of vulnerabilities among the migrants prior to, during, and after the first lockdown</p> <p style="text-align:justify">Overall, the survey showed that only 7.7 percent of migrants at native place reported being engaged in MGNREGA or any other public work during the Phase-2 survey. This suggests that various employment schemes, including Garib Kalyan Rozgar Yojana (GKRY), have either neglected most of these migrants or that migrants did not want to do MGNREGA work. Furthermore, the average days of employment per household under the MGNREGA scheme was 50.1 in FY 2020-21, 48.4 in FY 2019-20, 50.9 in FY 2018-19 (as of April 21st, 2021) (MoRD, GOI 2021). The employment guarantee of 100 days under MGNREGA or implementation of the GKRY in mission mode for 125 days has not been achieved. Besides, 55 percent of migrants at the native place are willing to return to the destination, of which 65.6 percent reported employment as the primary reason to return. The situation certainly warrants close monitoring to ensure no gap exists between measures announced and implementation on the ground.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">Moreover, the demand-driven skill training under GKRY, conducted under the component of Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Vikas Yojana, has not reached most of these migrants. For instance, only 1.4 percent of migrants reported getting any skill or training at the native place in our survey. The authors have recommended that the scale of permissible work under MGNREGA should be broadened to absorb the wide range of skilled and unskilled migrants. The skill mapping of the migrants could be done at Gram Panchayat or block levels to provide employment on a demand-driven basis under GKRY.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">**page**</p> <p style="text-align:justify"> </p> <p style="text-align:justify">The key findings of the study entitled [inside]Understanding the Effect of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Migrant Construction Workers in India (released in December 2020)[/inside], which has been prepared by Sattva Consulting and other organisations, are as follows (please click <a href="/upload/files/Sattva_GFEMS_Evidence-Learning-Booklet1.pdf">here</a> and <a href="/upload/files/www_sattva_co_in_publication_understanding_the_effect_of_the.pdf">here</a> to access):</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Between June 2020 and August 2020, NEEV – a multi-stakeholder consortium of partners working to improve worker welfare in the construction sector in India – conducted remote surveys with over 10,000 migrant construction workers (who migrated from the Bundelkhand region to Delhi NCR) to understand the impact of the COVID-19 lockdown on their lives, jobs and personal well-being. The surveys conducted were based on Longitudinal Migration Tracking or LMT i.e. prospective migrants were enrolled first, then their basic demographic information was collected and their seasonal journeys to work in the construction industry was tracked.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Although 59,129 participants were contacted at least once for the study, responses of 18 percent of the total participants (i.e. n=10,464) who completed the survey as per the LMT methodology were finally taken into account to get the survey results. Most respondents were male (97 percent; n=10,106), and belonged to either a Scheduled Caste (65 percent; n=6,999), Other Backward Caste (25 percent, n=2,549) or Scheduled Tribe (5 percent, n=528) community.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Nearly, one-third of respondents had no formal education (n=3,443; 33 percent), a further 18 percent had only completed primary education (n=1,912; 18 percent), 24% had attained secondary education (n=2,469), while a quarter of respondents had completed 12th grade (n=2,274; 25 percent).</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Ninety-five percent of workers surveyed (n=9,931) reported having a job in construction prior to March 2020, compared to only one-third (n=3,493) as of August 2020, indicating a 65 percent decrease in the number of participants employed in the construction sector during the pandemic.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• It was found that around 52 percent of — or one out of every two — participants (n=5,177) did not have a monthly household income.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Among participants who were working prior to the COVID-19 lockdown, 72 percent (n=7,421) had received payment for their work while 28 percent (n=2,839) had not.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Of the respondents who reported that they had not received any financial or in-kind assistance, approximately 58 percent were unaware of the welfare schemes and benefits they were entitled to receive, and a further 27 percent were unable to receive benefits despite having the necessary documents.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Of the migrant construction workers surveyed, 40 percent (4,241) reported that they had received some form of support (primarily in the form of food rations).</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Participants of this study borrowed money for meeting food requirements due to the pandemic at more than double the rate that existed prior to lockdown, reinforcing that food security is a critical concern for migrant workers in the construction sector at this time. Rising indebtedness among migrant workers in the construction industry increases the risk of modern slavery.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• A significant proportion of respondents reported that they had no savings (34 percent; n=3,536), which not only increases the severity of the COVID-19 lockdown, but also the potential for these individuals to be pressed toward riskier employment ventures.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• The study finds that the primary concern among migrant construction workers surveyed was food insecurity.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• While the amount of ration allocated to each ration-card holder covered under the National Food Security Act was expanded during the crisis through the PM Garib Kalyan Ann Yojana scheme, the study findings indicate that a significant portion (33 percent of construction workers who responded) were not in possession of a ration card that would allow them to avail these benefits. Additionally, for those migrant workers who have ration cards, the lack of portability of these benefits to destination locations still presents a challenge.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• The majority of migrant workers surveyed reported that they had not received any support from government welfare programmes.</p> <p style="text-align:justify"><strong><em>[Shivangini Piplani, who is doing her MA in Finance and Investment (1st year) from Berlin School of Business and Innovation, assisted the Inclusive Media for Change team in preparing the summary of the study by Sattva Consulting and others. She did this work as part of her winter internship at the Inclusive Media for Change project in December 2020.]</em></strong></p> <p style="text-align:justify">**page**</p> <p style="text-align:justify">Please <a href="/upload/files/Roadmap%20for%20developing%20a%20policy%20framework%20for%20inclusion%20of%20internal%20migrant%20workers%20in%20India.pdf">click here</a> to access the report entitled [inside]Road map for developing a policy framework for the inclusion of internal migrant workers in India (released in December, 2020)[/inside], which has been prepared by International Labour Organization (ILO), Aajeevika Bureau and Centre for Migration and Inclusive Development (CMID).</p> <p style="text-align:justify"><strong>---</strong></p> <p style="text-align:justify">Please click <a href="https://www.im4change.org/upload/files/Citizens_and_the_Sovereign.pdf">here</a> and <a href="https://www.im4change.org/latest-news-updates/the-migrant-worker-as-a-ghost-among-citizens-sampath-g.html">here</a> to access the report entitled [inside]Citizens and the Sovereign: Stories from the Largest Human Exodus in Contemporary Indian History (released in November 2020)[/inside], which has been brought out by Migrant Workers Solidarity Network (MWSN).</p> <p style="text-align:justify">---</p> <p style="text-align:justify">Please click <a href="https://www.im4change.org/upload/files/All-India-Report-on-Migrant-Workers.pdf">here</a> to access the report entitled [inside]Survey on Migrant Workers: A Study on their Livelihood after Reverse Migration due to Lockdown (released in October 2020)[/inside] by Inferential Survey Statistics and Research Foundation.</p> <p style="text-align:justify"><strong>---</strong></p> <p style="text-align:justify">Please click <a href="https://www.im4change.org/upload/files/SWAN%20Response%20to%20GoI%26%23039%3Bs%20Data%20on%20Migrant%20Workers%26%23039%3B%20Deaths.pdf">here</a>, <a href="https://www.im4change.org/latest-news-updates/although-govt-avoids-providing-data-on-the-impact-of-covid-19-lockdown-timely-intervention-by-a-civil-society-group-working-among-migrants-fills-the-info-gap.html">here</a> and <a href="https://www.im4change.org/upload/files/AU174.pdf">here</a> to access the [inside]Response by Stranded Workers Action Network (SWAN) dated 15th September, 2020[/inside] when the Government did not provide any data on the number of migrant workers who lost their lives during their return to the hometown (and the details), and also any data related to the assessment of job losses among migrant workers due to the COVID-19 crisis.</p> <p style="text-align:justify"><strong>---</strong></p> <p style="text-align:justify">Please <a href="https://www.im4change.org/upload/files/After_the_long_marches_-_WPC_.pdf">click here</a> to access the report entitled [inside]After the long marches: What do workers want? (released on 31st August, 2020)[/inside] by Working People’s Charter (WPC).</p> <p style="text-align:justify"><strong>---</strong></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><br /> The <a href="/upload/files/Garment-Workers-in-India%E2%80%99s-Lockdown1.pdf">report</a> entitled [inside]Garment Workers in India’s Lockdown Semi-Starvation and De-humanisation Lead to Exodus (released in June 2020)[/inside], which has been prepared by Society for Labour and Development – a Delhi-based NGO – examines how workers and their families coped with adversities during the lockdown despite not being provided any income support by either their employers or the government. The survey by SLD was carried out in the National Capital Region (i.e. in and around Delhi) and Tiruppur in Tamil Nadu. Telephonic interviews of about 100 garment workers, mostly migrants, were conducted during the second half of May, 2020. Almost 72 workers from National Capital Region and 28 workers from Tiruppur participated in the survey. Field-based investigations were also conducted among those workers who returned back to their villages in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. The major findings of the report are as follows (please <a href="https://im4change.org/upload/files/Garment-Workers-in-India%E2%80%99s-Lockdown1.pdf">click here</a> to access):</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Out of 100 garment workers interviewed 57 were women and 43 were men. There were 54 workers (23 men and 31 women) who were permanent and 44 workers were contractual (20 men and 24 women). Two women respondents were home workers. Most of the workers were inter-state migrants and some were intra-state migrants (28 workers). Nearly 69 percent of inter-state migrant workers were from the Northern belt of India, with 49 percent belonging to Bihar alone. The report finds that women in the sample consumed more food vis-à-vis men. It says that this might have happened due to the presence of more number of married females in the sample who had the support of their husbands as opposed to lower number of single male respondents.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• The report says that although the lockdown was imposed towards the last week of March, only one-fifth of workers (19 out of 100 workers) received any form of cash or advance payments. Cash or advance payment was given on the condition of deducting the same from the overtime work the workers would do in future. The payment they received was a meagre sum ranging between Rs. 1,800 and Rs. 10,969 per worker. The permanent workers failed to receive their dues from the garment/ apparel exporters. The contractors abandoned the workers by switching off their mobile phones. The report highlights that the government did not help the workers by providing them income support during the lockdown. During the lockdown crisis, the government only provided Rs. 500 to women who had bank accounts.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Please note that the government had on March 26th, 2020 declared that an ex-gratia <a href="https://im4change.org/upload/files/Garib%20Kalyan%20Yojana%2026%20March%202020.pdf">monthly payment of Rs. 500</a> would be given to <a href="https://im4change.org/upload/files/Garib%20Kalyan%20Yojana%2026%20March%202020.pdf">women</a> <a href="https://im4change.org/upload/files/Garib%20Kalyan%20Yojana%2026%20March%202020.pdf">Jan Dhan account holders</a> for the next three months, starting from April. This was part of Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Yojana.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• The garment workers were not provided any form of income support by either the employer or the government. Since most of the respondents were migrants, they did not have ration card which could have provided them access to subsidised foodgrains from the fair price shops of the Public Distribution System (PDS). The migrants did not possess any proof of their current residential address as they were not given identity cards by the factories where they worked. On top of that, they did not get any receipt from the landlords against the rents they paid. So, they were unable to produce any proof of their current local address. The survey results show that only 20 workers were able to get subsidised foodgrains from the government. Some trade unions and NGOs extended their helping hands and provided cooked food to the garment workers during the lockdown. Out of 97 workers who responded, six hardly had one meal a day while 69 had two meals a day during the lockdown. Two workers said that they had one meal a day usually and sometimes two meals a day. Thus, 82 percent of the workers could afford only two or less number of meals a day during the lockdown. In short, majority of garment workers and their families experienced starvation during that period.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• The reports by SLD finds that most intra-state migrants went back to their nearby villages while the inter-state migrants were stranded in cities or the place where they worked with no income. They faced hunger and starvation. Many used the last of their savings or borrowed money to finance their return back to native place. Estimates show that almost 40 percent of inter-state migrants in Tiruppur went back to their villages/ native place. The field investigation conducted in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh finds that the workers who went back had borrowed money from money lenders at exorbitant interest rate of around 20 percent per month. The migrant workers were afraid that the usurious interest rates might strip them of the meagre property they owned if they fail to repay back. The migrants who went back to their native place said that they felt helpless and were afraid of not being able to survive in their villages. The report states that the lockdown exposed the classist nature of the government since it arranged quick travel facilities for the middle and upper class students although migrants were provided those facilities much later.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• The report mentions that there were instances in which migrants in Tiruppur were kept in the dormitories against their will and were provided poor quality food. They were forced to stay there. There were protests in Tiruppur and some workers were arrested by the police for protesting. Some migrants said that they would not go back for work while others were of the view that they might go back since only a handful of opportunities are available in their villages/ native place. The report cautions that the garment industry might undergo automation and mechanisation due to rise in wages. Because of demand-supply mismatch in availability of skilled workforce in urban areas, wages are expected to increase. The report says that the lack of income support from employers as well as the government pushed garment workers to face hunger and destitution, besides de-humanising them. As a result, mass exodus of migrants from cities to villages could be observed when the lockdown was imposed.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• The report cites two surveys of garment exporters, which was conducted by the Apparel Export Promotion Corporation in May 2020. Almost 105 and 88 exporters were surveyed during those two surveys. Roughly 83 percent of the respondents said that their orders were either wholly or partially cancelled. On top of that, 72 percent of the respondents said that buyers were not taking responsibility for already purchased materials. About 52 percent of the respondents said that buyers were asking for discounts on already shipped goods. Among the respondents, almost 72 percent highlighted that buyers were asking for a discount of around 20 percent while another 27 percent said that buyers were asking for discounts as high as 40 percent or even more. Almost 88 percent of the exporters expressed their inability to pay wages to their employees.</p> <p style="text-align:justify"> </p> <p style="text-align:justify"><strong><em>[Balu N Varadaraj and Nabarun Sengupta, who are doing their MA in Development Studies (1st year) from Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Hyderabad, helped the Inclusive Media for Change team in preparing the summary of the report by Society for Labour and Development. They did this work as part of their summer internship at the Inclusive Media for Change project in June-July 2020.]</em></strong></p> <p style="text-align:justify">**page**</p> <p style="text-align:justify">Please click <a href="https://im4change.org/news-alerts-57/swan-third-report-outlines-the-perpetual-plight-of-migrants-in-terms-of-food-distress-income-insecurity-and-travel-difficulties-during-lockdown.html">here</a> and <a href="https://im4change.org/upload/files/To%20Leave%20or%20Not%20to%20Leave%20SWAN%20Report%2005%20June%202020.pdf">here</a> to access the key findings of report entitled [inside]To Leave or Not to Leave? Lockdown, Migrant Workers, and Their Journeys Home (released on 5th June, 2020)[/inside], which has been prepared by Stranded Workers Action Network (SWAN).</p> <p style="text-align:justify">---</p> <p style="text-align:justify">Please <a href="/upload/files/Unlocking%20the%20Urban%20English%20Summary.pdf">click here</a> to access the key findings of the report entitled [inside]'Unlocking the Urban: Reimagining Migrant Lives in Cities Post-COVID 19' (released on 1st May, 2020)[/inside]. Please <a href="https://im4change.org/docs/Unlocking-the-Urban.pdf">click here</a> to access the full report by Aajeevika Bureau.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">The report by Aajeevika Bureau, using findings from the pre-COVID period, examines the lives of migrant workers in Ahmedabad and Surat, across multiple work sectors and diverse castes, genders, language groups and source regions. Through the report, the authors of the report ask, “How do migrant workers access public provisioning – housing, water, sanitation, food, and healthcare – in urban areas?”</p> <p style="text-align:justify">The findings of the report suggest that the severe humanitarian crisis for over 100 million migrant workers is not unanticipated or caused solely by the COVID outbreak. It is rooted in India's urban and labour policies, and economic growth model, which excludes and alienates this vast group of workers while using them to boost industrial and infrastructural growth. For decades, migrant workers have relied on informal networks to access basic provisioning, which has severe implications for the cost, quality, and reliability of access to a basic, dignified survival.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">The report by Aajeevika Bureau entitled <a href="https://im4change.org/docs/Unlocking-the-Urban.pdf">Unlocking the Urban:</a> <a href="https://im4change.org/docs/Unlocking-the-Urban.pdf">Reimagining Migrant Lives in Cities Post-COVID 19</a> (released on May 1st, 2020) looks at the socio-economic and living conditions of circular migrants in cities of Ahmedabad and Surat (Gujarat) and attempts to find how they access basic facilities and services there, besides checking how migrant workers negotiate for these facilities and how urban planning and governance respond to the requirements of circular migrants in urban spaces.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">The Ahmedabad and Surat surveys were mainly conducted in the months of August, September and October during 2018 and in the months of February, August, September and October during 2019. The key findings from this report with respect to Ahmedabad and Surat surveys are summarised below.</p> <p style="text-align:justify"><strong>Key findings related to Ahmedabad survey:</strong></p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Of the 1.3 million circular migrant workers in Ahmedabad, 285 workers were surveyed across 32 locations and most of those surveyed were employed in five major sectors. Almost 80 respondents (28.07 percent) were working in the construction sector, 72 respondents (25.26 percent) in manufacturing, 47 respondents (16.49 percent) in hotel and dhaba, 44 respondents (15.44 percent) were head loaders and 42 respondents (14.73 percent) worked in the domestic help segment.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Roughly 174 respondents (61.05 percent) were males while 111 (38.94 percent) respondents were females. About 44.6 percent (127 respondents) of total respondents were Scheduled Tribes (STs), 23.5 percent (67 respondents) were Scheduled Castes (SCs), 12.3 percent (35 respondents) were from Other Backward Classes (OBCs) and 19.6 percent (56 respondents) were from general castes. Almost 176 respondents (61.75 percent) were family-based migrant workers and the rest 109 respondents (38.25 percent) were single workers. The migrant workers hailed mostly from the states of Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Odisha and Chhattisgarh.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Housing in the city of Ahmedabad for migrant workers was classified into rented rooms, worksite housing and settlement in open spaces. Of the migrants surveyed, 151 respondents (nearly 53 percent) lived in rented rooms, 79 respondents (27.7 percent) lived at worksite, 37 respondents (almost 13 percent) lived in open spaces and 18 (6.3 percent) respondents lived in some other forms of housing, mostly semi-permanent residences built by workers living for a long time period in Ahmedabad. For factory workers and domestic workers, rented house was the most preferred form of housing as is evident from the fact that 63.9 percent of the factory workers (46 out of 72 respondents) and 83.3 percent of the domestic workers (35 out of 42 respondents) stayed in rented accommodations. Almost 41.3 percent (33 out of 80 respondents) of construction workers stayed in open spaces. Roughly equal number of hotel workers lived in rented houses (24 out of 47 i.e. 51.1 percent) and worksite (23 out of 47 i.e. 48.9 percent).</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Although 62.1 percent of male respondents (108 out of 174) lived in rented rooms, only 38.7 percent of the female respondents (43 out of 111) stayed in rented rooms. Further, as compared to 21.8 percent of the male respondents (38 out of 174) staying at the worksite, 36.9 percent female respondents (41 out of 111) stayed at worksite. Of the 37 respondents living in open spaces, a whopping 32 migrants (86.5 percent) were STs, followed by three SC migrants (8.1 percent). On the contrary, out of 56 general category respondents, 35 respondents lived in rented rooms (62.5 percent).</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• For rented rooms, the monthly average for 10×10 sq. feet pucca room was found to be Rs. 3,022/-, which was too costly especially for unskilled ST (adivasi) workers. Instead rent per person arrangement was preferred by single workers on a 4-5 person sharing basis. Rental markets are unregulated without any written contracts. Facilities depended on tenant’s goodwill with landlord. Worksite housing is especially visible for construction workers, head loaders and hotel/ dhaba workers.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• In rented rooms, landlord determined the type of sanitation facilities for workers. Almost 15-20 individuals shared a toilet and they themselves were responsible for cleaning it. Workers living in worksites or open spaces either used pay and use or mobile toilets or resorted to open defecation. Some construction sites had separate toilets for women, but in case of gender neutral toilets, women had to wake up before 5 am in the morning to use them. For women in construction sector, 32 percent of the respondents had to use shared toilets while 68 percent resorted to open defecation. Nearly all women workers engaged in factories resorted to open defecation while all women workers working as domestic helps enjoyed access to individual toilets.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• For workers living in rented rooms, water facility was provided by landlords. For those living in worksites, either the employer provided it or workers fetched it from public stand posts. Only 9 percent of the respondents had access to water from taps installed by Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation (AMC). Almost 46 percent of workers relied on water from private buildings through goodwill with security guards/ local residents. Some of the construction site workers had access to 24 hours water since they used the water available for construction activities in household works as well. In case of migrants staying with their families, primary responsibility of water collection vested with the women of the household. Water usage is determined by the water available and not water actually needed. As against WHO’s mandated 100 litres water per person per day, people in the rented houses got only 85 litres per person per day. The situation was worst in open space settlements on government/ private land where people received only 39 litre per person per day. Nearly 70 percent of the respondents never treated the water and used it directly for consumption. Often there was a visible difference in between facilities being provided to local Gujarati speaking workers and migrant workers.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• None of the migrant workers had access to subsidised foodgrains through the Public Distribution System (PDS). Expenditure on food was the highest for those living in open spaces (about 53 percent of their income). Expenditure on food as a percentage of their income was the lowest for hotel/ dhaba workers (17 percent), followed by domestic workers (42 percent), factory workers (43 percent), head loaders (44 percent), and construction workers (48 percent). Often factory workers living in rented houses were forced to purchase ration from shops set up by their landlords. Adivasi families living in factories and working in hazardous conditions were found to spend just 29 percent of their income on food, because of the fact that continuous chewing of tobacco suppressed their hunger. For fuel, adivasi families staying in open areas collected different materials ranging from pieces of plastic to wood shavings. Buying firewood costs Rs. 100 per day on average, which is unaffordable for many.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• In the sphere of health care, only 14.7 percent respondents preferred public hospitals, 74.4 percent preferred private clinics, 14.4 percent preferred private hospitals, 5 percent preferred going back to their villages for treatment and 0.7 percent preferred urban health centres. Urban health centres remain open during 9am-6pm, which is the working hour for the migrants and hence visiting them might mean losing daily wage for a migrant. Public hospitals often insist on producing different kinds of domicile documents which are often not available with the workers. Hence they are unwilling to visit these hospitals. Even among the 40 respondents who said that they prefer public hospitals, 39 of them were living in Ahmedabad for more than 3 years. Almost 48 percent of them belonged to the general category and only one-fifth were adivasi workers. </p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Ahmedabad Urban Development Authority (AUDA) prepares static plans for 10 years, failing to take into consideration the changing nature of the cities. According to AUDA officials, housing for workers was never really a part of urbanisation plans. Open spaces almost always bear the brunt of evictions, whenever AMC took up expansion or land reclamation drives. Though AMC tried multiple times to send migrant workers from open spaces to night shelters built by the government, often those attempts were unsuccessful, owing to unfriendliness of such spaces and insufficient capacities.</p> <p style="text-align:justify"><strong>Key findings related to Surat survey:</strong></p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Surat, which is often boasted as world’s fastest growing city during the period 2019-35, has seen a boom in diamond polishing, textile, ship building and petrochemical industries post 1980s. This led to a massive influx of migrant workers. Presently, nearly 70 percent of wage workforce is constituted by migrants, which as a proportion of migrants to locals, is highest in the country. The survey in Surat was conducted among 150 migrant workers working in power loom industry across 12 different locations of the city. Out of total, 106 (70.7 percent) were single male migrant workers and 44 migrants (29.3 percent) lived with their families in the city. Almost 72 percent of the workers were from Odisha (mostly from Ganjam district), 16 percent were from Bihar, 10 percent were from Uttar Pradesh, and 1 percent each were from Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Nearly 56 percent respondents were OBCs, 26 percent belonged to general category, 10 percent belonged to ST category and 6 percent belonged to SC category.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• The housing for the workers was divided into three typologies – mess rooms where 25 respondents (16.7 percent) stayed, shared/ bachelor rooms where 81 respondents (54 percent) lived and rented family housing where 44 respondents (29.3 percent) resided. Thus, all the single male migrant workers stayed in some sort of shared facilities. In case of rented rooms, room rents are fixed in the range of Rs.2500-Rs.4000 and a common toilet facility is provided for a group of rooms. The number of persons sharing such a room varied in the range of 2 to 10. Mess rooms include long hallways having areas 500-1000 square feet, where around 100 workers stayed across two shifts. There are 2 toilets for a hall. Mess rooms come with a package of 2 meals per day. Migrants paid in the range of Rs.400-Rs.600 for room rent and Rs.1,800-Rs.2,200 for food. Most rooms were poorly ventilated, usually old power loom spaces converted as a mess and run by a mess manager. For families availing rented houses, rent was same in the range of Rs.1,800-Rs.3,800 for rooms of size between 80 sq. feet to 200 sq. feet. Finding an accommodation is highly dependent on social contacts in the city. Around 23 workers (15.3 percent of 150 respondents) said that they faced evictions at some point or other, and among them 20 had faced evictions from mess, thus, highlighting the highly insecure nature of rental arrangements for migrants in the city of Surat.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• All migrants had access to toilet facilities. Almost 83 percent of the respondents had access to shared toilets located inside or attached to their living spaces. Nearly one-third used shared bathrooms, 46 percent had access to kaccha bathrooms and one-fifth have access to private bathrooms. Roughly, 93 percent of the respondents said that they had a closed drainage system, but often it was clogged owing to no maintenance. Garbage collection by Surat Municipal Corporation (SMC) varied across locations, and often garbage is seen scattered around the roads.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Sources of water for the migrant workers include bore wells, pipe water and government tankers. Almost four-fifth (79 percent) of the respondents used SMC provided water for drinking. Further 76 percent of the respondents did not purify the water. Electricity was available to all workers and it rarely failed. Electricity costs were either included in the rent (for two-third of the respondents) or had to be separately paid to the landlords. Quality of facilities like water and electricity depended on the relationship of the tenant with the landlord. In case of fuel, all respondents had access to LPG cylinders and mess owners often resorted to buying cylinders from the black market for cooking. Families with 4-5 members shared a cylinder for a month.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Almost 92 percent of the respondents accessed private health care facilities like private hospitals, private clinics, quacks etc. Nearly 18 workers (12 percent of total respondents) reported having any accident in the previous year. Often, workers preferred going back to their native villages for treatment in case of any serious issue. Almost one-fourth (24 percent) of the respondents described immunisation as the only public health care facility availed by them. Requirement of domicile documents for availing subsidized health care in government facilities like Surat Municipal Institute of Medical Education and Research (SMIMER) prevented migrant workers from going there. ASHA workers did not visit areas inhabited by migrants frequently, especially if there are mostly single male migrants residing in the area. Further, only 31 percent of the respondents were aware about government schemes such as Ayushman Bharat.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• About 71 children of the migrant workers were recorded as a part of the survey. Amongst them 40 children were of school going age but 30 percent of them did not attend any kind of school. They instead were assisting their mothers in completing thread cutting work. Government schools were lacking across the areas where the survey took place. On top of that, dearth of documents and government schools mostly being Gujarati-medium prevented migrants from admitting their children there. Though a few Odiya medium schools were there, they had classes only upto 8th standard, thus, forcing children of migrants to enter the workforce after that. Roughly 15 percent children had attended anganwadis at some point. Approximately 14 percent of the children were not immunised at all.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Almost 36 percent of the respondents (55 respondents) earned in the income bracket of Rs.15,000-Rs.17000 per month. Single migrant workers remitted 40-60 percent of their incomes to their families back home. This remittance is done mostly informally by taking the help of local shopkeepers, who charge Rs.10 to Rs.20 for every Rs.1,000 transaction through net banking. Only 21 percent of the workers had Surat-based voter card and 31 percent had Surat-based Aadhaar card. Only 21 percent of the workers had access to a bank account. Often women in the family-based migrants took up the work of thread cutting for their husband’s employer, but earned a meagre and undervalued sum of Rs.1,500 to Rs.3,000 per month, despite working for 6 hours per day on average.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Around 98 percent of the workers never had any interaction with any government official in the area and only 8 respondents (5.3 percent) had been to a police station at some point or other. Even then, the police considered the workers as ‘mind dead people’ always under the influence of substance, ready to fight with each other over small issues.</p> <p style="text-align:justify"><strong>Status of migrants and response of the State</strong></p> <p style="text-align:justify">The sections mentioned above looked at the living conditions of migrants workers in Ahmedabad and Surat. The three research objectives for the study undertaken by Aajeevika Bureau are: 1) What is the state of access to basic facilities and services by cicular migrants in Ahmedabad and Surat?; 2) If there is an absence of access to these basic facilities, how do the circular migrants negotiate in order to access basic facilities and services?; and 3) How do urban planning, governance, policies and schemes respond to circular migrants and what implications does these policies have on their lives?</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• From the present report we come to know about the growth model these cities have pursued. The neo-liberal growth model which works on the sole principle of accumulation by dispossession is the reason why the circular migrants do not have access to the basic facilities. The neo-liberal growth path has kept the State outside the domain of welfare and has enabled employers to ignore their responsibilities towards the workers.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• The other reasons which prevent the migrants from accessing the basic facilities provided by the State include lack of information about the welfare measures provided by the State, neglect of circular migrants in many policies and fear of harassment when interfacing with the State. The employers who act according to the neo-liberal growth model and exploit workers to extract more surplus do not provide any basic facilities for the employees. This is a historic injustice done to the labour rights which were obtained after years of constant struggle. The neo-liberal growth model works through granting specific incentives to capital and weakening labour regulations. While semi-permanent migrants and settled urban poor are able to make demands through various mechanisms, it is circular migrants who are not able to make their claims for citizenship rights or labour rights.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• The study shows that in the absence of basic facilities, the migrants form a network of informal connections, often having urban poor as the main service providers, to negotiate for these facilities. This informal economy is location-specific and is rooted in unregulated relationships of simultaneous patronage and exploitation between workers and local actors. The informal economy along with the political economy in which it is embedded has two consequences. Firstly, the strong demand in the informal economy gives no space for negotiation and thus leads to arbitrary access to these facilities. Secondly, this also has high economic, physical and mental costs.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• This nature of informal economy often does not have any space for the migrant workers’ say and thus the space for negotiation is very small. An example for this is the fact that migrants are not able to have a written agreement for rent or electricity despite renting rooms from the same landlord over the years. The nature of informal economy is different and is often accompanied by local politics and power. This leads to varied experiences for the migrants and the costs of access and survival in the city is heavily determined by specific identities such as caste and gender.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• The experiences of migrants in the informal economy are different. The existing ethnic identities mediated by the social networks determine the experience of the migrant. The experience of SC and ST communities with that of the OBC communities in the city of Ahmedabad serves as a perfect example to highlight this point. The relatively stronger social networks and upward social mobility help the OBCs to have a consistent access to the basic facilities and services. The experiences of women migrants are also different. Women have to bear the costs associated with electricity charges, rent and safety of raw materials, besides unpaid domestic labour within the household, sometimes also extending to care work for their neighborhood.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Migrants are not considered as citizens but as consumers. This is due to the dual paradigm of capitalist growth and neo-liberal urbanism. Migrants are not able to demand any access due to the neo-liberal model of urban growth and also because of the negligence of their demands in the policies and schemes of the government. The migrants are not able to make demands to the State and employer through legal recourse and mobilizations. Everyday access to the basic facilities is largely transactional and costs are measured and paid in the various ways described in their narratives.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• The phenomena of intergenerational transfer of poverty is prevalent among circular migrants. Since the migrants are treated as consumers rather than citizens they often do not have much to invest for their children. Children often accompany their parents to the worksite or work in helping their mothers in home-based jobs. Often children start working as early as 14-15 years of age since their parents are not able to work beyond the age of 30-40 years owing to poor conditions of work and lack of proper access to healthcare facilities. Neither the State nor the employer provide childcare or primary education facilities for circular migrants.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• The report looks at the response of the State’s policies towards migrants and highlights the problems associated with these policies. The problems attached with the State has a major role in shaping the lives of migrants. These include: politics around enumeration constrains provisioning and eligibility, sedentary bias in urban policy design and implementation, pricing out by income criteria, static planning versus dynamic urban growth and labour flows, limited autonomy and budgetary powers for urban local bodies, dichotomy between urban governance and labour governance, limited recognition of their presence in cities and unique needs and lack of opportunity to assert their political agency.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Many policies use the Census data for its implementation, Due to definitional issues over last place of residence, migrants are often left out of the Census data collection. Census happen over large time gaps and thus is unable to capture the dynamic flow of migrants that has been characteristic of the informal economy. This means that since migrants are not placed in the Census data itself, they are often deprived of the government schemes.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Another factor that plays a role in the State policies is the sedentary bias of these policies. Many policies are available to an individual only if he/she is able to prove their domicile status. Many a time, the migrants are secluded from these policies as they cannot prove their domicile status. When permanence of residence become the primary determinant of access, migrants are the ones who are excluded from these policies. In some domains like health care, access to primary healthcare is determined on the basis of citizenship while access to welfare schemes is based on the domicile status. This often leads to a differential levels of access for the migrants.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• The income ceiling attached to many schemes make it very difficult for the migrants to access basic facilities. One striking example for this is the Affordable Housing Scheme of PMAY (Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana Scheme Guidelines, 2016). The beneficiary has to bear 50 percent of the costs to secure ownership of the housing units, which is almost Rs.3,00,000/- for even the cheapest housing units, which cost around Rs.6,00,000. This cost is very high for the migrants and thus they are denied access to a facility as basic as housing.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Another important factor that has an effect on the lives of migrants is the static nature of urban planning. For instance, it was in 2002 that Ahmedabad Development Plan was formulated and the next plan will be formulated in the year 2021. There is a gap of almost 20 years and a lot of demographic and other changes has happened over these years. This also implies that there is no feedback mechanism within the planning process to take into account the inflow of migrants.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Paucity of funds which is crucial for the decentralization process to have an impact is also a problem in the planning process. Majority of the development taking place in Ahmedabad and Surat is capital intensive and the local urban governments have very little stake in this compared to the State government. It is also noted that in some instances the local governments use this as an excuse to get away from the problems of marginalized sections. In effect, the urban governments are stripped of powers to have a meaningful impact due to the lack of institutional mechanisms.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• A major reason for the lack of welfare schemes for the migrants is due to the presence of a dichotomy between urban governance and labour governance. Although the exact nature of the dichotomy is not clear, the lack of clarity on the roles to be performed by different actors have huge implications on the lives of the migrants. For example, the Factory Act and the Shops and Establishments Act do not have any special provisions that take care of the housing needs of migrant workers. It is to be noted that many mid-sized hotels and restaurants are registered under the latter Act and many migrants are employed in that sector.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• The migrants are not able to assert themselves in the form of a political agency for their rights. The migrants are stripped of their voting rights and thus do not have any opportunity to assert their political agency. For example, no documentation is necessary to apply for the public stand post for water. However, these applications are often neglected by ward councilors/ an officials, since none of them are accountable to any migrant community. These things play a role and the lack of opportunity of migrants to assert their political agency makes it even worse.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• An important question is why migrants are not considered as citizens. This is because of their nature of to and fro movement between rural and urban areas. They do not have documents in the city and neither do they transfer the documents they have in the village to city as most of them consider village as their home. The formal state and the informal state do not treat circular migrants as legitimate actors who can make claims to the basic rights. There is also deep stigma towards migrants as they are viewed as outsiders and this gets reinforced through their different identities. It is in this context the idea of mobile citizenship captures our attention.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Permanent residence should not be the basis for any policy aimed to improve migrants’ access to basic facilities. A citizenship consistent with their temporary and dynamic presence in the city is mobile citizenship. This idea will help in accommodating multi-locality and flexible mobility between rural and urban areas. The claims of migrants to basic facilities should be based on their role in the participation of building the city rather than the current citizenship paradigm which is based on residence. It is to be noted that the idea of mobile citizenship should not harm a migrant’s desire to settle in the city. Rather it should be such that it is accommodative of migrants who want to retain their deep roots to the village and those who want to have permanent or semi-permanent ties to the city.</p> <p style="text-align:justify"><em><strong>[Balu N Varadaraj and Nabarun Sengupta, who are doing their MA in Development Studies (1st year) from Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Hyderabad, helped the Inclusive Media for Change team in preparing the summary of the report by Aajeevika Bureau. They did this work as part of their summer internship at the Inclusive Media for Change project in June-July 2020.]</strong></em></p> <p style="text-align:justify">**page**</p> <p style="text-align:justify">The economic crisis induced by COVID-19 could be long, deep, and pervasive when viewed through a migration lens. Lockdowns, travel bans, and social distancing have brought global economic activities to a near standstill.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">Host countries face additional challenges in many sectors, such as health and agriculture, that depend on the availability of migrant workers. Migrants face the risk of contagion and also the possible loss of employment, wages, and health insurance coverage.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">The Migration and Development Brief entitled '<a href="/upload/files/COVID-19-Crisis-Through-a-Migration-Lens%281%29.pdf">COVID-19 Crisis Through a Migration Lens</a>' provides a prognosis of how these events might affect global trends in international economic migration and remittances in 2020 and 2021. Considering that migrants tend to be concentrated in urban economic centers (cities), and are vulnerable to infection by the coronavirus, there is a need to include migrants in efforts to fight thecoronavirus. Migrant remittances provide an economic lifeline to poor households in many countries; a reduction in remittance flows could increase poverty and reduce households’ access to much‐needed health services. The crisis could exacerbate xenophobic, discriminatory treatment of migrants, which calls for greater vigilance against such practices.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">The policy brief is largely focused on international migrants, but governments should not ignore the plight of internal migrants. The magnitude of internal migration is about two-and-a-half times that of international migration. Lockdowns, loss of employment, and social distancing prompted a chaotic and painful process of mass return for internal migrants in India and many countries in Latin America. Thus, the COVID-19 containment measures might have contributed to spreading the epidemic. Governments need to address the challenges facing internal migrants by including them in health services and cash transfer and other social programs, and protecting them from discrimination.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">The key findings of the policy brief entitled [inside]COVID-19 Crisis Through a Migration Lens (released on 22nd April, 2020)[/inside], Migration and Development Brief no. 32, Global Knowledge Partnership on Migration and Development (KNOMAD), which is supported by the World Bank, European Commission, Germany’s Federal Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), and the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC), are as follows (please <a href="/upload/files/COVID-19-Crisis-Through-a-Migration-Lens.pdf">click here</a> to access):</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Remittances to India are projected to fall by about 23 percent to reach $64 billion in 2020 from $83 billion in 2019. Remittances grew by 5.5 percent in 2019.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• As the early phases of the crisis unfolded, many international migrants, especially from the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries, returned to countries such as India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh – until travel restrictions halted these flows.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• The number of recorded, primarily low-skilled emigrants from India rose in 2019 relative to the prior year but is expected to decline in 2020 due to the pandemic and oil price declines impacting the GCC countries. In India, the number of low-skilled emigrants seeking mandatory clearance for emigration rose slightly by 8 percent to 3,68,048 in 2019 (Ministry of External Affairs, India).</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• The lockdown in India has impacted the livelihoods of a large proportion of the country’s nearly 40 million internal migrants. Around 50,000–60,000 moved from urban centers to rural areas of origin in the span of a few days. The government set up camps with basic provisions to provide shelter to these migrants in cities and districts of destination, transit, and origin.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• The number of internal migrants is about two-and-a-half times that of international migrants. China and India each have over 100 million internal migrants. For the poorer sections of the population, especially from under‐developed rural areas, migration to urban economic centers provides an escape from poverty and unemployment. Remittances from these migrants, typically smaller amounts than those from international migrants, serve as a lifeline and insurance for families left behind.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Lockdowns, loss of employment, and social distancing prompted a chaotic and painful process of mass return for internal migrants in India and many countries in Latin America. Thus, the COVID-19 containment measures might have contributed to spreading the epidemic. Governments need to address the challenges facing internal migrants by including them in health services and cash transfer and other social programmes, and protecting them from discrimination.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Migrant workers tend to be vulnerable to the loss of employment and wages during an economic crisis in their host country, more so than native-born workers. Lockdowns in labor camps and dormitories can also increase the risk of contagion among migrant workers. Many migrants have been stranded due to the suspension of transport services.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Although the use of digital payment instruments for sending remittances is increasing, poorer and irregular migrants often lack access to online services. They require the origination and distribution of funds through banks, payment cards, or mobile money. Online transactions (like cash-based services) require remittance service providers to exercise vigilance against fraud and financial crime, to comply with anti-money laundering and countering the financing of terrorism (AML/CFT) regulations. However, such due diligence has become difficult amid staff shortages.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• The COVID-19 outbreak has placed many internal migrant workers in dire conditions, many losing their (mostly informal) jobs and unable to return home due to disruption to public transport services and movement restrictions. This is the reality for most migrant workers, especially those working in the informal sector and living in overcrowded slums.</p> <p style="text-align:justify"><img alt="" src="/upload/images/Remittances%20to%20India%202019.jpg" style="height:459px; width:814px" /></p> <p style="text-align:justify">• In India, the government has now set up camps with basic provisions to provide shelter to stranded migrants in cities and districts of destination, transit, and origin. Some countries are providing cash support to affected and vulnerable groups with a specific allocation for internal migrants and returned migrant workers.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">---</p> <p style="text-align:justify">Please <a href="/upload/files/Essays%20COVID-19.pdf">click here</a> to access the essay collection entitled [inside]Borders of an Epidemic: COVID-19 and Migrant Workers, edited by Prof. Ranabir Samaddar, Mahanirban Calcutta Research Group, 2020[/inside].</p> <p style="text-align:justify">**page**</p> <p style="text-align:justify">Stranded Workers Action Network (SWAN) -- comprising more than 70 volunteers mostly from the <a href="http://www.righttofoodcampaign.in/">Right-to-Food</a> and Right-to-Work civil society groups -- started working among migrant workers since the 27th of March, 2020. So far, SWAN volunteers have interacted with 640 groups of stranded migrants adding up to a total of 11,159 workers. All data collected in the rapid assessment action survey and provided in the report entitled [inside]21 Days and Counting: COVID-19 Lockdown, Migrant Workers, and the Inadequacy of Welfare Measures in India (released on 14 April, 2020)[/inside] is for the period 27th March, 2020 - 13th April, 2020.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">At the inception, the objective of SWAN volunteers was to receive distress calls made by the stranded migrants and help them out. However, a collective decision was soon taken to collect data from the migrants while simultaneously addressing their basic needs. </p> <p style="text-align:justify">In the study sample, majority of the migrant workers were found to be stranded in Maharashtra (39,923), followed by Karnataka (3,000) and then Uttar Pradesh (1,618). In Uttar Pradesh, almost all the calls to SWAN volunteers were received from Kanpur area with a few calls from Noida and Ghaziabad regions.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">Through their small initiative, based on assessment of needs, the SWAN initiative disbursed around Rs. 3.87 lakhs in the form of micro transfers (approximately Rs. 205 per person) to groups of migrants. So far, 203 people have made financial contributions in this endeavour. Several distressed people have re-approached the SWAN volunteers for more money since they were not able to access government supplies and exhausted all their resources. The responses of local administration in the states vary starkly.</p> <p style="text-align:justify"><strong>Profiling the stranded migrant workers:</strong></p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Out of 11,159 stranded migrant workers SWAN volunteers spoke with, 1,643 were women and children.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Roughly 79 percent were daily wage factory/ construction workers, 8 percent were non-group based daily wage earners like drivers, domestic help etc. and 8 percent were self-employed like vendors, zari workers etc. (This is out of 3,900 stranded workers for whom SWAN volunteers could collect this data).</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• The average daily wage in the sample was Rs. 402. The median daily wage was Rs. 400.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• About 28 percent of those who reached out to SWAN volunteers were originally from Jharkhand, about a quarter were from Bihar and about 13 percent were from Uttar Pradesh.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• A small percentage of those stranded had just recently migrated to a different state for work, and had barely started work when the lockdown was announced.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">Despite some meaningful state orders, the workers’ testimonies at the time they reached out to SWAN volunteers present a sombre picture, according to the present report.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">The key findings of the report entitled <a href="https://im4change.org/upload/files/swanreport_final.pdf">21 Days and Counting</a>: <a href="https://im4change.org/upload/files/swanreport_final.pdf">COVID-19 Lockdown</a>, <a href="https://im4change.org/upload/files/swanreport_final.pdf">Migrant Workers</a>, <a href="https://im4change.org/upload/files/swanreport_final.pdf">and the</a> <a href="https://im4change.org/upload/files/swanreport_final.pdf">Inadequacy of Welfare Measures</a> <a href="https://im4change.org/upload/files/swanreport_final.pdf">in India</a> are as follows (please <a href="https://im4change.org/upload/files/swanreport_final.pdf">click here</a> to access):</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Almost 50 percent of workers had rations left for less than 1 day.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Nearly 96 percent had not received rations from the government and 70 percent had not received any cooked food.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Roughly 78 percent of people had less than Rs. 300 left with them.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Around 89 percent had not been paid by their employers at all during the lockdown.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Approximately 44 percent of the calls received from stranded migrants were “SOS” with no money or rations left or had skipped previous meal.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• The rate of hunger exceeded the rate of relief. The percentage of people who said they have less than 1 day of rations increased from 36 percent to 50 percent in the third week of lockdown while the percentage of people who received government rations increased from 1 percent to only 4 percent in the third week of lockdown.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• The percentage of people who did not get cooked food from the government or any local organisation decreased from 80 percent to about 70 percent from the end of second week post lockdown to the end of third week post lockdown.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• The figures of 0.6 million migrants who are in relief shelters and 2.2 million migrants who have been provided food, mentioned in the status report filed by the government in the Supreme Court are just another indication of gross underprovisioning for migrants during the lockdown.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• There is a statutory obligation to record migrant labour in many legislations that is binding on the central and state governments such as the National Disaster Management Act (2005), the Interstate Migrant Worker Act (1979), and the Street Vendors Act (2014), among others. Further there are other wage laws which mandate that workers are entitled to the payment of full and timely wages, to displacement allowance, a home journey allowance including payment of wages during the journey. It is the government’s responsibility to ensure compliance of these laws for a safe and secure working environment for migrant workers.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">**page**</p> <p style="text-align:justify">The National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER) released the results of its first round of the Delhi National Capital Region Coronavirus Telephone Survey (DCVTS), on 12th April, 2020. The study, conducted by NCAER’s National Data Innovation Centre uses a scientifically designed rapid telephone survey in both the urban and rural parts of Delhi NCR to assess:</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• people’s knowledge of the Coronavirus</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• people’s attitudes and perceptions towards the risk of a Coronavirus infection</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• preventive and control measures, especially social distancing, and the feasibility of adhering to them</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• the impact of the Coronavirus pandemic on people’s livelihoods, income, social life, and access to essential items.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">The DCVTS interviewed a representative random sample of some 1,750 adults covering the entire Delhi NCR, comprising 31 districts spread across the four states of Delhi, Haryana, Rajasthan, and Uttar Pradesh, during 3rd-6th April, 2020.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">Please <a href="/upload/files/NCAER%201st%20round%20telephonic%20survey.pdf">click here</a> to access the key findings of the [inside]First Round of Delhi National Capital Region Coronavirus Telephone Survey conducted by NCAER (released on 12th April, 2020)[/inside].</p> <p style="text-align:justify">**page**</p> <p style="text-align:justify">Please <a href="https://im4change.org/upload/files/Voices%20of%20the%20invisible%20citizens_April_2020_JS.pdf">click here</a> to access the report entitled [inside]Voices of the Invisible Citizens: A Rapid Assessment of the Impact of COVID-19 Lockdown on Internal Migrant Workers -- Recommendations for the State, Industry & Philanthropies (released in April 2020)[/inside].</p> <p style="text-align:justify">The report prepared by the NGO Jan Sahas -- working with more than 1.20 lakh migrant workers -- is the result of telephonic interviews with 3,196 migrant construction workers from North and Central India (namely Madhaya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Delhi and other states). The data arrived at from the telephonic survey paints a gloomy picture reflecting negligence and apathy.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">The key findings of the report are as follows:</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Almost 55 percent of the workers surveyed earned between Rs. 200-Rs. 400 per day to support an average family size of four persons.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Nearly 42 percent of the workers mentioned that they had no ration left even for a day, let alone for the duration of 21-days lockdown.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• The telephonic survey demonstrates that 14 percent labourers did not have ration cards. So, the report writers have recommended immediate measures to be undertaken by the Centre and states to provide them ration to prevent hunger deaths.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Roughly 33 percent of the respondents interviewed said that they were still stuck in destination cities due to the lockdown with little or no access to food, water and money.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• A staggering 94 percent of the workers (viz. over 51 million labourers) did not have the Building and Other Construction Workers (BOCW) identity cards, which ruled out the possibility of availing any of the benefits that the states have declared from their Rs. 32,000 crore BOCW corpus.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• The present report highlights the structural flaws in the beneficiary identification systems that are probably going to get in the way of the subsidy and relief reaching migrant workers.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Telephonic interviews reveal that 17 percent of labourers did not have bank accounts. So, the report writers have recommended that the government should immediately explore multiple options of ensuring economic benefits reach migrants on time -- probably through flexibility in options of availing economic relief either through Jan Dhan accounts, Aadhaar identification and cash payment at doorstep using Gram Panchayat and postal offices.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Around 31 percent of workers in the telephonic survey mentioned that they had taken loans and they would find it difficult to repay that without being in jobs.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• The survey demonstrates that almost 90 percent of labourers had already lost their source of income in the last 1-3 weeks (just prior to the time when the present study was conducted i.e. 27th-29th March, 2020).</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Roughly 62 percent workers did not have any information about the emergency welfare measures announced by the government for them and nearly 37 percent workers did not know how to access the existing schemes. </p> <p style="text-align:justify">• The construction sector contributes to around 9 percent of the country's GDP and employs the highest number of migrant workers across India with 55 million daily-wage workers. Every year around nine million workers move from rural areas to urban cities in search of work within construction sites and factories.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">**page**</p> <p style="text-align:justify">Please <a href="tinymce/uploaded/Human%20Cost%20of%20Sugar_Maharashtra%20Case.pdf" title="Human Cost of Sugar_Maharashtra Case">click here</a> to access the Oxfam India Discussion Paper titled [inside]Human Cost of Sugar: Living and Workiing Conditions of Migrant Cane-cutters in Maharashtra (released in February 2020)[/inside].</p> <p style="text-align:justify"><strong>---</strong></p> <p style="text-align:justify">The India Migration Now’s [inside]Interstate Migrants Policy Index (IMPEX) 2019[/inside] is an index to rank and compare all the states/ UTs of India with respect to state policies on integration of interstate migrants. It uses a basket of indicators to evaluate state-level policies needed to facilitate the integration of interstate migrants. The index examines policies of states through the lens of migrant welfare.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">The IMPEX has been adapted from the Migrant Integration Policy Index (MIPEX) that was created by CIDOB-Barcelona Centre for International Affairs and MPG-Migration Policy Group, and is a variant of the same.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">The IMPEX is based on 8 policy areas: ‘Labour Market’, ‘Education’, ‘Children’ Rights’, ‘Social Benefits’, ‘Political Participation’, ‘Housing’, ‘Identity and Registration’, and ‘Health and Sanitation’. Each policy area is further broken down into policy dimensions, which are further broken down into policy indicators (total 63 policy indicators).</p> <p style="text-align:justify">The average score of all indicators per dimension gives a dimension score. The average score of all dimensions yields a policy area score and finally, the average score of all the policy areas gives the final state level score.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">Documents like State Legislations and Rules, Government Orders, Schemes/ Drives, Government Policy Documents, Reputed Secondary Sources and Directly Querying relevant Government Departments were used to evaluate the states’ policies towards interstate migrants.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">The key findings of the India Migration Now’s Interstate Migrants Policy Index (IMPEX) 2019 (released in 2019), are as follows (please click <a href="https://indiamigrationnow.org/impex-2019/">here</a>, <a href="https://im4change.org/latest-news-updates/how-state-governments-disenfranchise-interstate-migrants-in-india-varun-aggarwal-priyansha-singh-and-rohini-mitra-4687893.html">here</a>, <a href="/upload/files/Impex%20data%20for%20uploading%281%29.pdf">here</a>, <a href="/upload/files/IMPEX%202019%20Dashboard.jpg">here</a> and <a href="/upload/files/7%20State%20IMPEX%20evaluation.pdf">here</a> to access):</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• India Migration Now’s Interstate Migrants Policy Index (IMPEX) 2019 score is 37 on a scale of 0-100 for India.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Among states/ UTs, Kerala has the highest overall IMPEX score of 63, which is much higher than the national average. Kerala also ranks highest in 4 out of eight policy areas, namely ‘Education’ (85), ‘Children’s Rights’ (75), ‘Health and Sanitation’ (83), and ‘Social Benefits’ (54).</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Goa and Rajasthan both follow Kerala on the index with a score of 51 each (far lesser than Kerala, i.e. by 12 points).</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Manipur fares the worst in the index with a score of 19. The state scored the lowest in the policy areas ‘Social Benefits’ (zero), ‘Health and Sanitation’ (4) and ‘Identity and Registration’ (9).</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• States/ UTs like Maharashtra (44), Delhi (34) and Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat and Haryana (35 each), which have the highest interstate migration as per the migration data from Census 2011 (in the same order), did not fare well in terms of IMPEX 2019. Four of these states have a score lower than the national average (37). Policies of these states affect the welfare of most interstate migrants in India since they receive a large number of migrants every year.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Among the eight policy areas, India has scored <a href="https://im4change.org/upload/files/Impex%20data%20for%20uploading%281%29.pdf">poorly relative</a> to other policy areas in case of ‘Children’s Rights’ (average score of 25), ‘Social Benefits’ (average score of 25) and ‘Housing’ (average score of 27), whereas it performed <a href="https://im4change.org/upload/files/Impex%20data%20for%20uploading%281%29.pdf">relatively better</a> in case of ‘Identity and Registration’ (average score of 65) and ‘Labour Market’ (average score of 55).</p> <p style="text-align:justify"> </p> <p style="text-align:justify"><strong>Identity and Registration</strong></p> <p style="text-align:justify">• As compared to other policy areas, India has fared best in the policy area ‘Identity and Registration’ with a score of 65.<br /> <br /> • The ‘Identification and Registration’ policy area includes conditions for acquisition of status, security of status rights, and state residency status rights.<br /> <br /> • The 3 worst performers in the ‘Identification and Registration’ policy area are Manipur (9), Odisha (35) and Bihar (43), whereas the 3 best performers are Punjab (89), Uttar Pradesh (83) and Gujarat (81).</p> <p style="text-align:justify"> </p> <p style="text-align:justify"><strong>Labour Market</strong></p> <p style="text-align:justify">• In the policy area ‘Labour Market’, the country has an average score of 55.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• The policy area ‘Labour Market’ reflects the states’ policies on access to the labour market, facilitation of access and workers’ rights.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Uttarakhand (28) and Karnataka, Nagaland, Chhattisgarh and Manipur (33 each) are the 5 worst performing states in the policy area ‘Labour Market’. States/ UTs that have performed relatively better than the rest in the policy area 'Labour Market' are Sikkim (78) and Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Mizoram and Rajasthan (72 each).</p> <p style="text-align:justify"> </p> <p style="text-align:justify"><strong>Social Benefits</strong> </p> <p style="text-align:justify">• According to a paper written by India Migration Now and Migration Policy Group, social benefits are not accessible to persons who are mobile and are not staying at the place of their origin/ actual residence. The policy area ‘Social Benefits’ includes eligibility, facilitation of access and measures to achieve change.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• The states/ UTs that have performed better than the rest in the policy area ‘Social Benefits’ are Kerala (54), Madhya Pradesh (53) and Maharashtra (50). The states/ UTs that have performed poorer than the rest in the policy area ‘Social Benefits’ are Uttar Pradesh, Meghalaya and Manipur (zero each).</p> <p style="text-align:justify"> </p> <p style="text-align:justify"><strong>Children’s Rights</strong></p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Children are a vulnerable group during interstate migration as their access to social security and education is affected because of migrating from one place/ state to another place/ state. The policy area ‘Children’s Rights’ include facilitation of rights and policies, measures to achieve change and schemes/ policies.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• The states/ UTs that have performed worse than the rest in the policy area ‘Children’s Rights’ are Tripura (6), Jharkhand (6), Karnataka (8) and Chhattisgarh (8). The states/ UTs that have performed better than the rest in the policy area ‘Children’s Rights’ are Kerala (75), Goa (50) and Rajasthan (44). </p> <p style="text-align:justify"> </p> <p style="text-align:justify"><strong>Political Participation</strong></p> <p style="text-align:justify">• The policy area ‘Political Participation’ includes electoral rights, consultative bodies and implementation policies.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• The state that has performed better than the rest in the policy area ‘Political Participation’ is <a href="https://im4change.org/upload/files/IMPEX%202019%20Dashboard.jpg">Rajasthan (50)</a>. The state that has performed poorer than the rest in the policy area ‘Political Participation’ is <a href="https://im4change.org/upload/files/IMPEX%202019%20Dashboard.jpg">Mizoram (zero)</a>.</p> <p style="text-align:justify"> </p> <p style="text-align:justify"><strong>Education</strong><br /> <br /> • The policy area of ‘Education’ assesses the states’ policies on access to education, facilitation of access and measures to achieve change.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• India’s average score in the policy area ‘Education’ is 33.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• The states/ UTs that have performed better than the rest in the policy area ‘Education’ are Kerala (85), Andhra Pradesh (69) and Odisha (48). The states/ UTs that have performed poorer than the rest in the policy area ‘Education’ are Tripura (7), Delhi (8) and West Bengal (15).</p> <p style="text-align:justify"> </p> <p style="text-align:justify"><strong>Health and Sanitation</strong></p> <p style="text-align:justify">• The policy area of ‘Health and Sanitation’ assesses the states’ policies on entitlement to health and sanitation services, facilitation of access and measures to achieve change.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• The states/ UTs that have performed better than the rest in the policy area ‘Health and Sanitation’ are Kerala (83), Andhra Pradesh (79) and Tamil Nadu (71). The states/ UTs that have performed poorer than the rest in the policy area ‘Health and Sanitation’ are Manipur (4), Jharkhand (8) and Uttarakhand and Gujarat (17 each).</p> <p style="text-align:justify"> </p> <p style="text-align:justify"><strong>Housing</strong></p> <p style="text-align:justify">• The policy area ‘Housing’ covers access to housing, facilitation of access and measures to achieve change.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• India has an average score of 27 in the policy area ‘Housing’.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">• The states/ UTs that have performed better than the rest in the policy area ‘Housing’ are Bihar (64) and Assam and Rajasthan (58 each). The state that has performed the worst in the policy area ‘Housing’ is Chhattisgarh (zero).</p> <p style="text-align:justify"> </p> <p style="text-align:justify"><strong><em>[Meghana Myadam, who is doing her MA in Development Studies (1st year) from Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Hyderabad, assisted the Inclusive Media for Change team in preparing the summary of the report by India Migration Now. She did this work as part of her summer internship at the Inclusive Media for Change project in July 2020.]</em></strong></p> <p style="text-align:justify">**page**</p> <p style="text-align:justify">Please <a href="/upload/files/Report%20of%20the%20Working%20Group%20on%20Migration%20released%20in%20January%202017.pdf">click here</a> to access the [inside]Report of the Working Group on Migration (released in January 2017)[/inside], prepared under the chairpersonship of Prof. Partha Mukhopadhyay (Centre for Policy Research), Ministry of Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation.</p> <p style="text-align:justify"><strong>----</strong><br /> According to the [inside]Economic Survey 2016-17 (released in January, 2017)[/inside] (please <a href="https://im4change.org/docs/641Economic-Survey-2016-17.pdf">click here</a> to access):<br /> <br /> • New estimates of labour migration in India have revealed that inter-state labor mobility is significantly higher than previous estimates.<br /> <br /> • The study based on the analyses of new data sources and new methodologies also shows that the migration is accelerating and was particularly pronounced for females. The data sources used for the study are the 2011 Census and railway passenger traffic flows of the Ministry of Railways and new methodologies including the Cohort-based Migration Metric (CMM) .<br /> <br /> • The new Cohort-based Migration Metric (CMM) shows that inter-state labor mobility averaged 5-6.5 million people between 2001 and 2011, yielding an inter-state migrant population of about 60 million and an inter-district migration as high as 80 million.<br /> <br /> • The first-ever estimates of internal work-related migration using railways data for the period 2011-2016 indicate an annual average flow of close to 9 million migrant people between the states. Both these estimates are significantly greater than the annual average flow of about 4 million suggested by successive Censuses and higher than previously estimated by any study.<br /> <br /> • The second finding from this new study is that migration for work and education is accelerating. In the period 2001-2011 the rate of growth of labour migrants nearly doubled relative to the previous decade, rising to 4.5 per cent per annum. Interestingly, the acceleration of migration was particularly pronounced for females and increased at nearly twice the rate of male migration in the 2000s. There is also a doubling of the stock of inter-state out migrants to nearly 12 million in the 20-29 year old cohort alone. One plausible hypothesis for this acceleration in migration is that the rewards (in the form of prospective income and employment opportunities) have become greater than the costs and risks that migration entails. Higher growth and a multitude of economic opportunities could therefore have been the catalyst for such an acceleration of migration.<br /> <br /> • Third, and a potentially exciting finding, for which there is tentative but no conclusive evidence, is that while political borders impede the flow of people, language does not seem to be a demonstrable barrier to the flow of people. For example, a gravity model indicates that political borders depress the flows of people, reflected in the fact that migrant people flows within states are 4 times than migrant people flows across states. However, not sharing Hindi as a common language appears not to create comparable frictions to the movement of goods and people across states.<br /> <br /> • Fourth, the patterns of flows of migrants found in this study are broadly consistent with what is expected - less affluent states see more out migration migrating out while the most affluent states are the largest recipients of migrants. A strong positive relationship between the CMM scores and per capita incomes at the state level could be found. Relatively poorer states such as Bihar and Uttar Pradesh have high net out-migration. Seven states take positive CMM values reflecting net in-migration: Goa, Delhi, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Karnataka.</p> <p style="text-align:justify"> </p> <p style="text-align:justify">• Fifth, the costs of moving for migrants are about twice as much as they are for goods – another confirmation of popular conception.<br /> <br /> • Policy actions to sustain and maximize the benefits of migration include: ensuring portability of food security benefits, providing healthcare and a basic social security framework for migrants – potentially through an inter-state self-registration process. While there do currently exist multiple schemes that have to do with migrant welfare, they are implemented at the state level, and hence require greater inter-state coordination. </p> <p style="text-align:justify"> </p> <p style="text-align:justify">**page**</p> <p style="text-align:justify">According to the [inside]Concept Note prepared for the national seminar entitled: 'Contesting Spaces & Negotiating Development: A Dialogue on Domestic Migrants, State and Inclusive Citizenship in India’ (25-26 March 2016)[/inside], to be held at Center for Public Policy, Habitat & Human Development, School of Development Studies, Tata Institute of Social Sciences (Mumbai) (please <a href="tinymce/uploaded/Concept%20Note%20TISS.pdf" title="Concept Note TISS">click here</a> to access the Concept Note):<br /> <br /> • Some estimates shows that there are around 100 million temporary domestic migrants in India.<br /> <br /> • According to Census of India 2001 and National Sample Survey Organization (NSSO) 2007-08 estimates, three out of ten Indians can be classified as domestic migrants who have moved across district or state lines. In 2001, 309 million persons were migrants based on place of last residence, which constituted about 30 percent of the total population of the country. (Data from the latest census is unavailable).<br /> <br /> • The major reasons for migration have been work/employment, business, and education, marriage, moved at birth, and moved with family/household. Scholars argue that government data tends to underestimate the flows of seasonal/circular migration, a stream dominated by people belonging to socio-economically deprived groups with an extremely low asset base and poor educational attainments and skill sets. It is this floating segment of the migrant population, mostly comprising people working seasonally in brick kilns, construction, plantations, mines and factories that is most vulnerable to exploitation by labour contractors and faces relatively greater hurdles in participating in elections and politics.<br /> <br /> • Domestic migrants, especially so-called un-domiciled domestic migrants, suffer from a lack of formal residency rights; lack of identity proof; lack of adequate housing; low-paid, insecure or hazardous work; no access to state-provided welfare services including denial of rights to participate in elections even though elections in India have acquired the mythical status of ‘the greatest show in Earth’. Thus, these exclusionary practices lead to their disenfranchisement and treatment as second-class citizens.<br /> <br /> **page**</p> <p style="text-align:justify"><br /> The document entitled “Social Inclusion of Internal Migrants in India” (2013) acts as an overview of existing innovative practices that increase the inclusion of internal migrants in society and act as a living document that would inspire and assist professionals and governments officials in their attempts to facilitate the social inclusion of migrants in India. Through this publication, UNESCO wishes to increase visibility and recognition of the internal migration phenomenon in India, disseminate evidence based experiences and practices, and provoke a paradigm shift in the perception and portrayal of migrants by addressing myths and misconceptions and creating awareness on the benefits of migrants’ inclusion in society.<br /> <br /> According to the report entitled: [inside]Social Inclusion of Internal Migrants in India (2013)[/inside], by UNICEF, UNESCO and Sir Dorabji Tata Trust (Please <a href="tinymce/uploaded/Social%20Inclusion%20of%20Internal%20Migrants%20in%20India%20UNESCO.pdf" title="Internal Migration">click here</a> to download the report):<br /> <br /> • The report focuses on ten key areas for a better social inclusion of migrants: Registration and Identity; Political and Civic Inclusion; Labour Market Inclusion; Legal Aid and Dispute Resolution; Inclusion of Women Migrants; Inclusion through Access to Food; Inclusion through Housing; Educational Inclusion; Public Health Inclusion and Financial Inclusion.<br /> <br /> <strong><em>Magnitude of Internal Migration </em></strong><br /> <br /> • In India, internal migration accounts for a large population of 309 million as per Census of India 2001, and by more recent estimates, 326 million (NSSO 2007-2008), nearly 30 per cent of the total population. Internal migrants, of which 70.7 per cent are women, are excluded from the economic, cultural, social and political life of society and are often treated as second-class citizens.<br /> <br /> • Marriage is given by women respondents as the most prominent reason for migrating: cited by 91.3 per cent of women in rural areas and 60.8 per cent of women in urban areas (NSSO 2007–08). Women’s migration for employment also remains under-reported due to cultural factors, which emphasize social rather than economic roles for women (Shanti, 2006), and contribute towards women becoming invisible economic actors of society.<br /> <br /> • About 30 per cent of internal migrants in India belong to the youth category in the 15-29 years age group (Rajan, 2013; Census, 2001). Child migrants are estimated at approximately 15 million (Daniel, 2011; Smita, 2011). Furthermore, several studies have pointed out that migration is not always permanent and seasonal and circular migration is widespread, especially among the socio-economically deprived groups, such as the Scheduled Castes (SCs), Scheduled Tribes (STs) and Other Backward Castes (OBCs), who are asset-poor and face resource and livelihood deficits (Deshingkar and Akter, 2009).<br /> <br /> • Lead source states of internal migrants include Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Odisha, Uttarakhand and Tamil Nadu, whereas key destination areas are Delhi, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Haryana, Punjab and Karnataka. There are conspicuous migration corridors within the country: Bihar to National Capital Region, Bihar to Haryana and Punjab, Uttar Pradesh to Maharashtra, Odisha to Gujarat, Odisha to Andhra Pradesh and Rajasthan to Gujarat.<br /> <br /> • Migration in India is primarily of two types: (a) Long-term migration, resulting in the relocation of an individual or household and (b) Short-term or seasonal/circular migration, involving back and forth movement between a source and destination. Estimates of short-term migrants vary from 15 million (NSSO 2007–2008) to 100 million (Deshingkar and Akter, 2009). Yet, macro surveys such as the Census fail to adequately capture flows of short-term migrants and do not record secondary reasons for migration.<br /> <br /> • Internal migrants constitute about one-third of India’s urban population, and this proportion has been increasing: from 31.6 per cent in 1983 to 33 per cent in 1999-2000, and to 35 percent in 2007-08 (NSSO 2007-08). The increase in the migration rate to urban areas has primarily occurred due to an increase in migration rate for females, which has been rising from 38.2 percent in 1993 to 41.8 per cent in 1999-2000 to 45.6 per cent in 2007-08.<br /> <br /> • Male migration rate in urban areas has remained constant over this period (between 26 and 27 per cent), but employment-related reasons for migration of males increased from 42 per cent in 1993 to 52 per cent in 1999-2000 to 56 per cent in 2007-08.<br /> <br /> • The rising contribution of cities to India’s GDP would not be possible without migration and migrant workers. Some of the important sectors in which migrants work include: construction, brick kiln, salt pans, carpet and embroidery, commercial and plantation agriculture and variety of jobs in urban informal sectors such as vendors, hawkers, rickshaw puller, daily wage workers and domestic work (Bhagat, 2012).<br /> <br /> <strong><em>Contribution of migrants to the economy</em></strong><br /> <br /> • An independent study examining the economic contribution of circular migrants* based on major migrant employing sectors in India revealed that they contribute 10 per cent to the national GDP (Deshingkar and Akter, 2009).<br /> <br /> • According to Tumbe (2011), estimates of the domestic remittance market were roughly USD 10 billion in 2007-08. With rising incomes, migrant remittances can encourage investment in human capital formation, particularly increased expenditure on health, and also to some extent education (Deshingkar and Sandi, 2012).<br /> <br /> <strong><em>Situation of women migrants</em></strong><br /> <br /> • Women migrants face double discrimination, encountering difficulties peculiar to migrants, coupled with their specific vulnerability as victims of gender-based violence, and physical, sexual or psychological abuse, exploitation and trafficking.<br /> <br /> • Women migrant workers' lack of education, experience and skills leaves them vulnerable to exploitation from illegal placement agencies and touts.<br /> <br /> • Estimates indicate that the number of domestic workers in India vary from 4.75 million (NSS 2004-05) to 6.4 million (Census 2001) (MoLE, 2011).<br /> <br /> • The National Commission for Enterprises in the Unorganised Sector has estimated that out of four million domestic workers, 92 per cent are women, girls and children, and 20 per cent are under 14 years of age. However, other sources suggest that these figures are underestimated and that the number of domestic workers in the country could be much higher. The sector is said to have grown by 222 percent since 1999-2000 and is the largest sector of female employment in urban India, involving approximately 3 million women (MoLE, 2011).<br /> <br /> • NSSO data (2007-08) indicates that nearly 60 per cent of female migrants in rural areas were self-employed and 37 per cent were casual workers, whereas in urban areas, 43.7 per cent of women migrants were self-employed and 37 per cent were engaged in regular jobs (Srivastava, 2012).<br /> <br /> <strong><em>Rights of migrants</em></strong><br /> <br /> • The constraints faced by migrants are many-lack of formal residency rights; lack of identity proof; lack of political representation; inadequate housing; low-paid, insecure or hazardous work; extreme vulnerability of women and children to trafficking and sex exploitation; exclusion from state-provided services such as health and education and discrimination based on ethnicity, religion, class or gender.<br /> <br /> • Most internal migrants are denied basic rights. Despite the fact that approximately three out of every ten Indians are internal migrants, internal migration has been accorded very low priority by the government, and existing policies of the Indian state have failed in providing legal or social protection to this vulnerable group. This can be attributed in part to a serious data gap on the extent, nature and magnitude of internal migration.<br /> <br /> • In the absence of proofs of identity and residence, internal migrants are unable to claim social protection entitlements and remain excluded from government sponsored schemes and programmes. Children face disruption of regular schooling, adversely affecting their human capital formation and contributing to the inter-generational transmission of poverty.<br /> <br /> • Internal migrants suffer from a high HIV burden (3.6 per cent), which is ten times the HIV prevalence among the general population (NACO, 2010). Their vulnerability has been attributed to personal isolation, enhanced loneliness and sexual risk taking, lack of HIV awareness and of social support networks at both source and destination (Borhade, 2012). In addition to the exclusion they face from the local community at destinations due to their ethnicity, linguistic differences, religious beliefs and socio-economic conditions, migrants living with HIV and AIDS face double discrimination and stigmatisation. Migrant women living with HIV suffer the most from multiple and intersectional vulnerabilities (IOM, 2009).<br /> <br /> • According to a study, Political Inclusion of Seasonal Migrant Workers in India: Perceptions, Realities and Challenges (Sharma et al, 2010), nearly 60 percent of respondents reported having missed voting in elections at least once because they were away from home in search of work. Additionally, 54 per cent of respondents claimed that they had returned to their home villages during elections with the intention of voting, of which 74 per cent returned specifically for elections of the panchayat (village level institution of local self-government).<br /> <br /> • Migrants do the dirty, dangerous and degrading jobs which the locals do not want to do. It is "different from stealing jobs. By not accepting migrants or providing facilities to them, governments are merely increasing the risk and costs of migration and reducing its development potential.<br /> <br /> <em><strong>Note: </strong>* The process of “circular migration” implies circularity, that is, a relatively open form of (cross-border) mobility. Such migration might involve seasonal stays or temporary work patterns.</em></p> <p style="text-align:justify">**page**</p> <p style="text-align:justify">According to the report titled: [inside]Migration and Gender in India by Indrani Mazumdar, N Neetha and Indu Agnihotri[/inside], Economic and Political Weekly, March 9, 2013, Vol xlvIiI No 10 (<a href="tinymce/uploaded/Migration_and_Gender_in_India_2_1.pdf" title="Migration and Gender">click here</a> to access):<br /> <br /> • This paper presents a sketch of the key findings of a research project on Gender and Migration at the Centre for Women’s Development Studies. The results of a series of primary surveys conducted between 2009 and 2011 across 20 states have been consolidated to present a summary meso-level view of types of migration, patterns of female labour migration, conditions of work and civic life of women migrant workers. The sectoral composition of paid migrant workers based on the latest available migration survey by the National Sample Survey Office is presented for contextual background, alongside a critical interrogation of the official data’s gender insensitive concepts. Rising rates of marriage migration juxtaposed against falling female work participation rates and the spread of dowry are also touched upon.<br /> <br /> • The Centre for Women’s Development Studies' (CWDS) meso-level consolidation of a series of primary micro-surveys conducted with a common pair of questionnaires between 2009 and 2011 (over consecutive as well as overlapping periods) spanned 20 of the country’s 28 states. It includes comprehensive surveys in 43 village sites in 17 of these states, combined with surveys in select sectors with concentrations of migrant women workers in both urban and rural areas, across all 20 states. Individual-based questionnaires covered 3,073 female migrant workers drawn from village and sector sites and 1,934 male migrant workers (mostly outmigrants) drawn only from village sites. Household characteristics/ details and brief profiles of household members were gathered separately for each of these migrants plus 673 households without any economic migrants from the village sites for comparison.<br /> <br /> <strong><em>Types of migration</em></strong><br /> <br /> • Strikingly, only 42% of the women migrants and 36% of the males were long-term migrants or in other words, 58% of female labour migration and even more of male labour migration appears to be of a temporary nature. (In contrast, the picture that emerges from the NSS (2007-08) indicates temporary migration definitively for only one-third of all labour migration in India, and perhaps a little more if return migrants are also added).<br /> <br /> • Twenty per cent of the migrating women and 23% of the migrating men were circular migrants (longer durations exceeding four months and shorter durations of less than four months in each spell), 9% were short-term seasonal migrants (distinguished from circular both in terms of duration as well as in spending the major part of the working year in their village/place of origin) for both males and females, 2% of the female and 3% of the male migrants were irregular short-term migrants (i.e, outside any established pattern or occupation and driven by abnormal contingencies/desperation). Since all of the above are forms of short-term migration, when taken together, the CWDS surveys suggest that the share of short-term migration at around one-third of labour migration is far greater than accounted for by the NSS.<br /> <br /> • After excluding pre-selected female migrant intensive sectors, the share of short-term migration was much higher at 41% among women migrants and 53% among male migrants, which highlights the reality of large-scale migration from village India beyond just the urbanisation paradigm and indeed a degree of pullback that is rarely touched upon in migration theories.<br /> <br /> • Six per cent of the women and 7% of the men were long distance commuters (across distances outside the perimeter of normal movement for work around any village or within any town/city), 4% of the women migrants and 2% of the men were migrants for family care (for unpaid care work separated from marriage migration with unspecified purposes). Medium-term migration (i.e, for a broadly fixed period of up to a few years in any particular industry/occupation) accounted for 16% of the women migrants and 18% among the men. It is interesting that when village sites alone constituted the universe, the proportions of medium-term migrants dropped sharply to 9% for women, but increased to 21% for men.<br /> <br /> <strong><em>Gendered Patterns of Labour Migration</em></strong><br /> <br /> • 59% of women migrants from STs backgrounds and 41% of SCs background were short term and circulatory migrants in comparison to just 18% of migrant women workers of upper caste origin.<br /> <br /> • 39% of women migrants from Other Backward Classes (OBCs) backgrounds were also short term and circulatory migrants, although the majority (65%) were long-term and medium-term migrants in comparison to 43% of SC and 32% of ST women in these latter categories.<br /> <br /> • After migration, 40% of the women workers were in more diversified industry and services in comparison to 51% of the male migrant workers.<br /> <br /> • In rural areas, occupational shifts through migration by women appear to be concentrating in circular migration for brick-making (bhatta workers) across the length and breadth of the country, even though agriculture is the most prominent destination for rural women migrants. The labouring units in brick-making and cane cutting (where female labour is involved) largely comprises male-female pairs (jodis) or family units and generally a cycle of advances and debt-based tying of such labour. Jodi-based wage labour combined with piece rated payment, leaves no scope for independent work/activity and income for women. It was striking that 42% of the rural women migrant workers were involved in such pair, family or ad hoc group-based employment.<br /> <br /> • In urban areas, close to one-third of the migrant women workers (31%) were either unemployed or engaged in only family domestic duties before migration (in comparison to 15% of rural women migrants). Only a small proportion of the urban women migrants had a pre-migration background in agricultural work (13%) and many were in service sector or other diverse jobs even before migration (20% were in paid domestic work and 30% in diversified services before migration). The process of concentration in paid domestic work (whose proportions almost trebled from around 10% before migration to 28% post-migration) was the most gender distinctive feature of urban wards labour migration by women.<br /> <br /> <strong><em>Other Migration Processes</em></strong><br /> <br /> • A little over half of the women migrant workers (rural and urban combined) identified poverty, debt, decline in income, lack of local employment or loss of such employment as their reason for migration. The majority, however (62%), bore their migration costs out of household savings. Women migrated more with family members (43%) while men migrated more alone (43%). Nevertheless, it is significant that close to a quarter of the women (23%) reported having migrated alone and 7% in all female groups, although this is substantially less than the 43% of the men who migrated alone and the 19% who had gone in all male groups. Further, while 25% of the rural and 6% of the urban women migrants were dependent/ mobilised by contractors, 81% of the urban and 63% of the rural women migrants said they migrated independently – whether with families or alone.<br /> <br /> • 72% of the female migrant workers with urban destinations were below 36 years of age in comparison to 63% of the male migrants to urban areas. Similarly 61% of the female migrant workers with rural destinations were below 36 in comparison to 56% of rural male migrants. Most striking was the higher proportion of women migrant workers in the age group 15-25. Thirty-four per cent of the urban female migrant workers were in the 15-25 age group in comparison to 22% of the urban male migrant workers and on a slightly lower scale of difference, 24% of the women with rural destinations were in this age group in comparison to 19% of the rural male migrant workers.<br /> <br /> • While 5% of the female migrant workers and 9% of the male migrants reported having been targets of harassment by local people at destinations, 23% of the women and 20% of the men had experienced violence, threats and being forced to work in the course of migration. Interestingly, among male migrants, contractors were identified as the most common perpetrator, while more than half the women who had faced such harassment/ violence identified the principal employer and the supervisor as the perpetrators.<br /> <br /> • While most women migrant workers migrated with their minor children (67%), only around a quarter of the male migrants (26%) of the male migrant workers took their minor children with them.<br /> <br /> <strong><em>Conditions of Work among Women Migrant Workers</em></strong><br /> <br /> • 78% of rural and 59% of urban women migrant workers were working as unskilled manual labour; 16% and 18% were in skilled manual work in rural and urban areas respectively. A total of 6% of the rural and 23% of the urban women migrants were in a combination of clerical, supervisory, managerial jobs, or work requiring high professional/educational skills (highly skilled). Ten per cent of the urban women migrants were in the last category of the highly skilled in comparison to just 1% of the rural women migrants.<br /> <br /> • Casual labour in the private sector was the most prominent form of pre-migration employment among rural women migrants (41%), whose share also increased post-migration (44%); but it was the share of contract labour that showed the most significant increase from pre to post-migration rising from 13% before migration to 26% after. Of rural female labour migration (i e, after migration), 70% was for casual and contract work.<br /> <br /> • Among urban migrant women workers, the share of regular employment for private employers showed the most striking and maximum increase post-migration (almost doubling from 21% before migration to reach 41% after), although the insecure nature of much of this “regular” employment was evident with 85% of the surveyed urban women migrants reporting they had no maternity leave and 80% had no medical leave.<br /> <br /> • Across the board, the overwhelming majority of the workers – more than 93% in the case of rural women migrants and more than 84% in the case of urban – had no provident fund and no health insurance. The worst situation was, however, in relation to daycare/crèche facilities, to which only 3.4% of the rural women migrants and 4.4% of the urban had any access at all.<br /> <br /> • In rural destinations, the majority of women workers (68%) worked for eight hours and below per day, but in peak season the majority (68%) worked well over eight hours with 41% working above 10 hours of which around half (20%) worked over 12 hours a day. In urban destinations, 78% worked eight hours and below in normal periods, but this dropped to 57% in peak seasons, with 21% working up to 10 hours, 15% from 10 to 12 hours, and 6% above 12 hours.<br /> <br /> <strong><em>Modes of Payment and Wages</em></strong><br /> <br /> • Around 20% of both rural and urban women migrants were on daily wages. The average daily wage/income for these women migrants in rural areas was Rs 136, and in urban areas, it was Rs 141. Prominent among women migrants with rural destinations who were daily wage/income earners were agricultural workers (47%), brick kiln workers (28%)13 and manufacturing workers (8%). In urban areas, construction accounted for 67% of daily wagers, vendors/petty traders for 9% and manufacturing for 7%.<br /> <br /> • In rural areas, 22% of the women migrant workers had monthly payment of wages – of an average amount of Rs 4,778. In urban areas, 64% of the women migrants received wages on a monthly basis – of an average amount of Rs 6,729. Of the women migrants in rural areas, 29% received payment at the end of contracted work periods (mostly brick kiln and agricultural workers).14 Only 4% of the urban women migrants were so paid.<br /> <br /> • Thirty-two per cent of the rural and 45% of the urban women migrants were paid at minimum wage rates, and only 5% of the rural and 11% of the urban received wages above the statutory minimum. Of the rural women migrants 64% and 44% of the urban women migrants received either below the minimum wage or did not know about minimum wages.<br /> <br /> • Among daily wager rural migrants – 13% of the women earned less than Rs 100 in comparison to just 3% of the men, while 23% of the men earned Rs 250 and above in comparison to a mere 0.2% of the women. The same pattern was visible among weekly earners in both rural and urban areas. However, among urban daily wagers, while 17% of the women migrants were earning less than Rs 100 in comparison to just 2% of the men, only 2% of the urban daily wager migrants – men and women – received wages/ incomes of Rs 250 and above. Twenty-eight per cent of the rural women migrants were paid on a weekly basis in comparison to 13% of the urban.<br /> <br /> <strong><em>Of Remittances and Civic Amenities</em></strong><br /> <br /> • Of the women migrants with rural destinations 32%, and 33% of those with urban destinations sent or brought no remittances to their source areas. At the other extreme 9% with rural destinations and 11% with urban destinations remitted their entire incomes.<br /> <br /> • At their destinations, 76% of all the women migrant workers (rural + urban) did not have any ration card, 16% had below poverty line (BPL) cards, less than half a per cent had Antyodaya cards and 7% had above poverty line (APL) cards. In comparison in their source areas, 34% of these migrants had no ration cards, 40% had BPL cards, 6% had Antyodaya cards and 20% had APL cards. Loss of public distribution system (PDS) entitlements through migration was thus quite widespread. It was found that 91% of the women migrant workers had never availed of any public housing scheme, 79% had no National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) job cards, and 96% had never been employed under any public employment programme or scheme.<br /> <br /> • 75% of all the women migrant workers did have electoral cards, but again the majority of them (almost three quarters) had their voting rights at area of origin and only around 28% of those with electoral cards had voting rights at destination areas. Of the women migrants 10% had voted in the last parliamentary elections at destination in comparison to 46% at area of origin. For state assembly elections 13% had voted at destination in comparison to 47% at area of origin. For panchayat/ municipality, again 13% had voted at destination but 52% at area of origin.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">**page**</p> <p style="text-align:justify"> </p> <p style="text-align:justify"> </p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:medium">According to [inside]Migration in India, 2007-08, National Sample Survey[/inside], MOSPI,<br /> Government of India, </span><br /> <a href="http://mospi.nic.in/Mospi_New/upload/nss_press_note_533_15june10.pdf"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:medium">http://mospi.nic.in/Mospi_New/upload/nss_press_note_533_15june10.pdf</span></a><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:medium">: </span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:medium"><em><strong>A. Household migration during last 365 days</strong></em></span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:medium">• Proportion of households migrated to rural areas was very low, nearly 1 per cent. In urban areas, on the other hand, the migrated households constituted nearly 3 percent of all urban households. </span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:medium">• Migration of households was largely confined within State: 78 percent of the migrant households in rural areas and 72 per cent of the migrant households in the urban areas had last usual place of residence within the State.</span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:medium">• Migration of households in both the rural and urban areas was dominated by the migration of households from rural areas. Nearly 57 per cent of urban migrant households migrated from rural areas whereas 29 per cent of rural migrant households migrated from urban areas.</span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:medium">• In both rural and urban areas, majority of the households migrated for employment related reasons. Nearly 55 per cent of the migrant households in rural areas and 67 per cent of the migrant households in the urban areas had migrated for employment related reasons.</span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-size:medium"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><em><strong>B. Migrants</strong></em><br /> <br /> • In India, nearly 29 per cent of the persons were migrants with significant rural-urban and male-female differentials.</span></span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:medium">• The migration rate (proportion of migrants in the population) in the urban areas (35 per cent) was far higher than the migration rate in the rural areas (26 per cent).</span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:medium">• Magnitude of male migration rate was far lower than female migration rate, in both rural and urban areas. In rural areas nearly 48 per cent of the females were migrants while the male migration rate was only 5 per cent, and in the urban areas, the male migration rate was nearly 26 per cent compared to female migration rate of 46 per cent.</span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:medium">• Migration rate in rural areas was lowest among the scheduled tribe (ST), nearly 24 per cent, and it was highest among those classified in the social group ‘others’, nearly 28 per cent.</span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:medium">• In urban areas, migration rate was lowest among other backward class (OBC) nearly 33 per cent, and it was highest among those classified in the social group ‘others’, nearly 38 per cent.</span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:medium">• Migration rate was found to be lowest for bottom MPCE decile class in both rural and urban areas and there is an increasing trend in rate of migration with the increase in level of living, with the migration rate attaining peak in top decile class. Migration rate, for rural male, for the bottom MPCE decile class was nearly 3 per cent and 17 per cent in the top decile class. For rural females, migration rate was 39 per cent in the bottom MPCE decile class and 59 per cent in top decile class.</span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:medium">• For urban males the migration rate for the bottom MPCE decile class was 10 per cent which reached to 46 per cent in top decile class and for urban females the migration rate for the bottom and top decile classes was 36 per cent and 56 per cent, respectively.</span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:medium">• For rural male, migration rate was lowest (nearly 4 per cent) among the ‘not literates’, and it was nearly 14 per cent among those with educational level ‘graduate and above’. For urban males also, it was lowest among the ‘not literates’ (17 per cent), and 38 per cent for those with educational level ‘graduate or above’ level.</span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:medium">• Among the migrants in the rural areas, nearly 91 per cent had migrated from the rural areas and 8 per cent had migrated from the urban areas, whereas among the migrants in the urban areas, nearly 59 per cent migrated from the rural areas and 40 per cent from urban areas.</span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:medium">• Nearly 60 per cent of urban male migrants and 59 per cent of urban female migrants had migrated from rural areas.</span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:medium">• The most prominent reason for female migration in both the rural and urban areas was marriage: for 91 per cent of rural female migrants and 61 per cent of the urban female migrants the reason was marriage.</span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:medium">• The reason for migration for male migrant, was dominated by employment related reasons, in both rural and urban areas. Nearly 29 per cent of rural male migrants and 56 per cent of urban male migrants had migrated due to employment related reasons.</span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:medium">• A higher percentage of the persons were found to be engaged in economic activities after migration: for males the percentage of workers increased from 51 per cent before migration to 63 per cent after migration in rural areas and from 46 per cent to 70 per cent in urban areas, while for females it increased from 20 per cent to 33 per cent in rural areas and from 8 per cent to 14 per cent in urban areas.</span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:medium">• For rural males, self-employment had emerged as main recourse to employment after migration. The share of self-employment in total migrants increased from 16 per cent before migration to 27 per cent after migration, while the shares of regular employees and casual labours remained almost stable, in both before and after migration.</span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:medium">• In case of urban males, the percentage of regular wage/salaried employees has shown a quantum jump (from 18 per cent before migration to 39 per cent after migration), besides an increase in the share of self-employment after migration (from 17 per cent to 22 per cent), and casual labour as a means of employment had reduced in importance after migration (from 11 per cent to 8 per cent).</span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:medium">• Rate of return migration (proportion of return migrants in the population) for males in rural areas was significantly higher than females: 24 per cent for males and 11 per cent for females.</span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:medium">• In the urban areas, the rate of return migration did not differ much for males and females: it was 12 per cent for males and 10 per cent for females.</span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:medium"><em><strong>C. Short-term Migrants</strong></em></span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:medium">• The rate of short-term migration (proportion of short-term migrants in the population) was 1.7 per cent in the rural areas and almost negligible (much less than 1 per cent) in the urban areas. Moreover, in the rural areas, the rate was nearly 3 per cent for the males and less than 1 per cent for females.</span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:medium">• In rural areas, for both males and females short-term migrants, more than half were casual workers in their usual principal activity status.</span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:medium">• The share of the rural self-employed males in total short-term male migration was also significant, nearly 32 per cent, and rural females who were out of labour force in the usual principal activity status, shared nearly 24 per cent of the total short-term female migration.</span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:medium"><em><strong>D. Out- Migrants</strong></em></span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:medium">• Out-migration rate (proportion of out-migration in the population) for males was nearly 9 per cent from rural areas and 5 per cent from urban areas. The rates for females were much higher compared to males in both the rural and urban areas. It was 17 per cent among rural females and 11 per cent among urban females.</span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:medium">• A relatively higher percentage of female out-migrants, from both the rural and urban areas, took up residence within the State: nearly 89 per cent for rural female out-migrants and 80 per cent for urban female out-migrants had residence within the State.</span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:medium">• Majority of the male from both the rural and urban areas had migrated out for employment related reasons which accounted for nearly 80 per cent of the outmigrants from the rural areas and 71 per cent of the out-migrants from the urban areas.</span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:medium">• For female out-migrants from both rural and urban areas, the reason for outmigration was predominantly for marriage, which accounted for nearly 84 per cent of female out-migrants from both the rural and urban areas.</span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:medium">• In case of rural male out-migrants, residing abroad, nearly 95 per cent were engaged in economic activities compared to 80 per cent of those residing in India and for male out-migrants from urban areas nearly 93 per cent of those residing abroad were engaged in economic activities compared to 73 per cent of those residing in India.</span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:medium"><em><strong>E. Out-migrant Remittances</strong></em></span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:medium">• Among the male out-migrants from the rural areas and residing abroad, nearly 82 per cent had sent remittances during the last 365 days, while only 58 per cent of those residing in India had sent remittances.</span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:medium">• Among male out-migrants from the urban areas, nearly 69 per cent of those residing abroad had sent remittances compared to only 41 per cent of those residing in India.</span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:medium">• On an average, during the last 365 days, a male out-migrant from rural areas and residing abroad had sent 4 times the amount of remittances sent by an out-migrant residing in India: while on an average nearly Rs. 52,000 was remitted by those residing abroad, the amount was nearly Rs. 13,000 for those residing in India.</span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:medium">• Out-migrants from the urban areas had remitted higher amount, during the last 365 days, to their former households compared to those from rural areas. On an average a male out-migrant from the urban areas, and residing abroad, had remitted nearly Rs. 73,000 during the last 365 days, which was higher by nearly Rs. 21000 of the amount remitted by a male out-migrant from rural areas and residing abroad. On an average, during the last 365 days, male out-migrants from urban areas and residing in India had remitted on an average nearly Rs. 28,000.</span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:medium">• The amount of remittances from the female out-migrants from both the rural and urban areas was lower compared to their male counterparts, irrespective of whether the female out-migrants are residing in India or abroad.</span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"> </p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:medium"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif">According to [inside]Managing the Exodus: Grounding Migration in India[/inside], which has been prepared by American India Foundation,</span><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif">(<a href="http://www.aifoundation.org/documents/Report-ManagingtheExodus.pdf">http://www.aifoundation.org/documents/Report-ManagingtheExodus.pdf</a>): </span><strong><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"> </span></strong> </span></span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"> </p> <p style="text-align:justify"> </p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:medium"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif">• Migration is defined as the displacement of a person who leaves their place of birth or of residence for another place, most often remaining in country. In 2001, 309 million persons were migrants based on place of last residence, which constitute about 30% of the total population of the country. This figure indicates an increase of around 37% from the 1991 census, which recorded 226 million migrants. It is estimated that 98 million people moved within the country between 1991 & 2001</span></span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"> </p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:medium"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif">• Traditional rural-urban migration has seen a gradual increase, with its share in total migration rising from 16.5% to 21.1% between 1971 and 2001.</span></span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"> </p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:medium"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif">• There has been an increase of urban to urban migration from 13.6% to 14.7% over three decades (1971-2001).</span></span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"> </p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:medium"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif">• In 2001, rural to rural migration (during the last decade) has accounted for 54.7% of total migration</span></span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"> </p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:medium"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif">• The last decade the urban to rural migration figure stands as 6.2 million people, i.e. approximately 6% of the population that moved between 1991-2001. </span></span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"> </p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:medium"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif">• 'Seasonal migration' has long been practiced in the rural areas, particularly among landless laborers and marginal farmers with limited livelihood options. Livelihood opportunities, its dearth in the rural and abundance in the urban areas are therefore responsible for the majority of migration. Media exposure and growth of the metros is another reason that allures people to move from rural to urban areas. In tribal regions, intrusion of outsiders, the pattern of settlement, displacement and deforestation, are significant to drive the phenomenon of migration. Marriage accounts for more than half of the migrants.</span></span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"> </p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:medium"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif">• In India, 73 million people in rural areas have migrated from 1991 – 2001; of which 53 million have moved to other villages and 20 million to urban areas – a majority of them in search of work. These figures do not include temporary or seasonal migration.</span></span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"> </p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:medium"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif">• Poor states such as Orissa, Bihar, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh that experienced rapid demographic growth in urban areas were also those that reported low productivity and high unemployment in agrarian sectors as well as heavy pressure on urban infrastructural facilities, suggesting the presence of push factors behind rural-urban migration.</span></span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"> </p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:medium"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif">• Caste, kinship bonds, and other kinds of village networks do help rural job seekers to arrange urban-based jobs.</span></span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"> </p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:medium"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif">• Migration is associated with rising informalisation of work and growth of urban slums. </span></span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"> </p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:medium"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif">• By 2021, India will have the largest concentration of mega-cities in the world; with a population exceeding 10 million people The UN projects that half of the world population will live in urban areas by the end of 2008, primarily due to urbanization and migration.</span></span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"> </p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:medium"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif">• National averages suggested that about 205 households live in each notified slum and 112 in each nonnotified slums.</span></span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"> </p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:medium"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif">• The total number of slums in urban India are approximately 52,000 with 51% of the slums being notified slums.</span></span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"> </p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:medium"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif">• It is estimated that every seventh person living in the urban areas is a slum dweller.</span></span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"> </p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:medium"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif">• About 65% of slums are built on public land, owned mostly by local bodies, state government etc.</span></span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"> </p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:medium"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif">• Maharashtra has the highest number of urban slums in the country totaling 173 – 113 notified and 60 non-notified</span></span><br /> <span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:medium"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-size:medium"><em><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"> </span></em></span></span></span></span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:medium"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-size:medium"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif">**page**</span></span></span></span></span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"> </p> <p style="text-align:justify"><br /> <span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:medium">According to [inside]Internal Displacement: Global Overview of Trends and Developments in 2009[/inside], produced by Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre and Norwegian Refugee Council, (<a href="http://www.internal-displacement.org/8025708F004BE3B1/%28httpInfoFiles%29/8980F134C9CF4373C1257725006167DA/$file/Global_Overview_2009.pdf">click here</a> to access)</span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><br /> <span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:medium">• Number of countries covered by this report is 54</span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:medium">• Number of people internally displaced by conflict or violence as of December 2009 is 27.1 million</span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:medium">• Over half of the world’s internally displaced persons (IDPs) were in five countries: Sudan, Colombia, Iraq, DRC and Somalia. The region with most IDPs was Africa, with 11.6 million.</span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:medium">• South and South-East Asia and the Americas accounted for most of the increase, with their respective totals 800,000 and 500,000 higher. These increases mirrored the year-on-year growth in the internally displaced populations of Pakistan and Colombia. </span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:medium">• Since 1997, the number of IDPs has steadily increased from around 17 million to over 27 million in 2009.</span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:medium">• In 21 countries, people had been born and grown to adulthood in displacement.</span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:medium">• Internal armed conflict, rather than international armed conflict, has caused most internal displacement in the last decade.</span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:medium">• Number of internally displaced persons (IDPs) in India is at least 500,000</span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:medium">• This figure includes those people displaced since 1990 by separatist violence targeting the Hindu minority in Jammu and Kashmir, and by shelling between Indian and Pakistani forces along Kashmir’s “line of control”; those displaced in states of the north-east by conflicts ongoing since 1947 between state and ethnic or secessionist groups, and by inter-ethnic and intra-ethnic violence; victims of the conflict between Naxalite insurgents and government security forces and armed vigilantes in Chhattisgarh State; victims of communal violence between the majority Hindu populations in Gujarat and Orissa States and the States’ respective Muslim and Christian minorities; and people displaced in West Bengal by violence related to a proposed development project. </span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:medium">• In 2009, people were newly displaced by armed conflict and violence in the north-east (Manipur, Assam, and Mizoram States) and in Orissa State.</span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:medium">• Causes of internal displacement in India are: armed conflict, generalized violence and human rights violations </span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:medium">• Tribal IDPs in camps in Chhattisgarh face the risk of attacks by both government forces and Naxalite insurgents. Muslim IDPs in Gujarat continue to endure very poor living conditions and they are increasingly at risk of losing their original homes and land, which have been taken over by Hindu extremist groups.</span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:medium">• Christian IDPs in Orissa risk being forced to convert to Hinduism if they return to their homes. Displaced women in Assam and Manipur have increasingly been forced into prostitution in order to support their families in the absence of husbands who have left in search of work.</span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:medium">• After living in displacement for more than 15 years, displaced Kashmiri Pandit families risk losing their cultural identity, while the government refers to them as “migrants”. </span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:medium">• Conflict-induced IDPs enjoy no recognition under India’s national laws. The responsibility to protect them is generally left to state authorities, who are often unaware of their rights or reluctant to offer support, particularly in cases where they played a role in causing the displacement.</span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"> </p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:medium"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-size:medium"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif">According to the [inside]11<sup>th</sup> Five Year Plan, Planning Commission[/inside]</span></span></span></span></span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:medium"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-size:medium"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><a href="http://www.planningcommission.nic.in/plans/planrel/fiveyr/11th/11_v3/11v3_ch4.pdf">http://www.planningcommission.nic.in/plans/planrel/fiveyr/11th/11_v3/11v3_ch4.pdf</a>: </span><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"> </span></span></span></span></span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"> </p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:medium"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-size:medium"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif">The fact that the numbers of the poor have declined in rural areas, and increased in urban areas over the last three decades suggests that to escape rural poverty, the poor migrate to urban areas. In fact, the total number of <em>migrant workers </em>in India in 1999–2000 was 10.27 crore—a staggering number. The number of seasonal or cyclical migrants in India may be 2 crore or so.</span> </span></span></span></span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:medium"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-size:medium"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"> </span></span></span></span></span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif">According to the [inside]National Commission for Enterprises in the Unorganised Sector--NCEUS (2007)[/inside], Report on Conditions of Work and Promotion of Livelihoods in the Unorganised Sector, please <a href="https://im4change.org/nceus_reports/NCEUS-2007-Report-on-conditions-of-work-and-promotion-of-livelihoods-in-the-unorganised-sector.pdf">click here</a> to access:</span> </span></span></span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><br /> <span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif">• The National Commission on Rural Labour-NCRL (1991) report suggests that labourers and land-poor farmers have a high propensity to migrate as seasonal labourers. These migrants are highly disadvantaged as they are poverty ridden with very little bargaining power. They are employed in the unorganized sector, where the lack of regulation compounds their vulnerability. They are largely ignored by the government and NGO programmes and labour laws dealing with them are weakly implemented. </span></span></span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"> </span></span></span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif">• Women migration for employment was most prominent among agricultural labourers, while male migrants were mainly the non-agricultural workers Seasonality of agricultural operations is one of the factors that lead to migration of agricultural labourers in search of employment during lean periods. </span></span></span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"> </span></span></span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif">• The NCRL (1991) indicates that uneven development of agriculture across different states of the country has led to the migration of labourers from low wage regions/states to states and regions where both the demand and wages are higher. </span></span></span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"> </span></span></span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif">• This is particularly so after the Green Revolution when higher agricultural development led to migration of labour from states such as Bihar to Punjab, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh. </span></span></span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"> </span></span></span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif">• Low rate of public investment in agricultural infrastructure in the less-developed regions has resulted in highly uneven development of agriculture between different regions of the country. </span></span></span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"> </span></span></span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif">• As per the NCRL there were more than 10 million seasonal/circular rural migrant labourers in the country. Growth of input intensive agriculture and commercialisation of agriculture since the late 1960s has led to peak periods of labour demand, often also coinciding with a decline in local labour deployment. </span></span></span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"> </span></span></span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif">• Migration also takes place when workers in source areas lack suitable options for employment/ livelihood. This may be particularly true when there has been stagnancy in employment generation in agriculture during the nineties along with a slow pace of diversification to non-farm employment in rural areas. </span></span></span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"> </span></span></span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif">• Mass migration by socially and economically relegated groups such as SCs/STs who have poor physical and human asset base in states like Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Maharashtra are noted<br /> <em><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"> </span></em> </span></span></span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif">[inside]Large Dam Projects and Displacement in India[/inside], produced by South Asia Network on Dams, Rivers and People (SANDRP), <a href="http://www.sandrp.in/dams/Displac_largedams.pdf">http://www.sandrp.in/dams/Displac_largedams.pdf</a> show: </span><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"> </span> </span></span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><br /> <span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif">• In India, the government, which is the planner, financier, developer and owner of numerous large dam projects, does not have figures of people displaced by large dams, either since independence in 1947 or in toto. </span></span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"> </span></span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif">• India is the third largest dam builder country in the world. It now has over 3600 large dams and over 700 more under construction. </span></span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"> </span></span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif">• The World Bank notes that though large dams constitute only 26.6% of the total WB funded projects causing displacement, the resulting displacement makes up 62.8% of the total number of people displaced </span></span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"> </span></span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif">• It is also apparent that project authorities do not consider the problems of displacement and rehabilitation as important parts of the project. The primary concerns are engineering specifications and electricity and irrigation benefits. </span></span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"> </span></span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif">• The number of persons displaced by the Hirakud dam was between 1.1 lakh and 1.6 lakh, while the official figures are only 1.1 lakh. </span></span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"> </span></span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif">• The latest figures of government estimates over 41,000 families will get displaced due to reservoir constructed under the Sardar Sarovar Project (SSP). About 24,000 khatedaars (land-holding families, meaning thereby, a much larger number of families, since one joint land holder generally represents many more families) will be seriously affected by canals under the SSP. Similarly, over 10,000 fisherfolk families will lose their livelihood in downstream areas due to complete stoppage of riverflow in non-monsoon months due to the dam. </span></span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"> </span></span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif">• A survey of 54 projects estimated the people displaced by large dams in last 50 years to be 33 million. </span></span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"> </span></span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif">• According to the World Bank, an average of 13,000 people are displaced by each new large dam constructed currently </span></span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"> </span></span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif">• According to conservative estimates of the Government of India, less than a quarter of estimated 40 million people displaced by large dams in fifty years have been resettled in India </span></span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"> </span></span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif">According to [inside]In the Name of National Pride (2009)[/inside], which has been prepared by the People's Union for Democratic Rights (PUDR), </span><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><a href="http://www.pudr.org/index.php?option=com_docman&task=doc_details&Itemid=63&gid=179">http://www.pudr.org/index.php?option=com_docman&task=doc_details&Itemid=63&gid=179</a><strong>: </strong></span><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"> </span> </span></span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><br /> <span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif">• Severe violation of labour laws could be found at the sites of Commonwealth Games </span></span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"> </span></span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif">• According to union sources, there are 6,000 workers employed at the Commonwealth Games Village (CWGV) site. According to the Regional Labour Commissioner (Central), there were 4,106 workers in all, out of which 229 were skilled, 833 were semi skilled and 3,004 were unskilled. As per some of the workers, there were up to 15,000 workers on site at one point. Maintaining ambiguity in the number of contract workers is one of the methods by which contractors escape accountability. </span></span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"> </span></span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif">• Workers at the Commonwealth Games Village (CWGV) site claim that 70 to 200 labourers have died at this site due to work related mishaps. Union representatives, however, said that there have been about 20 fatal accidents, a much lower number, but nevertheless an alarming one. </span></span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"> </span></span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif">• The workers at the Commonwealth Games Village (CWGV) site are from Bihar, Jharkhand, Orissa, Madhya Pradesh, eastern Uttar Pradesh, and West Bengal. Some of the workers are from Punjab as well. There are Bihari workers from Maharastra as well who left Pune after the anti-Bihari (anti North-Indian) movement was launched by Raj Thackaray </span></span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"> </span></span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif">• Most of the contractors or sub-contractors at the Commonwealth sites have not obtained licenses under Section 8 of the Inter-state Migrant Workmen (Regulation of Employment and Conditions of Service) Act 1979 (ISMW Act). </span></span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"> </span></span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif">• Most of the infrastructure development work of the Central Public Works Department (CPWD), the Delhi Development Authority (DDA), the New Delhi Municipal Corporation (NDMC), and the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) have been contracted out to multinational real estate and construction companies, having severe implications for the rights of contract workers employed. </span></span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"> </span></span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif">• The unskilled workers at this site are getting Rs.85 to Rs.100 per day for 8 hours of work as against the stipulated minimum wages of Rs. 142 till February 09. </span></span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"> </span></span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif">• About 5% of the unskilled workers at site are women and they are paid slightly lower than their male counterparts for the same kind of work. </span></span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"> </span></span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif">• The workers at Commonwealth sites seem to know very little about the company that employs them. Most of the workers do not possess an identity card. They only get a gate pass, which does not have the name of the company or of the contractor they are associated with or their date of joining or any other details. </span></span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"> </span></span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif">• The mode and schedule of payment is also absolutely arbitrary and exploitative. Full payment of wages is never made to any worker. Workers do not get any pay slips or receipts for the wages paid to them. They are made to sign in a register that the contractor maintains, which does not include details such as the amount paid or the number of days and hours of work completed. Workers live under constant fear of never receiving their dues. </span></span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"> </span></span></p> <p style="text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif">• The contractors rarely pay the full pending amounts at the time of final settlement (which they refer to as ‘final’).<br /> <span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"> </span> </span></span></p> <p style="margin-left:0in; margin-right:0in; text-align:justify"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"> </span></span></p> ', 'credit_writer' => 'Rural Expert', 'article_img' => '', 'article_img_thumb' => '', 'status' => (int) 1, 'show_on_home' => (int) 1, 'lang' => 'EN', 'category_id' => (int) 8, 'tag_keyword' => '', 'seo_url' => 'migration-34', 'meta_title' => 'Migration', 'meta_keywords' => '', 'meta_description' => '', 'noindex' => (int) 0, 'publish_date' => object(Cake\I18n\FrozenDate) {}, 'most_visit_section_id' => null, 'article_big_img' => null, 'liveid' => (int) 34, 'created' => object(Cake\I18n\FrozenTime) {}, 'modified' => object(Cake\I18n\FrozenTime) {}, 'edate' => '', 'category' => object(App\Model\Entity\Category) {}, '[new]' => false, '[accessible]' => [ '*' => true, 'id' => false ], '[dirty]' => [], '[original]' => [], '[virtual]' => [], '[hasErrors]' => false, '[errors]' => [], '[invalid]' => [], '[repository]' => 'Articles' } $imgtag = false $imgURL = '#' $titleText = null $descText = ' KEY TRENDS • The new Cohort-based Migration Metric (CMM) shows that inter-state labor mobility averaged 5-6.5 million people between 2001 and 2011, yielding an inter-state migrant population of about 60 million and an inter-district migration as high as 80 million @* • The first-ever estimates of internal work-related migration using railways data for the period 2011-2016 indicate an annual average flow of close to 9 million migrant people between the states. 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