A circular loop: Rural-urban-rural migration in a north Karnataka district

The government’s skill development schemes encouraged youth in Raichur to migrate to cities for ‘better jobs’, but they only found low-paid work in urban areas and have been returning to their villages?

Vishaka V. Warrier

Supriya RoyChowdhury

An industrial skills training centre for rural youth in Muranpur village, Raichur district, Karnataka.

Vishaka V. Warrier/The Migration Storyi

“I was really excited about working in Bangalore. I went there to attend a sales management training and hoped I’d acquire skills to get a job. After the training, I got placed in the branch of a supermarket chain, where I wasn’t doing billing or computer-related work, but cleaning and working in the store room. It was very strenuous, the monthly pay was only 8,000-10,000 rupees, and I couldn’t find an affordable room. So, I decided to leave the job and return to my village,” said Mithunraj (name changed), a youth from Medikinhal village in northern Karnataka’s Raichur district, whom we had interviewed in the course of our research.

In 2018, we did one-on-one interviews with youth (aged 18-22) from five villages in Raichur, who had enrolled at training centres set up under the government’s skill development programme. To maintain confidentiality, we anonymised the identities of everyone we interviewed.

Mithunraj, who was relieved to have returned to his village, added: “I now work in the same stone quarry I was working at earlier and don’t have to pay rent or adjust to a culture or a type of food I’m not comfortable with. I can decide how much I want to earn as I get paid on an hourly basis – and still make more than what I was making in Bengaluru. Plus, I get to stay with my family.”

Many rural youth like Mithunraj aspire to work in the big city, and these aspirations are often fuelled by government policies and schemes, which underscore the idea that villages and small towns cannot provide the employment opportunities that cities do. This idea is not new: it has traversed across generations and geographies.

Raichur, one of Karnataka’s poorest districts, is a case in point. Our research highlighted rural youth’s aspirations for office-based employment, but also the reality they experienced after migrating to Bengaluru, where they struggled to survive in low-paid jobs and ended up recalibrating their assumptions about the dream of working in the big city.

This article – drawn from our chapter in the book Shifting Landscapes: Education and Urban Transformations in India (Cambridge University Press, 2025) – sheds light on the dynamics between youth aspirations in Raichur, the government’s Skill India policy, and the intricacies of the rural-urban-rural migration the latter induces.

Researchers (bottom left and right) converse with the residents of Medikinhal village, Raichur district, after a focus group discussion. Vishaka V. Warrier/The Migration Story

Skills training: a road to nowhere

The mandate of the Skill India policy (2009) – re-enacted as the Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Vikas Yojana (PMKVY) in 2014 – is to train rural and urban youth, who have completed class 12 or a college degree, in vocational skills. The government training centre we visited in Maski town, Raichur district, provided computer training even though there were few jobs that required this skill in nearby villages. 

We visited the homes of young women being trained at a centre in Balaganur village and found that there was a perception (among women, their parents and trainers) that they wanted to become accountants and bank managers or secure government jobs. Though the women were willing to work anywhere in the district, they were unsure if their parents would allow this. Women rarely migrated for jobs and were expected to contribute to the family’s work in agriculture.

The young men we spoke to, from Medikinhal village and Maski town, had migrated to Bengaluru for training in driving but returned to their villages afterwards. They couldn’t afford to live in the city on the minimal wages they were making from work that was neither regular nor related to the training they had received. Thus, many came home and resumed work in construction. For these young men, the skills training was a road to nowhere. 

We also interviewed young women from Bettadur village, who had received training in beauty and wellness in Bengaluru. After the training, they returned to their village and started providing beauty services to women and girls for a nominal fee. But their families were hesitant about them working as they were keen to get them married – and it was unlikely they would continue working outside the home after marriage.

One of the most visible differences in attitudes towards the trainings was between the parents of young men and those of young women. Women from relatively well-settled families were enrolled in trainings to learn a skill while waiting to get married. However, men were enrolled in trainings so they could make a living from the skills they acquired, even if it meant migrating to a city.

Skilling interventions: The Karnataka story

A training centre in Maski town, which is among many where migrants from Raichur district sought training in computer skills to get ‘well-paying jobs’ in the city.  Vishaka V. Warrier/The Migration Story

Karnataka is one of India’s fastest growing states, with an average annual growth rate of 8.5%, and its growth rate has been higher than the national average since the 1990s. It has been a leader in IT and IT-enabled services as well as cutting-edge sectors like biotechnology, and is an epicentre of technology-rich start-ups. Despite this, close to 46% of employed persons in the state are engaged in agriculture. Additionally, the share of industry and services in employment is around 24% and 30%, respectively, according to the Periodic Labour Force Survey, 2022-23. 

Overall, employment in the state leans heavily on agriculture, despite the sector’s declining share in the Gross State Domestic Product (GSDP) and repeated agrarian crises, particularly in the northern, drought-prone regions. The northern Kalyana Karnataka region comprises six of the state’s most backward districts – Bidar, Gulbarga, Ballari, Raichur, Yadgiri and Koppal. State-supported industrialisation in southern Karnataka, particularly in Bengaluru and Mysuru, accounts for almost half of the total employment in the state, while the northern districts are severely lacking in economic, social and financial infrastructure.

Successive state governments have been concerned about the rising number of youth, who have completed class 10 or 12 but are seemingly unemployable. To this end, the Government of Karnataka enacted a skill development policy in 2008 and the state’s Ministry of Labour established its own skills commission with the objective of providing suitable training and placement to 15 lakh job seekers by 2020.

Skill development in Karnataka takes place through the PMKVY, the Chief Minister’s Kaushalya Karnataka Yojane, charitable organisations or NGOs, and entities that combine for-profit and nonprofit models. Training centres primarily concentrate on skilling for job opportunities in retail sales, back-office support services, beauty and wellness, driving, and electrical, plumbing and industrial services (like welding, for instance). This focus reflects the structure of the state economy and especially, Bengaluru’s service-heavy economy. 

Raichur’s employment scenario

Raichur is one of Karnataka’s poorest districts, according to the 2023 National Multidimensional Poverty Index Report. In 2011, 70% of its workers were engaged in cultivation and agricultural labour compared to 49% in the entire state. The district is predominantly agricultural, with a very slow diversification of employment in non-agricultural activities. 

Historically drought-prone, the situation in Raichur has aggravated in recent years, with rainfall shortage every year since 2012-13. This has resulted in agrarian distress and massive out-migration.  Village youth have increasingly turned away from agriculture and sought alternate means of livelihood.

However, the state has not taken adequate steps to support non-farm and industrial development in the district, which could have been an alternative source of employment. Its focus has been less on generating employment by promoting large or medium industries and more on self-employment through small and micro enterprises. Given the overall lack of economic development and prosperity in Raichur, many such enterprises falter and eventually fail.  

Young men from households that are relatively well-off or have steady incomes usually complete their college degrees and take up jobs in schools and private companies (such as the local solar and windmill company). Some start their own businesses, typically in printing and photocopying, textiles and clothing, or mobile phones and accessories.

However, young men from poorer backgrounds go to Raichur town or Bengaluru to work in factories or offices. Those who have completed class 12 or less stay back in the village and typically work in quarrying or construction in nearby towns, or become security guards at construction sites. 

A public school (left) and a gram panchayat office (right) in Medikinhal village, in drought-prone Raichur district which has for over a decade witnessed agrarian distress. Vishaka V. Warrier/The Migration Story

Disconnect between youth, trainings and jobs

Between 2014 and 2018, around 600 individuals were trained at institutes in Raichur, and approximately 10,000 rupees from the PMKVY was spent on each trainee. But according to local NGOs, PMKVY has been a failure in small rural districts like Raichur, where the job market is very different from that in cities like Bengaluru.

For example, the tailoring course teaches youth to become basic sewing machine operators. But since there are no garment factories in the district, there is no scope for these trainees to be employed locally. And they may not be able to migrate due to cultural or familial reasons.

Similarly, sales management courses appear attractive to trainees. However, retail jobs are scarce in this economically backward district, and there is only one small mall in Raichur city. It is important, therefore, for training programmes to align with local needs. For example, Raichur has around 44 rice mills, and each rice mill requires around six boiler operators. These vacancies have not as yet been filled, so a training course for boiler operators would greatly benefit both local job seekers and the rice mills.

We observed that aspirations to get trained weren’t always those of the youth; often, they were also those of their parents. While some households could afford to send their children to school, college or even vocational training, many couldn’t and were struggling to survive. Still, parents didn’t just hope that their children would get educated or trained in the abstract; they often had specific hopes for them.

For instance, Anitha from Balaganur, whose parents were uneducated and worked as farmers and agricultural labourers, said that she wanted to become a bank manager because her “mother wants to see me [her] as a bank manager”. Basavaraj, a former construction worker from Medikinhal, whose father and brother still work in construction, said, “I joined the course only because my parents asked me to.” His family was keen that he leave construction, which is strenuous, and find a ‘better job’.

The home of a young woman in Balaganur village, where many  women wanted to become accountants or bank managers, but were unsure their parents would let them migrate for work. Vishaka V. Warrier/The Migration Story 

Youth aspirations centred around office jobs or computer-based work. Many from Balaganur enrolled in computer skills training at a church organisation in Maski town. Many also wanted to migrate to the city for ‘well-paying jobs’ and were attracted by any advertisement that said “100% assured job”. These jobs were an escape route for them from gruelling farming and construction work. But for many migrants, the dream of working at a computer in an air-conditioned office was shattered by the reality of their experiences of working as housekeeping staff in malls and supermarkets. 

For the training centres, the stated objective was to facilitate the movement of rural youth to urban areas: “Ooralli khaali odadtira, sumne banni Bangalore ge” (You people just loaf around in the village; come with us to Bangalore”), their representatives would say while enrolling village youth. Most trainees told us that they would like to work in Raichur and that they might work in Bengaluru for some years, but would eventually return to build a life for themselves in the village.

Clearly, there was a disjuncture between the training centres’ vision and that of the trainees when it came to imagining a future in the city. Besides, attraction for the city amongst trainees had slowly dimmed because of the low-paid jobs they ended up getting there and the resultant lack of mobility it gave them (from city to the village and back).

A return to life in the village

For many youth, the desire to return to Raichur was inextricably linked to land and a future for their families built on steady incomes – and not the limited and irregular income they earned in the city. For some, social obligations had nudged them to stay in the village and work for low wages, which was prioritised over seemingly better-paid jobs elsewhere.

Take the case of Earesh Desai from Manvi town, who worked as an agricultural and construction labourer before he enrolled in a skills training course and, through his own connections, got a job as a cashier in a Big Bazaar branch in Bengaluru. Though he was earning 10,000 rupees a month, he had to spend 4,500 rupees on paying-guest accommodation.

“I want to earn and look after my family. I’d like to build a house and buy a bigger piece of land when I have enough savings,” he told us over the phone from Bengaluru. His family was pressuring him to return to the village and he, too, was inclined to do so.

Or Basavaraj from Medikinhal who said, “I want to come to Bangalore and stay here for a job. But I wish to build a house in my village, buy a car, and live well there.” Or Dasappa, from Kanoor village, who quit at a call centre job in Bengaluru. He told us, “I want to my parents to rest, stay away from agricultural work, build a house for them, and buy a bike.”

Part of the inclination to return to Raichur or not migrate at all was linked to their experiences at the training centre. Ramesh, who returned to Lingasugur town after struggling for a few months in Bengaluru, said: “The training centre or the trainers haven’t even called us after we got employed. Once we graduate from the training centre, they won’t care for us. None of my friends are working. All have left their jobs because of the high paying-guest accommodation rates. If the salary is so low during the training, after getting employment, how do we survive? Move Up [the training centre] says there’s no need to pay the advance [for the paying-guest accommodation it referred to us]. But we can’t even pay the rent with our salary!”

Fields after harvest in Bettadur village of Raichur district. Vishaka V. Warrier/The Migration Story

Most rural trainees end up employed in the low value-added, bottom rungs of the service sector, that is, in hospitality, entertainment, security, beauty and wellness, tourism and transport. Although much of this employment is in the so-called organised and corporate sector and it comes with a monthly wage and some social security, the wage itself is most often low in the context of a high-cost city like Bengaluru. Thus, many youth, unable to find an adequate economic foothold in the city, end up returning to their villages.

The urban job market offers only informal and unregulated jobs at the lower end of the services and the manufacturing sectors. And the training centres offer very limited support to trainees, whether it is through placement services, providing information, sharing networks or mentoring post-placement.

The literature on migration often presents the desire to move to the city as universal – and the move as uni-directional. Our limited findings from Raichur district, however, suggest that perhaps this perception needs to be modified or fine-tuned. Even though urbanisation is the centrepiece of India’s developmental model, in practice, the political economy of employment and housing in cities make them a tough choice for job-seeking rural youth.

The purpose of Skill India was to prepare a young workforce to meet the needs of the emerging urban economy. However, if skills are seen as the bridge that will bring unemployed rural youth into the fold of cities, this vision is deeply challenged. Employment in India, across various sectors, has not grown sufficiently, and most migrant young men who move to the city end up in low-quality and low-paying jobs in the informal sector. It isn’t surprising, therefore, that they feel compelled to return to their rural homes, despite their dreams of working in the big city.

Supriya RoyChowdhury is a visiting professor at the Urban and Mobility Studies programme, National Institute of Advanced Studies, Bengaluru. Her research has focused on labour and globalisation, social movements and urban poverty, and her book, City of Shadows: Slums and Informal Work in Bangalore, was published by Cambridge University Press (2021).

Vishaka V. Warrier is currently a Ph.D. scholar at the Institute for Social and Economic Change (ISEC), Bengaluru. She has worked on academic projects focusing on themes like migration and livelihoods in Indian cities, and gendered labour in Karnataka’s garment industry.