From crisis to coordination: lessons from Jharkhand’s journey

One of India’s poorest states showed enterprise and initiative to bring back its workers home amid a raging pandemic

Bhargabi Ghosh

When millions began their trek home in March 2020, telephones rang off the hook in Jharkhand state’s Migration Control Room. Mineral-rich Jharkhand’s citizens have for years been migrating to cities for work, owing to limited livelihood opportunities, low agricultural productivity, and deep-rooted structural poverty in the state.

Over a period of just three months from March to May 2020, an estimated 8.5 lakh people reached out to this control room, which was initially set up in 2016 but recorded its maximum outreach during the pandemic.  The callers included both inter-state and intra-state migrants, and in several cases, multiple calls were logged from members of the same family or repeat callers, an indication of both the intensity and the scale of distress.

The number remains significant even with overlaps and points to the sheer urgency with which people were seeking help as tens of thousands of workers across the country walked home for days on end.

It was during this time, in May 2020, that the Policy & Development Advisory Group, the research think tank where I work, began its strategic advisory work with the Government of Jharkhand. We were involved in operationalising airlift missions to evacuate stranded migrant workers from Ladakh, Andamans, Tripura, and Goa making the state the first in India to take such steps during the crisis.

Migrant workers undergo thermal screening before being transported by the Border Roads Organisation (BRO) to Leh for the airlift mission.

The state government had already set up control rooms, mobilised relief, and was coordinating with other states to bring migrants back safely. While these efforts were commendable, it also brought into focus a deeper gap: most interventions were reactive, geared towards short-term relief rather than long-term resilience. It became clear that without a systemic and institutionalised approach to migration governance, such crises would continue to be marked by chaos and uncertainty.

The Safe and Responsible Migration Initiative (SRMI) was born from that reckoning. When the Chief Minister of Jharkhand launched the initiative in December 2021, it marked a rare alignment of political will, ground-level urgency, and systemic thinking. It aimed to move beyond temporary relief measures and build a structured and responsive migration governance framework that supports migrant workers before, during, and after migration.

I was co-leading the Technical Support Unit (TSU) anchored within the Department of Labour and Employment, on behalf of PDAG, as part of the consortium of partners—Partnering Hope Into Action Foundation (PHIA), the Centre for Migration and Inclusive Development (CMID), and the Bharti Institute of Public Policy (BIPP) at the Indian School of Business (ISB), supported by Omidyar Network. Together, we set out to move beyond the ad-hoc relief and response lens and build a lasting architecture of care and welfare for migrant workers—both those who leave and the families that stay behind.

This is the story of what we did, what we learned, and what it taught us about the future of internal migration in India.

BUILDING NEW SYSTEMS

The safe and responsible migration initiative was not just another welfare scheme. It was a policy experiment—one that asked: What if we treated migrant workers not as temporary labourers but as dignified citizens whose rights must travel with them?

To that end, the state-level Technical Support Unit (TSU) was anchored within the Department of Labour, Employment, Training and Skill Development, Government of Jharkhand with an aim to institutionalise a safe migration framework backed by robust data, inter-state coordination, and on-ground service delivery of welfare measures.

At the heart of SRMI were four things:

• The State Migrant Control Room (SMCR), which had already proven effective during the pandemic and was now institutionalised as a permanent 24x7 helpline and grievance redressal system.

• Safe and Responsible Migration Centres (SRMCs) at both source and destination states.

• A first-of-its-kind Jharkhand Migration Survey—our attempt to map the pulse of migration, migration flows, socio-economic profiles, and gaps in social protection.

• A sustained Information, Education and Communication (IEC) campaign to raise awareness about entitlements, schemes, and support systems among migrant workers and their families.

Each component addressed a different but interlinked aspect of the migration journey. Together, they created the possibility of long-term and scalable solutions.

POLICY AND PEOPLE

One of the most transformative components of SRMI was the establishment of SRMCs in three source districts of Jharkhand—Gumla, Dumka, and West Singhbhum. These were not just help desks; they became mini-hubs for rights, recognition, and redressal. Staffed by centre coordinators, community mobilisers, and data entry operators and integrated with the Labour Department, these centres became critical nodes in the migration governance ecosystem.

In June 2022,  Sanika Kumhar, a young woman from West Singhbhum, was trapped in Punjab by an employer who refused to let her return home even after her father died, it was the SRMC team that intervened. Through coordination with the Punjab Police and local administration, Sanika was rescued and compensated.

Around the same time, SRMC Gumla helped the family of Vijay Prakash Kujur, a construction worker who tragically passed away in Goa due to an illness. His relatives, unable to afford the transportation of the mortal remains, were left with few options. The SRMC team coordinated with the district administration and mobilised both inter and intra-state efforts to bring him home. The incident was a stark reminder that for many migrant families, even death can become an unresolvable crisis—unless someone steps in to navigate the system with and for them.

These stories weren’t isolated. They reflected a model that worked precisely because it was embedded in local governance, yet linked to larger state-level mechanisms.

SRMC Gumla, registering migrant workers and their families. 

MIGRATION DOESN’T END AT STATE BORDERS

A key innovation of SRMI was that it didn’t stop at the state level. Recognising that migration is a corridor not a point together with the partners, we also established SRMCs in Ladakh (August 2022) and Kerala (May 2022), two very different but equally critical destination sites for workers from Jharkhand.

In Ladakh, the SRMC supported labourers working in remote BRO worksites to access registration, insurance, and grievance redress. Our engagement led to the first-ever meeting of the Building and Other Construction Workers (BOCW) Welfare Board in Ladakh, chaired by the Lieutenant Governor, and resulted in the notification of new insurance schemes for labourers.

SRMC Ladakh team visiting BRO work sites on NH-1 to  talk to the workers about their rights and entitlements. 

In Kerala, CMID worked closely with multiple stakeholders and the TSU in the Department of Labour to help secure wage payments worth over ₹3 lakh for construction workers, repatriated 11 mortal remains, mapped more than 2,300 migrant workers, and rescued five girls intercepted by Childline.

As of December 2023, all five SRMCs (three in Jharkhand and two in destination states) completed their pilot phase. The centres have since been phased out, but efforts are ongoing to institutionalise their core functions into departmental protocols and state-to-state coordination mechanisms.

IEC awareness being conducted at a railway station  in Kerala

COMMUNICATING AND CONNECTING

Among the many components of SRMI, the structured Information, Education, and Communication (IEC) campaign played a crucial role in bridging a fundamental gap: lack of awareness.

We realised early on that many migrant workers and their families were unaware of the entitlements, schemes, or grievance mechanisms available to them. To address this, our teams launched district and block-level campaigns, roped in PRI members and frontline workers, and ran sustained outreach through village-level meetings, pamphlet distribution, and IEC vans.

The SRMC teams were also active participants in the state government’s flagship public service delivery drive—Aapke Sarkar Aapke Adhikar Aapke Dwar. As part of this initiative, SRMCs set up kiosks in panchayats of all three source districts—Gumla, Dumka, and West Singhbhum—for over 25 days to register migrant workers, working closely with Deputy Commissioners and over 15 departmental secretaries. More than 32,000 workers were registered on the Shramadhan portal through this campaign alone. This helped take safe migration messaging and registration efforts directly to people’s doorsteps. 

IEC outreach was also undertaken in destination states like Ladakh and Kerala. In Ladakh, SRMC team carried out extensive IEC activities, visiting remote BRO worksites and interacting with migrant workers to inform them about their rights, entitlements, and helpline numbers. In Kerala, SRMC Kochi conducted awareness drives at railway stations, worksites, and marketplaces, distributing IEC materials and promoting enrolment in social security schemes like Shramadhan and ISMWWS.

But perhaps the most innovative piece of this campaign was what we did through long-distance trains. Recognising that India’s railway network is the lifeline of labour migration, we took our messaging directly along the migration corridors. Between July and November 2023, on key train routes connecting Jharkhand to states like Maharashtra, Kerala, Delhi, Punjab, and Tamil Nadu, we reached over 20,000 workers daily with carefully designed messages in local languages. These were implemented as printed posters and banners displayed inside general class compartments—near toilets, above seats, and on doors.

The campaign created visibility and initiated dialogue. Workers called the SMCR directly from trains. Many began discussing entitlements among themselves. Some were seen clicking pictures of posters and sharing them with co-workers in their destinations. In a space otherwise devoid of state presence, it made migrants feel seen and supported.

IEC campaign through long-distance trains

SHIFTING THE NARRATIVE

For years, migration in Jharkhand was poorly understood—spoken of in anecdotes but rarely backed by data. The Jharkhand Migration Survey (JMS), designed and led by PDAG, changed that.

Over three months—February to April 2023—across 395 locations, 10,700 households, and 58,000 respondents, we mapped the contours of labour mobility: to what destinations were workers from Jharkhand travelling to, why they were migrating, what kind of risks did they face, and whether any safety nets followed them.

The White Paper was submitted to the Labour Department and discussed at the Advisory Committee level. The findings nudged a few introductory interventions: piloting of village-level migration registers; corridor-specific IEC campaigns; and initiation of high-level discussion on interstate coordination between Jharkhand and key destination states.

WHEN THE PHONE RINGS AT MIDNIGHT

I often say that the SMCR is the emotional core of SRMI. Staffed with people who answer distress calls at all hours, it’s where the abstraction of policy turns painfully real.

During the Balasore train tragedy, when many migrants were feared dead or missing, it was the SMCR team that activated support channels. When 13 workers were trapped in the Uttarkashi tunnel collapse, SMCR worked across departments and with the Uttarakhand Government to bring them home. During the Ukraine war, we even tracked the movements of students from Jharkhand until they safely landed in Delhi and returned to Jharkhand.

Between January 2022 and December 2023, SMCR resolved over 2,100 grievances—including 270 rescue cases, 372 mortal remains, and over 270 wage violations. The SMCR is housed within the Shram Bhawan, Labour Department in Ranchi and currently managed by a 6 member team. It operates 11 helplines and provides counselling support and legal assistance to migrant workers. 

Looking back, several design elements helped SRMI succeed where many similar efforts falter. The decentralisation of services to SRMCs, paired with strong back-end coordination through the TSU, ensured that local interventions were embedded in a broader strategic vision. The TSU was active till December 2023 and supported day-to-day coordination, stakeholder engagement, and policy planning.

Evidence-based planning was critical—JMS findings helped guide real-time decisions such as prioritising Maheshpur and Shikaripara blocks for IEC campaigns based on low registration and high vulnerability. The trust built between departments and across states created the conditions for joint action—like facilitating compensation schemes in Ladakh and strengthening coordination with the Kerala Labour Department. Most importantly, SRMI’s narrative strategy—whether through community meetings or train posters—allowed workers and families to see themselves in the system, not outside it. 

Image: State Migrant Control Room

REAL CHALLENGES, AND LEARNINGS

This wasn’t an easy journey. Coordinating across departments, states, and stakeholders tested us daily. The technological aspirations—such as real-time data integration—often ran into infrastructural or digital literacy hurdles. Many migrant workers remained beyond our reach, especially those in deeply informal or undocumented employment setups like brick kilns, construction, or domestic work. In some districts, frequent transfer of officials meant we had to rebuild institutional memory repeatedly. At the field level, digital connectivity challenges delayed real-time updates from remote blocks. Gender remained a complex cross-cutting issue—many women workers in domestic work or seasonal agriculture were not visible in existing systems and required dedicated interventions which the pilot’s timelines could not always accommodate.

And then there were moments when we found ourselves recording tragic loss of lives, and conveying it to their loved ones.

A moment that left a deep imprint on me was meeting the wife of Bablu Hansda, a young migrant worker from Shikaripara block in Dumka who died while working as a casual paid labourer (CPL) in the 51 RCC Himank Project of the Border Roads Organisation (BRO) in Ladakh. When we first reached out to her, she had received no word from the contractor, no compensation, not even a formal acknowledgment of his death. She was grieving, angry, and surviving in dire conditions collecting Sal tree leaves to make disposable plates and barely managing to support her children. The SRMC team in Dumka worked tirelessly and escalated the case to the Deputy Commissioner, Dumka and also coordinated with BRO officials and Labour Superintendent, Dumka. The team pieced together documentation in order to secure death compensation for the family. The SRMC team also helped her get linked to the Widow Pension Scheme and Birsa Awas Yojana. All this work took several months. But what stayed with me wasn’t just the outcome, it was her quiet resilience, and the dignity with which she said, “Pehli baar laga ki koi lad raha hai mere liye” (For the first time, it felt like someone was fighting for me). That moment reminded me why institutional mechanisms matter but more importantly, why they must be humane, persistent, and deeply local.

These challenges didn’t deter us; they taught us. We learned that district administrations are key levers of change and that Panchayati Raj Institutions, if engaged meaningfully, can transform how migration is understood at the village level. That placing a young woman officer at an SRMC can change how women workers approach the state. That if you invest in building the capacity of workers, of the government, of civil society, you can build a system that lasts beyond a project.

WHAT NEXT?

SRMI concluded its pilot phase in 2024 and the big question is: What next?

The Government of Jharkhand has already taken steps to institutionalise parts of the model like revising compensation norms and formalising coordination with other states. There’s growing interest in using SRMI as a blueprint in other states. And the data infrastructure we’ve helped build for the Department can power future rounds of policy innovation.

But to me, the real legacy of SRMI is not in the numbers. It's in the shift in the perspective of how we need to see, understand, and humanise migrant workers and their contribution to the making of modern India.

We no longer see them as "those who left” but as citizens whose rights and dignity must travel with them, wherever they go. That shift, I believe, is the first step in building a more humane, equitable migration system in India.

Bhargabi is a Senior Consultant at the Policy and Development Advisory Group (PDAG), where she co-led the Safe and Responsible Migration Initiative in Jharkhand. She works at the intersection of gender, migration, and climate change, and has been closely involved in designing people-centric governance models across states. This piece draws from her experience of working with governments, frontline institutions, and communities to make migration safer, smarter, and more humane.