Loss of culture weighs heavy on Odisha’s migrant women

The migration of women from coastal Odisha to other states over the years reflects the thousands of livelihoods lost to cyclones, floods, and sea erosion. The women who migrate for work risk everything --- they travel far from their community, uprooting themselves from their culture, language and families. Will Odisha government’s newly launched mobile migrant resource centre be able to arrest distress migration?

Shobha Surin

Nolia Nuagaon, a fishing village in Ganjam district, is facing severe sea erosion.

Pukal Chandrama/The Migration Story

KENDRAPARA, Odisha: Nineteen-year-old Mamata Mallick was busy arranging fresh flowers in front of a Maa Mangala (Goddess Durga) idol for khudurukuni festival on August 31 in her thatched house in Bagapatia rehabilitation colony in Odisha’s Kendrapara district. The colony has been her home and that of 571 families who were relocated here nearly seven years ago after sea erosion wiped out homes and livelihoods in her native village - Satabhaya - about 12 kms away, located along the Bay of Bengal.

Like the other unmarried women in the village, she was fasting for the good health and safety of her brothers, who take up odd jobs in Bagapatia village but are mulling moving to Kerala for better opportunities, like tens of thousands of other rural residents of climate- vulnerable Odisha who have moved to the southern state for work and better wages.

Mamata too was one of them, chasing the stable wages dream in Kerala.

On this August morning, however, she looked forward to eating the fruits she would have offered to the goddess after the prayers. Mamata looked happy as she went about preparing for the prayer rituals — her calm demeanour not once reflecting the months of stress she suffered in a garment factory in Ernakulam, Kerala, until a few months ago.

In the four months there, she learned stitching, made friends from other Indian states and got used to south Indian food.

What did she miss in Kerala?

“This,” said Mamata, as her deft fingers gave the finishing touch to the floral decoration.

More than 200 km of Odisha’s shoreline will face erosion by 2050, according to a 2023 study, Quantitative assessment of the present and future potential threat of coastal erosion along the Odisha coast using geospatial tools and statistical techniques.

The state’s rehabilitated families like that of Mamata’s in Bagapatia rehabilitation colony – are expected to grow in number in the coming years. Like Mamata, they too will  experience loss of their traditional livelihoods of farming and fishing, the local biodiversity that used to sustain them such as honey, medicinal plants and fruits, and the community spaces which brought them together.

Located around 146 km from Bhubaneswar, Bagapatia is considered India’s first rehabilitation village for those displaced by coastal erosion in Satabhaya village. In 2018, families from Satabhaya were shifted to Bagapatia and given 10 decimals of land by dividing the area into rows of plots. The village lacks amenities --- it does not have proper roads and floods easily when it rains.

“The land is barren and uncultivable. We have been struggling to even get basic amenities like water,” said Mamata. “In Satabhaya, we were self-sufficient. My mother used to collect fruits and honey from the forest. Fish was in ample supply. In Bagapatia, we have to buy everything.”

Pushed to migrate to other states in the hope of earning better, these communities are impacted in ways that they themselves – as well as the state – do not recognise, as the loss and damage they incur is not necessarily valued in economic terms, a poorly-discussed dimension of climate losses at the global climate dialogue Conference of the Parties that started in Belem this Monday, November 10.

Although Mamata had left home to contribute to the family’s income, she did not imagine her first job outside the state would be this short-lived and the separation from home so challenging.

“Although I had many friends there, I missed celebrating festivals with our rituals and customs. Most people working there have detached themselves from our culture. I do not want to,” she said, adding that she yearned for home all the more during festivals and this made her feel lonely

The occasional outings with friends provided little solace --- the pain of being away from her family made her quit the job and she returned home three months ago. Now, she wants to look for work closer to home.

Satabhaya villagers were shifted to Bagapatia rehabilitation colony in Kendrapara district.

Baidyanath Nayak/The Migration Story

Non-economic loss and damage

The inherent desire to uphold familiar but missed traditions is what Mamata and others like her experience, especially when they are away from their home and community.

This erosion of cultures and heritage is one aspect of non-economic loss and damage -- a broad range of losses that are not easily quantifiable in financial terms or commonly traded in markets, according to the United Nations -- and why it is crucial to preserve them, wrote  Joanne Clarke, Professor of Archaeology and Heritage in the School of Art, Media and American Studies at the University of East Anglia, in Carbon Brief. 

“Heritage is all the inherited conditions, objects, places and culture, as well as contemporary activities, knowledge, meanings and behaviours that are drawn from them,” she stated in her piece.

Climate campaigners have for years pushed for more attention to loss and damage at the Conference of the Parties (COPs), the annual global climate dialogue. At the dialogue’s 30th edition in Belem, the Loss and Damage Collaboration feared it was still not a priority discussion point.

A proposal for climate-related financial assistance was mooted as early as 1991, when the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) was being drafted. Over three decades later, the loss and damage fund was finally announced at  COP27 in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, in what was described as a historic move. Although the deal was far from perfect, it set the ball rolling on the global fund. On November 30, 2023, the Loss and Damage Fund was operationalised at COP 28 in Dubai with initial pledges of $475 million.

The loss and damage fund aims to provide compensation to developing countries for climate-related damages. According to the United Nations Environment Program, developing nations need an annual financial commitment ranging from $215 billion to $387 billion throughout this decade to address and mitigate the impact of global warming.

Billed as the Finance COP, the climate summit at Baku reached an agreement of providing USD 300 billion annually by 2035 for the loss and damage fund. But a year later, the fund suffered a setback with the US pulling out of it this year.

Migration often not a choice

Mamata’s decision to go out for work was driven by the poor financial condition of her family --- her parents are struggling to raise five children --- after they were displaced by the rise in the sea level and coastal erosion, both caused by a string of cyclones that battered their village over the past decade.

She now counts the losses she suffered after leaving home: what she earned at the garment factory did not make up for what she gave up -- the familiarity of home, parents and customs.

It has been a month since she returned, but Mamata is unsure of what she wants to do. “I will probably look for a job in a tailoring unit,” she said, hopeful that she will find work soon. 

While Mamata could return, this choice is a luxury few can afford.

The weekly bus from Bagapatia takes migrants to Ernakulam in Kerala for work.

Prasanna Kumar Parida/The Migration Story

About 1.7 million people moved from Odisha to other states in 2023 for better wages and opportunities, according to the Odisha Migration Survey 2023 conducted by S. Irudaya Rajan and Amrita Datta.

Like Mamata, around 800 people from Bagapatia migrated to other states for work this year, according to Prasanna Kumar Parida, sarpanch of Satabhaya, Mamata’s native village.

Parida said the families have expanded since they moved to Bagapatia in 2018, the population  of this rehabilitation colony now estimated at 3,500.

“But there are no livelihood opportunities, and a lack of options, people ---mostly men migrate to Kerala, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Gujarat to work in garment factories, plywood factories, construction sites, hospitality, domestic work, transport, and informal services.  Around 50 women from the village have [also] gone to Tamil Nadu and Kerala to work in textile and garment industries,” said Parida.

Women migrants are especially disadvantaged, said Tara Nair, Director (Research) at Work Fair and Free Foundation, Bengaluru, who has extensively worked on livelihoods and labour, rural finance, and gender. “They are definitely more vulnerable compared to men. Women face gender discrimination -- they have a huge gender wage gap. Many are sexually harassed too.”

In 2007-08, the National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO) stated that women formed more than 80 percent of all migrants nationwide (72 per cent in 1993).

Rukhmini Panda, a doctoral researcher on migration in Odisha, attributes the “inflated figure” of women migrants to “marriage migration” or women who accompany their families to other states as caregivers. “Then, the Census did not capture work-related migration but migration in general --- it could be for higher studies too,” said Panda.

A 2012 study, ‘Gender and Migration: Negotiating Rights, a Women’s Movement Perspective’ by the Centre for Women’s Development Studies, New Delhi, stated: “While female migrants vastly outnumber male migrants in the population movement/migration data for India, the proportions of female migrants identified as moving for employment-related reasons is so small as to be rendered insignificant, in contrast to males where the proportions migrating for employment reasons are the most significant.”

The families shifted to Bagapatia but lost their traditional livelihood of farming and fishing.

Baidyanath Nayak/The Migration Story

The state does not have accurate and robust data on the number of migrants.

A study by the Work Fair and Free Foundation (WFF), formerly Centre for Migration and Labour Solutions, Bengaluru, on seasonal labour migration and migrant workers from Odisha, found that trends of migration in Odisha varies according to the region. The high household migration in coastal regions suggests “that a large number of households have one or more members migrating from the region.”

Climate change and livelihoods

A paper published in Applied Ecology and Environmental Research in July 2022 noted that sea level along Odisha’s coast has risen by 9.5 cm between 1966 and 2015.

And this will worsen in the coming years.

Although not aware of the term non economic loss and damage, their experiences point to the loss of culture, community, and the mental trauma they have gone through. “We have seen women bear the brunt more than men,” said Lochan Mallick, a resident of Bagapatia.

“They take a huge load of responsibilities, they are the caregivers and juggle home and the factory work, which is gruelling. They are perpetually under stress but have to work even though they have health problems,” she said.

Eighteen-year-old Lochan left her home in Bagapatia to work in a juice processing factory in Tirupati, Andhra Pradesh. She had not imagined that she would have to work for 12 hours a day. “Work was difficult and I was depressed being away from my home and family,” said Lochan, whose father and aunt have migrated to Kerala to work as construction labourers.

Her desire to contribute to the family income was cut short by her yearning for home. She now plans to look for work in Odisha, for which she will have to travel to a nearby town such as Kendrapara or Rajnagar.

For 19-year-old twin sisters, Barsharani and Ashalata Mallick, the pull of a new town and a new life also waned after a few months of working in the juice factory in Tirupati --- the same one where Lochan worked.

That the agents, who helped them find employment, did not pay them the entire amount promised added to their mental stress of being away from home and in June, they “escaped” from the house the employer had arranged and returned home.

Barsharani and Ashalata, too, no longer want to go outside the state to earn money. Working in tailoring units or as salespersons in stores nearer home would be apt for us, said Ashalata.

For now, however, opportunities within the state may be hard to come by.

Odisha’s unemployment rate is 3.9% --- higher than the national average of 3.2%, according to Periodic Labour Force Survey 2022-23 conducted by the National Sample Survey Office (NSSO). The unemployment rate in the state’s rural areas was 3.6%, and 6.2% in the urban areas.

Even so, these young women had the support of their families to return home. But many have little choice but to work far from home, visiting their families only if they get leave.

Initiative to curb migration

On August 4, 2025, Odisha launched a Mobile Migrant Resource Centre as part of its project ‘Enhancing climate resilience of migrants and other vulnerable households in the coastal areas of Odisha’ to address climate-change induced migration.

Aiming to inform, educate, create awareness and also sensitise the climate-affected people in the coastal areas of Odisha on safe migration, the pilot project aims at reducing distress migration.

As migration is a fundamental human right, it is also important to educate people on safe migration as it entails people moving to other places for work with an informed choice, said researcher Panda. “Safe migration means there is no exploitation and workers get health services and timely wages.”

The state’s first such initiative started in Ganjam and Kendrapada districts, which are highly prone to migration and vulnerable to extreme climate events.

Working in partnership with the Government of Odisha are not-for-profit organisations Aide et Action, International Organization for Migration, and the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization.

“Our efforts have started to make them self-reliant by providing employment in their own areas,” Odisha’s Deputy Chief Minister Kanak Vardhan Singh Deo told mediapersons at the inauguration, adding that the mobile migrant resource centre will help curb distress migration.

Odisha’s labour minister Ganesh Ram Singh Khuntia told The Migration Story: “Through this initiative, we will know how many people are going outside to work. This will give us accurate data of migrants.”

Awareness drives have already begun in villages, said Umi Daniel, Director, Migration & Education, Aide et Action, Bhubaneswar. Villagers are being shown videos and films, educating them not only on psychosocial welfare, but also on safe migration and the government’s livelihood schemes.

The mobile migrant resource centre van has been travelling to villages in Kendrapara. Pic courtesy: Aide et Action

The migrant resource centre van has been moving from village to village and the community resource persons are interacting with people, recording their statements. After getting their feedback, the Labour Department and the Agriculture Department plan to work out solutions to keep them from migrating.

“We are collecting more data on migrants, and the left-behind families. We are also examining what are the livelihoods that have failed and what should the government do to provide livelihood opportunities. We will document the feedback and share it with the government,” said Daniel. This will help develop a structured framework and sustainable solutions to address migration challenges.

The initiative will also look into supporting the psychosocial health of climate-affected people, including women. The trained staffers of Aide et Action are encouraging people, including migrants, to reach out to them in case of problems or for information by dialling the toll-free psychosocial helpline number 1800-345-7885. The NGO has hired professionals to handle calls and guide the callers after listening to their grievances.

Pukal Chandrama, 27, a graduate living in Nolia Nuagaon village in Ganjam district, around 148 km from the capital city of Bhubaneswar, is among those who called the toll-free number.

Belonging to the fisher community, Chandrama was worried about her job prospects. The person she spoke to told her they would look into it and would also have a meeting with the youth in Nolia Nuagaon village, many of whom were struggling to find jobs after college. “Proper guidance will help youths like me find jobs and support our families,” she said.

The efforts might help provide alternatives for women like Mamata, Lochan, Barsharani and Ashalata, who do not want to leave the state to find work. The women are optimistic that this initiative may yield livelihood options nearer home, close to their families.

 “Any initiative launched for us gives us hope that the government is taking steps to improve our lives and that there are people listening to our voices,” said Mamata.

The author researched the subject as part of the Internews’ Earth Journalism Network fellowship to cover ‘Non-Economic Loss and Damage on the Bay of Bengal’

Shobha Surin is an associate editor with Question of Cities and writes on climate change, ecology and gender.