What can migrants’ earnings buy? In Odisha, migrant workers are bringing in as much or more financial resources as the government spends on development activity in some blocks. The income from migration has pulled families out of debt and poverty in several villages, research shows
Liby Johnson
Bustling market area in Surada block. Photo credit: Rufus Sunny, Gram Vikas
“I think there is something seriously wrong with the household survey in Surada. The numbers that are coming out seem to be very unrealistic”, Benoy Peter tells over a telephone call one afternoon. “How can more than 70% of the households have a migrant?”
Gram Vikas, the organisation I work with, and Centre for Migration and Inclusive Development (CMID), the organisation that Benoy leads, have been working together for more than five years to understand issues of labour migration from Odisha.
Migration from Odisha is not a new phenomenon. The popular imagination of migration in the state is influenced by the large number of families that travel by trains from the western districts of Bolangir and Nuapada to work in the brick kilns in Andhra Pradesh/ Telangana or as informal sector workers in the urban centres in Chhattisgarh. This form of migration is driven by distress, with the households forced to take advances from labour contractors to raise the rainfed crop in the monsoon season. In return, they are forced to engage in backbreaking labour, in abysmal living conditions, and suffering from various forms of abuse and discrimination. Popular media in Odisha often reports on the villages where every able-bodied man, woman and child have migrated, leaving behind only the old and the very young. This cycle of migration continues every year, with the exodus beginning in November and returning in June.
Odisha has also had migration of other forms. Cooks, plumbers and electricians from Odisha, particularly the coastal districts around Cuttack are a regular feature in many Indian cities. The power loom textile industry in Surat in Gujarat employs an estimated 7 lakh people, most of them from Ganjam district. In fact, nearly one-third of the migrant workers in Surada and Jagannathprasad work in Surat. In all these cases, it is almost entirely the men who originally migrated, with the families staying behind. A small proportion of them have moved permanently with families to their work locations.
Two percent of the total households had women or girls who had migrated out of the Ganjam district for work. Picture credit: Ajaya Behera, Gram Vikas
Migration to destinations in southern India, from the southern districts of Odisha – Gajapati, Ganjam, Kalahandi, Kandhamal, and Rayagada is a more recent phenomenon. This too is largely male migration – the proportion of women among migrant workers range from 1.2% in Thuamul Rampur to 10.6% in Baliguda.
Both Gram Vikas and CMID have together been carrying out ‘Block Migration Profiles’ - a scientific, rigorous sample survey - that provides information about the socio-economic context of the block. A block is a cluster of villages, and we have been studying, mapping the incidence and nature of migration from different blocks in Odisha, the perceptions of migrant workers and their households on the benefits and challenges that migration poses.
During 2020 to 2022, Gram Vikas and CMID prepared block level migration profiles of four blocks in four districts of Odisha - Rayagada block in Gajapati district, Jagannathprasad block in Ganjam district, Baliguda block in Kandhamal district and Thuamul Rampur block in Kalahandi district. We conducted the survey in Surada block in Ganjam district in 2023.
Our findings in the blocks revealed that people opted for migration as a livelihood choice. It is necessary for the rest of us, in policy making and practice, to understand migration for work as an intermediate livelihood option, a tool in fact aiding the transition from a subsistence oriented agrarian economy and society to one with diversified livelihoods options.
The block profiles provide information on how this could be happening.
Through remittances.
FOLLOW THE MONEY
Four out of five agricultural households in Surada reported negative climate impacts on profitable farming practices. Picture credit: Ajaya Behera, Gram Vikas
What began as a casual port of call during the 2018 floods in Kerala has today developed into a full-fledged partnership between Gram Vikas and CMID that together run the ‘Safe and Dignified Migration' programme in the Odisha-Kerala corridor.
Our approach to enabling safe and dignified migration has four key components: scientifically designed studies to understand the nature of migration; a corridor approach to enabling safe and dignified migration through collaboration with governments and other stakeholders; destination level services to migrant workers; and source level activities focussing on financial and emotional well-being of families of migrants who stay back.
We found that Rayagada and Baliguda blocks each received ₹ 1.8 crore per month as remittance in 2020. In Thuamul Rampur block, the remittance was about ₹ 2.3 crore a month, or ₹ 28 crore in a year. We were very surprised by these numbers, but there were more surprises in store, with the other blocks.
At this point, we reviewed the government spending on development activities in Thuamul Rampur block to understand the remittance better and found that in the five years between 2015 and 2020, an amount of ₹ 30 crore had been spent each year. Which means that migrant workers in this block are bringing in as much or more financial resources as the government. What is remarkable is that the remittance from migrant workers is completely new money for the district.
Our remittance findings were far from over. We were yet to uncover bigger money inflows.
In Jagannathprasad block, remittances estimated in 2020 was ₹ 64 crore per annum.
Surada block received an estimated ₹ 180 crore in 2023. In per capita terms, this means ₹ 12,587 for every resident of Surada block. The per capita income of Odisha for 2023-24, as per the Economic Survey of the Government of Odisha, is ₹ 1,61,437. Based on my understanding of the context of Surada block, I would assume that the per capita income there would be about 75% of the figure for Odisha, or ₹ 1.21 lakh.
Remittances thus account for 10% of the per capita income of the block.
Bustling market areas in Surada block. Photo credit: Rufus Sunny, Gram Vikas
These numbers are logical estimations based on certain indicators. The migration profiles also have evidence of the impact of migration on the households through a set of perception-based questions.
Proportion of households with a history of migration which report that they would not have been able to come out of poverty without the income from their migrant household members range from 62.9% in Baliguda to 95.8% in Surada.
Proportion of households reporting that they would not have been able to repay debt without the income from the migrant members of the household range from 33.3% in Baliguda to 79.2% in Surada.
Proportion of households reporting that their savings have increased due to income from the migrant members of the household range from 46.4% in Baliguda to 70.3% in Surada.
About 12% of the households in Rayagada and Baliguda blocks, 15% in Jagannathprasad, 27% in Thuamul Rampur, and 35% of households in Surada report their ability to diversify household income sources as a result of migration. Similar sentiments are echoed in case of improvements being made to agriculture.
Migration income has helped households to improve their physical quality of life, starting with a better house: 5% of households in Thuamul Rampur, 9% in Baliguda, 26% in Surada, 28% in Jagannathprasad, and 32% of households in Rayagada have reported use of income from migration to build a new house.
THE MIND-BOGGLING SCALE OF MIGRATION
Historical incidence of migration reported in the four blocks where we did the study in 2020-21, ranged from 36% in Baliguda to 61% in Jagannathprasad (refer to the table above).