Alternative to migration

Published : Jan 16, 2009 00:00 IST

For us, getting work in our village is a big thing. Since I dont have any land, I am completely dependent on casual labour.

Gondi, a 45-year-old woman (Surguja district, Chhattisgarh)

Because works have started opening, the idea of leaving the village doesnt enter our mind.

Dilsay (Surguja district)

Migrating for work is very expensive. Half of our earnings are spent in commuting alone. When he used to go to the bazaar to work, he had to face exploitation from his employer.

Sita Bai (Sirohi district, Rajasthan)

Before the NREGA, we had to go far for work. There was no place to stay, so we slept with our children on the footpath where dogs also slept with us.

Dinesh, 20 years (Badwani district, Madhya Pradesh)

These testimonies sum up the importance of the NREGA in the lives of many migrant labourers. It is a valued source of local employment, if not at times the only source. In their minds, migration is associated with hardship and they resort to it only when there is no alternative.

Such is the outlook, for instance, of Baleshwar Mahto, a resident of Uttari Dehati in Bihars Araria district. Baleshwar goes to Punjab every year in search of work to sustain his family. He had planned to go there last June as well. However, he got NREGA employment in his own village and so he decided to stay back. Baleshwar will definitely go to Punjab next time the trip has only been postponed.

Meanwhile, he enjoys this respite. The NREGA is a triple bonus for him: apart from providing local employment, it enabled him to combine this work with tending his own fields and spending more time with his family.

Baleshwars story illustrates the situation faced by many in Araria. Large numbers of people there are forced to look for work in Punjab, Delhi and Gujarat as employment is hard to find locally. What is available is very poorly paid, with wages varying from Rs.40 to Rs.60 a day during the harvest season, even less (Rs.25 to Rs.50 a day) otherwise. Baleshwar takes up such employment only when he is forced to stay back in his village, for instance, owing to illness in the family.

In their survey responses, migrant workers often spoke about the hardships associated with migration. In the cities, they live in deplorable conditions, with no access to basic facilities such as shelter, sanitation or even safe drinking water. In the case of men-only migration, women and children face material and psychological insecurity, and family relations often suffer.

The NREGA is a potential liberation from these hardships. Naresh Hirshi Dev from Palamau (Jharkhand) put it succinctly: To be with your family and get work in the village is a real relief.

Says Noor Zaheer, survey coordinator, about the condition of migrant workers in Himachal Pradesh: Migrant workers who came to Himachal for fruit picking were paid a pittance [just a little more than what they would have got at home], made to sleep in torn tents and given poor meals. This year, however, they had a choice. Says Noor Zaheer: They refused to work for less than Rs.200 a day. They also demanded waterproof tents and decent meals. They said if they had to work for Rs.100 a day, they need not have come all the way to Himachal Pradesh. They could have earned it at their doorstep at the NREGA worksites. The orchard owners had no option but to comply.

More than half (57 per cent) of the sample workers stated that the NREGA helped them avoid migration, and a similar proportion (also 57 per cent) felt that migration had decreased in their villages after the NREGA was launched. As expected, these figures were even larger in areas with high levels of NREGA employment or high rates of migration before the inception of the programme. For instance, in Pati block (Madhya Pradesh), a hub of out-migration where the NREGA has been deployed in a big way, 92 per cent of the sample workers felt that migration had gone down and 88 per cent said the NREGA had helped them avoid migration.

The responses were similar in Dungarpur (Rajasthan), where some people had even returned from Mumbai and places in Gujarat on hearing that NREGA work was available in their villages.

Even in areas where the scale of NREGA work is much smaller, for instance, Sitapur in Uttar Pradesh and Araria, there is some evidence of an impact on migration. One possible explanation is that a few days of assured employment in the lean season is enough to persuade some workers to stay back for the entire period.

However, it is also possible that the promise of local employment is luring workers to stay back and that if these hopes are dashed migration will resume. Delays in wage payments could intensify this potential discouragement effect and push people back into the web of migration. If this setback is to be averted, NREGA employment must be expanded and made more predictable.

Kartika Bhatia and Ashish Ranjan
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