Migrant labour as a catalyst

THE villages of Gosaipur and Majauli impart a dash of colour to the largely drab rural neighbourhood of Dumraha block in Sitamarhi district. Their residents, especially women and children, wear dresses that are cleaner and better than those seen in an average Bihar village. The houses, despite the absence of electricity and other basic infrastructure, suggest a sense of organisation. One can hear transistors playing inside them. As night falls, the villagers gather around a television set and watch the latest Bollywood films with a generator-powered digital video system.

Gosaipur and Majauli are considered "forward-looking" by development officers of the government. A single socio-economic factor - migrant labour - has conferred this "different status" on Gosaipur and Majauali. There are approximately 850 households in the two villages and, at any given point in time, at least 250 men from them are away at work in rural Punjab and Assam or in Delhi, Mumbai, Surat, Hyderabad or Nagpur. "We earn better wages outside Bihar and are able to save more and this helps us acquire things that other villages do not have," says Bihari Rai, who worked for five years in Gujarat at a construction site.

Gosaipur and Majauli are not exceptions. There are hundreds of such villages across Bihar where migrant labourers constitute sizable segments of the populations. According to a study conducted by the New Delhi-based Institute of Human Development (IHD) in 18 villages of North Bihar, migration from the State in search of jobs has increased substantively in the past two decades. The study showed that in 2000, 49 per cent of the families had a member who was a migrant worker. The figure was 28 per cent in 1983. In the Census decade that ended in 2001, as many as 12 lakh people left Bihar for work.

The study noted that that significant changes had occurred in the choice of destination in the past decade. During the early 1980s the most important destination was the rural areas of Punjab and Haryana. By the end of the 1990s, migrants opted for urban destinations such as New Delhi, Mumbai, Surat, Kolkata, Guwahati, Hyderabad and Nagpur. The National Capital Region Planning Board (NCRPB) estimates that nearly 11 per cent of New Delhi's population is from Bihar, the second largest migrant population in the capital. Migrants from Uttar Pradesh constituted the largest chunk, with 40 per cent.

The primary reason for this type of migration is, of course, lack of employment opportunities in the State. Agriculture is the bedrock of Bihar's economy, employing 80 per cent of the workforce and generating 40 per cent of the State's gross domestic product (GDP). But the sector has registered only 1 per cent annual growth since 1995. Jobs are vanishing in the industrial sector too. A survey conducted by the Bihar Industries Association two years ago found that 54 per cent of the "existing" industrial units were closed, 26 per cent were sick and only 20 per cent were working.

The IHD study noted that the "overall impact of migration on the village economy in Bihar is wide-ranging and substantial". It said: "The large-scale migration of rural workers from the State has resulted in a shortage of labour in the villages of Bihar, particularly during the peak agricultural season. Accordingly, there have been substantial changes in the internal employment relations as well as real wage rates during the last two decades. Moreover, the technical know-how acquired by the migrating workers and the small savings by way of remittances, which are being reinvested in the native places, are contributing significantly to its economy." The study pointed out that the "increasing trend in non-farm activities in the villages of Bihar provides evidence of this phenomenon".

Several observers and political leaders such as former Railway Minister Nitish Kumar of the Janata Dal (United) hold the view that temporary migration would dramatically alter the political discourse in the State. Nitish Kumar said that increasing migration would open more and more segments of the population to issues of development and ultimately strike the "death knell of the Lalu Prasad-led Rashtriya Janata Dal [RJD] regime of Bihar, which survived for 15 years by merely emphasising the point that it had enhanced the self-respect of neglected sections of society".

The RJD leadership has a different view. According to Union Minister and RJD leader Raghuvansh Prasad Singh, it is the very enhancement of self-respect provided by successive RJD governments that has given the confidence to the weaker sections of society to venture out into the world and make a living away from the clutches of caste-Hindu landlords. Lalu Prasad himself has gone on record several times as saying that "there is no need to get unduly worried about migration as it is a global phenomenon".

Notwithstanding these arguments, there is little doubt that migration and the life of migrant workers outside Bihar has contributed in a big way to the increasing focus on development issues on the electoral scene. This focus had manifested prominently in the Assembly elections held in February. The current election campaign also reflects the same trend.

Analysts believe that the RJD's defeat in as many as 30 seats in the February Assembly elections was owing to the development factor. Travelling across Muzzaffarpur and Sitamarhi districts, this correspondent interacted with scores of villagers for whom development was an important electoral issue. But the perspectives seemed to be equally divided on the lines advanced by Nitish Kumar and Raghuvansh Prasad Singh.

Obviously, sizable segments of the population still believe that the political force that gave them a sense of self-respect in the face of oppression and caste discrimination would provide them with a better living too, in due course. Going by such reactions, the dramatic change that Nitish Kumar predicts on the basis of large-scale migration of labour may take a little more time to materialise.