About 78% of migrants from rural Bihar were headed towards an urban destination, a study by a researcher of the Indian Institute of Technology-Hyderabad (IIT-H) has found. Those in the upper end of the social and economic hierarchy in villages are disproportionately represented in the rural-urban migrations.
These migrant workers are more educated and tend to step out of the village without having worked at all in the local rural economy. This relatively better-off migration stream contrasts with the other, more precarious migration stream in which workers predominantly undertake manual work, and when they migrate, they are more likely to work in rural areas.
These differentiated migrant labour markets pathway suggest that social and economic hierarchies in source regions are translated in destination regions. Where one is located in the social and economic ladder in the village determines what kind of work she/he will undertake at the destination of migration.
Titled ‘Poverty, Migration and Development in rural Bihar,’ this study was undertaken by Amrita Datta, Assistant Professor of Development Studies, Department of Liberal Arts, IIT-H. This work has been done in collaboration with Institute for Human Development, New Delhi, and supported by Indian Council of Social Science Research.
“The broad objectives of this research were to study the socio-economic attributes of migration; linkages between poverty, migration and development; shifts in sources of rural income, and role of remittances therein. Based on a specially-designed module, information related to the migration destination was collected to focus on linkages between Bihar and rest of the Indian economy as well migrants’ social and political lives at destination,” says Datta.
Another major finding was that 98% of return migrants reported migration was beneficial. At the same time, 9 in 10 such migrants did not desire to migrate permanently. This cannot be seen as paradox, as material gains of migration come at the high cost of separation from family members
A survey-based primary study was undertaken in 12 villages in seven representative districts of Bihar — Araria, Gaya, Gopalganj, Nalanda, Madhubani, Rohtas, and Purnia. It covered 9,737 individuals in 1,588 households, of which about two-third of the households were also studied earlier in 1998-99 and 2009-11.
Households with migrants reported a higher annual income than households without migrants. More than 90% of all migrants sent remittances, which comprised 55% of total income of households with migrants. Remittances were predominantly used in consumptive expenditures — food, education, health, but also sometimes invested in productive sources.
While migration has increased and become longer-term, it remains circular; a majority of migrants eventually return to the village after having worked for long in distant labour markets.
