A recent study of the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD) throws light on many interesting facets of migration and reverse migration after the four-phased, 68-day national lockdown (between 24 March and 31 May) in Asia\u2019s third largest economy, in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic outbreak.<\/p>\n
The study is based on feedback from 397 reverse migrants from 35 districts in seven Indian states which had seen the maximum flow of reverse migration.<\/p>\n
The seven states are Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Odisha, Jharkhand, West Bengal and Rajasthan.<\/p>\n
The survey was conducted between 24 May and 2 June, 2021, amidst the second wave of the pandemic.<\/p>\n
What are the key findings of this survey?<\/p>\n
# WHY MIGRATION?:<\/strong>\u00a0The reverse migrants were originally low-income earners and marginal earners in their native places. 72% of the migrants were earning Rs6,000 per month where they lived before migration.<\/p>\n # DID MIGRATION HELP?:\u00a0<\/strong>Of course, it did. After migration, almost all of them started earning more. Only 1.5% of the respondents reported earnings of less than Rs6,000 per month. They earned and saved well. Average savings were Rs7,845 and average remittance Rs6422.<\/p>\n # WHAT DID THEY DO IN CITIES? :<\/strong>\u00a0Most of them were casual labourers or self-employed in cities without any social security or job contract. Many had worked in the construction sector.<\/p>\n # WHY REVERSE MIGRATION?:\u00a0<\/strong>3 % of respondents returned to villages for employment under MNREGA; 40% for drop in income; 42% under family\/peer pressure to be with the community; 63% because of the Covid pandemic in cities; and 70% for lack of employment.<\/p>\n # LIFE AFTER REVERSE MIGRATION :\u00a0<\/strong>At least 62% of the reverse migrants had access to subsidized food; 79% were not aware of any development activities near their villages.<\/p>\n Only 20% of the respondents are aware of skill development programmes near their villages.<\/p>\n # LIFE AFTER REVERSE MIGRATION:<\/strong>\u00a041% of the reverse migrants relied on agriculture for livelihood. 16% of them found work under the Mahatma Gandhi National Employment Guarantee (MNREGA) scheme.<\/p>\n At least 70% of the respondents saw a drop in income. 48% of them used their savings to overcome difficulties while 22% borrowed to tide over the tough time.<\/p>\n Of the respondents who borrowed, only 16% accessed credit from formal sources.<\/p>\n At least 12% of them are unemployed.<\/p>\n # WHAT NEXT?:\u00a0<\/strong>55% of the reverse migrants want to return to cities.<\/p>\n The pull is higher income opportunities. 14% of the respondents are attracted to better infrastructure in urban India; 14% see limited use of the skill they have acquired in cities; 41% see job opportunities in Cities; 61% feel they could earn more in urban pockets.<\/p>\n # WHY MANY STILL DON\u2019T WANT TO RETURN TO CITIES?:<\/strong>\u00a0\u00a025% of the respondents wish to stay back in the village.<\/p>\n The main trigger for staying back is concern for safety due to the pandemic.\u00a013% see lack of livelihood opportunities in urban India post pandemic; 6% don\u2019t want to go back to cities because of family pressure and children\u2019s education in villages; 5% say they have multiple skills which can be used in their villages for earning livelihood; and 3% own land and\/or livestock.<\/p>\n Around 20% are still indecisive.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A recent study of the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD) throws light on many interesting facets of migration and reverse migration after…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3073,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3072","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-articles"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bankerstrust.in\/column\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3072","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bankerstrust.in\/column\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bankerstrust.in\/column\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bankerstrust.in\/column\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bankerstrust.in\/column\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3072"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/bankerstrust.in\/column\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3072\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3074,"href":"https:\/\/bankerstrust.in\/column\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3072\/revisions\/3074"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bankerstrust.in\/column\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3073"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bankerstrust.in\/column\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3072"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bankerstrust.in\/column\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3072"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bankerstrust.in\/column\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3072"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}