For origin-states and regions, migration reduces the glut in the labour market and increases remittances. For the destination states, it adds to the economic dynamism of the region through provision of labour, work experiences, and skills. Migrants gain an opportunity to earn higher wages and cultivate new skills and experiences, acquire greater independence and agency, as well as participate in the economic development of the destination and their families and host communities back home.
Given India’s demographic patterns, inter-state migration is likely to continue to grow. Over the course of the next few decades, the growth in the working-age population will be driven by northern and central states that lag behind in the demographic transition, such as Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, and Rajasthan. These states will see their working-age population increase through 2041 and supply labour, especially low-skilled labour in sectors such as construction, retail, care, beauty and transport to the aging states in southern and western India.
Internal migrants are heterogeneous in terms of education, incomes, skills, social location, and age, among other characteristics. Micro-surveys indicate that most migrants are between the ages of 16 and 40 years, particularly among temporary seasonal migrants. Census 2011 indicated that there 45.36 crore migrants in India, equivalent to 37 per cent of the country’s population. Most migrant workers are employed in the informal sector in unskilled or semi-skilled manual jobs. The Indian economy is critically dependent on this internal migrant workforce that contributes to the high-growth sectors of manufacturing, construction, and trading activities such as hotels, restaurant, shops, and wholesale and retail trade, and other services in the destination states.
According to Census 2011, more than 35 per cent of seasonal migrants worked in construction, 20 per cent in agriculture, and 16 per cent in manufacturing sectors. A large proportion of gig and platform workers, who are ubiquitous in urban spaces, delivering food and ferrying passengers, are migrants from rural and semi-urban areas, who migrated to the cities in search of jobs and better wages.
Despite their contribution to economic growth, migrants face a host of challenges such as lack of access to social protection, poor living and working conditions, language and cultural barriers, discrimination based on social location, precarity of livelihoods, and so on.
Recent initiatives for migrant workers
The Covid-19 pandemic affected all sections of the population, significantly impacting the lives of migrant workers. In this backdrop, many initiatives were undertaken by the Centre and state governments to mitigate the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic and to support migrant workers.
Ministry of Rural Development (MoRD) launched the Garib Kalyan Rojgar Abhiyan (GKRA) to provide immediate opportunities for livelihood generation to returnee migrant workers and the rural population in 25 categories of economic activities covering 116 districts of Assam, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Odisha, Rajasthan, and Uttar Pradesh. These districts were selected given their high concentration of unskilled or semi-skilled migrant workers.
The Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship, under its flagship scheme Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Vikas Yojana (PMKVY), implemented a targeted programme for the skilling of reverse migrant workers who were adversely affected by the pandemic in the 116 districts identified by MoRD through the Recognition of Prior Learning (RPL) and Short Term Training (STT) components.
District Skill Committees, the locus of skill planning and skill training efforts at the district level, were given the responsibility of mobilisation of candidates, identification of candidate aspirations and expectations, and facilitation of training in batches based on local livelihood opportunities. Job roles such as mason, self-employed tailor, sewing machine operator, assistant electrician, and organic grower were identified and nodal officers were designated to support and monitor the district authorities. Once skill mapping of all migrants was done, the details of skilled migrants were uploaded on the ASEEM portal, a skilled workforce directory, for the benefit of industries. MSDE also introduced online skill training in short-term and long-term courses through the eSkill India portal and Bharat Skills portal respectively.
At the directive of the Ministry of Labour and Employment, states undertook tremendous efforts in mapping the skills of returnee migrant workers, identifying reskilling and upskilling needs, and linking workers to local livelihood opportunities. States such as Karnataka, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, and Madhya Pradesh, among others, launched mobile apps and government portals to link workers to jobs, social security schemes, and skill development.
Karnataka’s kaushalkar.com web portal became an interface for mapping of skills, evaluation of skilling needs, and job opportunities. The Karnataka Skill Development Corporation worked in tandem with industry associations such as Karnataka Small Scale Industries Association (KASSIA), Federation of Karnataka Chambers of Commerce and Industries (FKCCI), and others to boost job opportunities for migrant workers.
With a focus on women’s economic empowerment, the Government of Andhra Pradesh implemented ‘mahila prangnams’ for skilling women. Uttar Pradesh launched the ‘Sewa Mitra’ platform under the aegis of the Department of Labour to collect data of more than 37 lakh migrant returnees, map their skills, and categorise them into over 100 skill sets across the skill spectrum. Details of approximately 18 lakh construction workers, registered with the Building and Construction Workers (BoCW) scheme, were added to the platform.
Civil society organisations had a very strong role to play with skill centres run by Aajeevika Bureau witnessing an increase in enrollments in short-term courses such as bike-repair by migrant workers. Aajevika also provided and continues to provide on-the-job training to migrant workers in construction, factory work, and hospitality industry in cities in Maharashtra and Gujarat, catering to their specific skilling needs. This enables higher wages, better placements, and improved worker self-esteem. Online training courses run by private companies also saw an uptick in interest, with migrants eager to acquire new skills as they sought to re-enter the labour market or open an enterprise.
Skill development for migrant workers
There is a spatial dimension to migration, with regional specialisation in certain trades and occupation categories. For instance, interstate migrant workers from Odisha are often engaged in the plumbing trade, whereas migrant workers from Uttar Pradesh are frequently employed as factory workers and drivers. Given that spatial migration trends are quite entrenched, focused skilling and vocational training programmes for youth in the origin states can help migrants access better-paid, skilled work opportunities in the destination and break from the intergenerational transmission of poverty. Skills in digital technology must form a part of the skilling programme modules.
For the destination states and regions, establishing migrant facilitation centres where workers can register themselves, obtain information on government schemes, post their grievances through help desks, and be provided immediate counseling and support is an important intervention. In 2015 and 2016, the DDU-GKY, MoRD’s flagship skilling programme, released detailed guidelines regarding the setting up of migrant support centres (MSCs) for migrating candidates and their families. DDU-GKY envisaged MSCs to provide residential assistance, counselling, identity documentation and registration services, alumni and employer networks, healthcare links, and other support services to migrant candidates. In order to facilitate the creation of an institutional support framework for migrants, DDU-GKY provisioned funding of Rs. 10 lakhs per centre per year through State Rural Livelihood Missions/State Skill Missions. This was increased to Rs. 30 lakhs per centre per year in 2020. Given that migrant workers face challenges in accessing formal, quality skill training, and post-placement support, the MSCs are an important intervention and need to function in close coordination with the MoLE.
Moreover, given the presence of the informal sector and dynamic nature of the labour markets, assessing the demand and supply of skills and match-making of skills in both the source and destination states is a herculean task. However, skill needs analysis can be attempted using a mix of qualitative methods —case studies, interviews, FGDs— and quantitative methods— surveys, skill assessments, modeling estimates— at the state and district levels.
Social networks
Field research indicates that the elaborate social networks of interstate migrant workers, comprising family, relatives, and friends, enable and assist the process of migration. In fact, strong community solidarity facilitates exposure to a range of occupational pathways, as well as acquisition of vocational skills through observation and learning by doing.
While male unskilled construction workers rely on urban networks to provide access to important information, public services, and alternative employment prospects, women garment workers depend on social ties and associations with workers and NGOs to access loans, SHGs, and training.
As is well-documented, in the Indian ecosystem, skills are frequently acquired through non-formal means, that is, skills are inherited and passed on through learning from one generation to another through family and kinship networks of master crafts-persons. Workers marginalised from formal labour markets, such as low-income migrant women workers in the construction and garment sectors, workers from pastoralist communities engaged in urban services, etc. rely on social and community networks and generational skills for skill acquisition and opportunities for upward social mobility.
Skill assessment and certification of migrant workers through Recognition of Prior Learning (RPL) will augment worker competencies, scope for employability and upward mobility, and enable substantiation of existing knowledge. The RPL certification of prior formal, semi-formal, and non-formal skills is a valid skill acquisition and certification method, recognised in existing skilling programmes such as PMKVY. There is a need to scale up the RPL framework and capture the numbers of those skilled in different sectors and crafts through informal skill acquisition.
Labour laws and data
To protect the interests of the inter-state migrant workers and provide them with rights at par with the local workers, the Centre passed the Inter-state Migrant Workmen (Regulation of Employment and Conditions of Service) Act, 1979. This Act has now been subsumed in the Occupational Safety, Health and the Working Conditions (OSH) Code. The OSH Code provides for decent working conditions, minimum wages, grievance redressal mechanisms, protection from abuse and exploitation, enhancement of skills and social security to all categories of workers including migrant workers. Furthermore, legislations like Unorganized Workers’ Social Security Act and BOCW Act have been subsumed in the Code on Social Security (CoSS), 2020.
The Ministry of Labour & Employment launched the eSHRAM portal in 2021 to create a comprehensive national database of unorganized workers, including migrant workers. There are currently more than 28.62 crore workers registered in the portal. Going ahead, it is envisaged that the portal will facilitate a mapping of the delivery of welfare benefits to such workers, including portability of benefits of welfare schemes to the migrant workers.
The way forward
The process of mainstreaming migrant workers in the policy discourse has been initiated through various initiatives in the domains of social welfare, skill development, and awareness building, with momentum picking up in 2020 after the pandemic-induced exodus. To support the pandemic-affected migrants, a whole range of initiatives were introduced by the Centre and state governments. Taking a long-horizon view of migration, investing in the potential, productivity and agency of migrant workers is crucial. Skill development programmes in source states need to be designed to meet growing demands in emerging sectors. Specialised training as care workers which have demand both within India and abroad would have the potential to provide employment opportunities in the growing care economy. Skill development in source states needs to be accompanied by soft support such as language skills, travel assistance etc. that can enable skilled persons to embark on the journey of migration and get accustomed to a new setting.
Local Migration Resource Centres need to be set-up in high intensity areas to offer support and help establish linkages with social security schemes. Civil society and grassroots organisations can play an important role in supporting local governments in running Migration Resource Centres and helplines for migrant workers. Initiatives to ensure access to toilets and other basic facilities for health, hygiene and sanitation for women migrant workers would be critical. Access to education, health, and nutrition for children of migrant workers need to be ensured through integration with government schemes and health and education facilities.
(The authors are associated with the Skill Development, Labour & Employment, NITI Aayog. Views expressed are personal.)
