Migrants keep India moving

The recent exodus of migrant workers from the Kashmir Valley has yet again put the spotlight on their precarious lives. This time the reason is terrorism, in 2020 it was a badly planned national lockdown and in many Indian states, they are subject to recently introduced nativist laws that blatantly violate the spirit of the Indian Constitution that permits free mobility via clauses under Article 19. Over a hundred million circular migrant workers play an important role in running India’s economy. The number of inter-state migrant workers runs into tens of millions, and they are the ones that repeatedly suffer due to deep-seated prejudices in some places of seeing the ‘outsider’ as a problem. At various times, they have been blamed for stealing jobs of locals or even for murders and rapes in cities. Blaming the internal migrant ‘outsider’ has a long history in India. The Mulki rules of the late 19th century in Nizam-ruled Hyderabad privileged locals for employment for several decades. The 1960s anti-South Indian movement in Mumbai depicted ‘SI Vultures’ or ‘South Indian Vultures’ in cartoons and decades later morphed into an anti-North Indian movement. As one sarcastic letter to the editor of this newspaper in 1973 pointed out: “There is much talk these days about the ‘Sons of the Soil’… Only those born in the alluvial soil can work in the alluvian region. They may call themselves ‘alluvians’… People may be given identity cards with the name of the soil clearly printed on it. To solve the problems of babies born in the air (planes), they should be employed as pilots and air hostesses. Nobody except the sons and daughters of the air should get these air jobs. They should be allowed to stay on earth in a non-classified soil region when they are off-duty.”medium nocaption87262375 The source-region state that has borne the brunt of anti-migrant prejudices has been Bihar. Precisely because of Bihar’s relatively low position on the economic ladder within India and the wide migration networks that have taken people to all corners of the country, the Bihari migrant workers are routinely targeted by nativists. They have earned the ire of politicians in Mumbai for claiming jobs and also fallen prey to nativist movements in Assam. Often, those anti-migrant movements had more rhetoric than substance but by firing the imagination of locals and party workers, they would lead to subtle harassment of the migrant workers. Low levels of education and limited political voice in destination-regions imply that the Bihari migrant worker was and still is inadequately equipped to stand up against bullying and harassment by nativists. Resistance rarely takes the form of protests or legal recourse that high-income migrants would use, but is expressed by short-term reverse migration and the ‘wait and see’ approach. There are however destinations in India for internal migrant workers that have so far not witnessed substantial anti-migrant rhetoric. Kerala, Gujarat and Punjab receive a large number of internal migrant workers in the services, manufacturing and agricultural sectors respectively but do not actively discriminate against migrant workers. People in these states understand the logic of migration because the Keralites, Gujaratis and Punjabis have themselves migrated all over India, and the world. Nativism is particularly shrill in Northeast India because of a long history of in-migration with relatively little out-migration. Nativism also tends to peak in times of economic stagnation because outsiders are blamed for the internal economic ills − a strategy used by politicians across the world today, especially in the case of international migration. The Kashmir Valley has faced significant exodus of various kinds, and the recent phase linked with targeted killings of migrants is yet another sorry chapter in its recent history. As Myron Weiner, political scientist and author of Sons of the Soil: Migration and Ethnic Conflict in India, once wrote, “Nativist movements convert cultural differences into cultural conflicts.” In recent years, nativist movements and anti-migrant rhetoric have unfortunately grown in India across the political spectrum. In this context, it is perhaps time to seriously consider an inter-state migration council on the lines of the GST Council that deliberates on goods and services. At the least, this council should have up-to-date information on how many people from each state reside in other states and ensure their wellbeing. It could also be used to ensure the effectiveness of the One Nation, One Ration Card policy that has recently been launched but needs far more traction on the ground. Internal migration in India, contrary to work-from-home advocates, is likely to surge even further in the coming decades. And a policy architecture that protects the freedom of movement of people within India beyond the constitutional provisions, is urgently needed. It would help curb nativist sentiments that arise repeatedly on economic, linguistic and religious grounds. The writer is faculty at IIM-Ahmedabad and author of ‘India Moving’ and ‘The Age of Pandemics’Illustration by Ajit Ninan