India’s migrant millions: Caught between jobless villages and city hazards

Sujeet Kumar says he thinks about the better life in India’s dream city as he crosses his village’s mud huts and wheat fields to catch a train to Mumbai.

The 21-year-old from Jaunpur district in Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous state, said he moved to the financial capital out of “compulsion” like hundreds of millions of others.

“Mumbai is a city of the rich…whoever goes to Mumbai, their luck changes,” Kumar stated. “I hope luck shines on me there and I progress.”

As India becomes the world’s most populated nation, managing urban infrastructure and producing 8 million to 10 million jobs each year for its army of young unemployed will become increasingly difficult.

In 2011, 456 million Indians were internal migrants.

Last week, the UN predicted India’s population would surpass China’s 1.42 billion.

Nearly two-thirds of India’s population is under 35, and many rural youth move to cities to work as laborers, drivers, or shop and home helps. Many come from Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, where populations are growing faster than elsewhere.

Migrants always work in riskier jobs. “Migrants have no political power to negotiate wages and no better jobs,” said New Delhi’s Centre for Policy Research migration analyst Mukta Naik.

“There are not enough jobs, and they are not good enough to attract people for the long term, not good enough wages to invest in housing, to get their children to the cities to study.”

Besides low-paying and hard-to-get occupations, city dwellers face high living costs and housing shortages. They cannot get social support and many are victims of urban slum crime.

Abdul Nur, a 37-year-old Bengaluru security guard, left his village in Assam at 17 to live and work in Chennai, Hyderabad, and Mumbai.

“Mumbai was too tense. “Crime and heat,” he said.

A decade ago, in India’s financial capital, he struggled to live on 14,000 rupees ($171) a month due to expensive rents and food prices.

Nur said Bengaluru, India’s tech center, is too pricey.

“I am sending my wife and child back to the village,” he stated. “Educating him on my pay is difficult. I’ll be alone.”

Going back
Disillusioned migrants are returning home.

Bhikhari Manjhi, 30, left his hometown in Odisha state for Bengaluru, where he was offered a construction job paying 10,000 rupees a month. His contractor paid him 100 rupees every week for two months but never paid the remainder.

“When we demanded our money, we were beaten up,” Manjhi added.

Manjhi and two other villagers trekked 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) home this month.

“We live in the forest and earn about 15,000 rupees a year,” he said.

Bengaluru makes more in a month. Manjhi said “I don’t want to go back”.

Migrant workers make almost 10% of India’s GDP and support many sectors, according to a 2020 ILO report. It stated sending money home reduces poverty and increases family well-being.

Experts think the government should help create more employment and distribute them nationwide, especially in the underdeveloped and rural north and east.

“Rural India (only) provides jobs in the form of disguised unemployment,” said Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy director Mahesh Vyas.

He explained that agricultural occupations do not increase output. Apart from agriculture, the hinterlands only receive transient infrastructure projects that create short-term jobs.

He said cities, despite their flaws, will attract migrants because they offer the most jobs.

Jaunpur Kumar agrees.

He took images and films for his social media accounts in Mumbai’s tourist spots with a fresh haircut and sunglasses.