Republic of India Livelihoods in intermediate towns

6. Migration and the Non-farm Economy

6.1: The Context: Outmigration is perhaps the single most important social and economic process articulating through the rural landscape of Madhubani. Not only has the out-migration of young men for work grown manifold over the past three decades and more, it has also transformed the local dynamics of social relations and of economic life. As mentioned above, scholars studying various aspects and regions of Bihar see out-migration as a “trigger of change” (Rogers et. al. 2013), with a marked onset in the 1970s in the form of short-term migration to Punjab and Haryana, primarily for seasonal work in agriculture. Over the years, it has continued to grow. As shown by Datta in her study of the village of Mahisham in Madhubani, the proportion of households with at least one member of the family as a migrant worker went up from 24 percent 1980-81 to 54 percent 1999 and to a further 78 percent in 2011 (Datta 2014:4).

Unlike three decades ago, migrant workers from Bihar no longer go only to rural Punjab for seasonal agricultural work. Their choice and range of destinations has since diversified – increasingly, they prefer going to urban centres and they work there for most of the year. However, such movements remain circular in nature.

As mentioned above, migrants are mostly men. Even though they begin their journey for work when they are quite young (15 to 20 years of age), most of them are married and leave their wives behind, with their parents in the village. They visit homes once or twice every year during their active work life. Once they can no longer continue bearing the hardships of working outside, they move back to the village when, mostly, when they are between 45 and 50 years of age. For instance, Shyam Kumar Mandal, worked in Delhi for many years of his life and has since returned to Satghara had this to say about his work in Delhi –
The work that I did in Delhi was very tough. I never had time to rest.

(Dilli ka kaam bahut kathin thaa, koi aaram hi nahi milta thaa).
The growth in the rate of outmigration has continued to increase for several reasons. First, given the population density of the region, the local agrarian economy has simply become unviable. Land holdings have mostly become very small, with an average size of less than one acre. Many of our respondents reported owning less than one-fourth of an acre. Those own more than 5 acres of land are not be more than 5 to 10 percent of all those who have traditionally cultivated land or identified themselves as zamindars (landlords).
Second, agriculture in the region has also remained less developed. There has been very little investment in building agricultural infrastructure, such as canals and tube-wells or creating capacities for marketing networks. The quality of soil is also not poor and the local farmers have adopted modern practices of farming and increasingly use hybrid varieties of seeds, chemical fertilizers and pesticides. However, they are not able to undertake intensive farming. Some of them reported growing a single crop and being always worried about floods and their lack of capacity to irrigate their crops in the absence of rains.
Third, there is virtually no local industry. On the contrary, Madhubani district has seen some kind of de-industrialization over the past 30 odd years. The district had several sugar mills, which not only procured sugar cane from the local farmers but also provided employment to the locals. All of them have closed down sometime during the 1980s. The only “industry” that survives in Madhubani and the neighboring districts is the low technology intensive brick-kilns. Even though their numbers have grown, they do not work all around the year and hence do not employ many people.
Finally, social and political changes in the local structures have also played their role in intensifying out-migration. Decline in the authority of the local semi-feudal patriarch and changing land relations enabled the release of the erstwhile tied labour from Dalit and lower OBC castes from bondage and dependency. Even though they were freed from the ties or attachments of tradition, they were not able to find casual employment, as free labour, in the local market. The compulsions of economic survival and new aspirations hence pushed them out of village. The old structure of caste hierarchy and the jajmani system, which tied the local communities with their caste occupations, has almost completely disintegrated. While some of those traditional occupations survive (such as tailoring or barbers), albeit in a new commercial avatar, some of them have become almost completely redundant (such as the traditional plough related work)
At the other end of the social spectrum, are those who had occupied positions of dominance in the traditional system, and also felt uncomfortable and often insecure in the rapidly changing political environment in the village. Their younger generation also began to look outwards, towards the urban life and secure jobs. Given the economic and social resources at their command, many of them moved out the village, at least partially. As a combination of these various factors, those from the “backward” caste communities largely dominate rural politics in the villages of Madhubani today.
6.2. Remittance Economy: The growth of the non-farm economy and the increase in outmigration for work in rural Bihar appear to be closely related. The number of villagers engaged in non-farm activities has increased along with an increase in migration. As is evident from Table 7 above, nearly 80 percent of the respondents reported having begun the corresponding non-farm activity after 1980 and it is precisely during this period that the remittance economy of these villages also appears to be growing. Cash coming into the villages in the form of remittances induces demand for local consumption, which in turn leads to a spurt in the growth of local markets in the form of a variety of shops and other retail outlets.
Several of the respondents underlined the change that migration and associated remittances have brought about in their life. A 75 years old Dalit man from the musahar community had this to say to us during a conversation about migration and its impact on personal and social life in the village:
Thirty years ago, we could not eat three meals. If we ate one evening, we had to stay hungry the next evening. Now, we eat breakfast in the morning, lunch during the day, and dinner at night, everyday.
A woman respondent from the Lehri community, (EBC, bangle makers) seemed to echo the old man:
Earlier we counted grains and we ate; we no longer need to do that

(Pehle anaaj ginkar khana padta tha, ab ginana nahin padta).

Janaki Devi, a thirty year old woman from an EBC community, told us that her husband works as a carpenter in Delhi and sent her around 5000 rupees every two months. With an approval from her husband, she reported spending the money on items of daily needs. Along with that, she also uses the money sent by her husband to help her father-in-law in farming the land they have leased in. From the remittance money, she also manages to keep a cow or a buffalo. Janaki Devi also informed us that even though local people did not like educating their daughters, she sends her daughter to the local school. The impact of remittances, hence certainly extends beyond influencing the nature and patterns of consumption; they also have a bearing on the social life of the individual and of the village.
Other than the financial resources made available my migration, some of the migrants also create additional human resources upon joining the non-farm economy of the village once they return for good. Nearly half of our respondents (48%) currently engaged in non-farm economy have been migrant workers at least for sometime in their working life, before they started working locally or set-up their own enterprise. Interestingly, most of these return migrants had mostly worked in urban centres when they went out of the village.