“I was very scared. What kind of a disease is this? How will I manage with my small children here? Whatever happens I will never return to ...
“I was very scared. What kind of a disease is this? How will I manage with my small children here? Whatever happens I will never return to Surat again.”
Durgabai, an Adivasi woman migrant worker from Udaipur, Rajasthan, was recalling her horrendous experience during the Covid-19 lockdown in Surat, where she had migrated with her family to work as a casual construction labourer. Her anxieties about returning to the city in which she had been stuck for 40 days with little food or money reflect those of the large numbers of Adivasi workers who migrate from tribal dominated, remote, rural regions of southern Rajasthan to large cities in Gujarat and Maharashtra.
Seasonal migration for work has become an irreversible phenomenon in many parts of India. It is a key livelihood strategy for more than 60% of households in southern Rajasthan, the majority of whom are impoverished, tribal families. They are being pushed to find informal and casual work in urban areas due to a lack of sufficient rural employment, severe indebtedness and landlessness, accompanied by the gradual extinction of traditional forest-based livelihoods.
This form of migration, driven by desperation, forces workers to take up work for very low wages with poor or non-existent protection and...