Joblessness, COVID-19 label cause problem for migrants

G S Anjineya

Hundreds of migrants from North Karnataka districts are returning to Bengaluru, and are again in search of jobs.

“I was in the village for two months but couldn’t find any work. I thought I would start a small business, but didn’t get any support,” Gangadhar, a driver, who hails from Gabbur village in Raichur district told DH.

He says it is not so difficult to find jobs in big cities like Bengaluru.

Read: COVID-19: Several schemes, little progress for agrarian economy

About 30 people from his village have come back to Bengaluru between June 6 and 8. Half of them have found jobs while the others are still looking. They were earlier employed as drivers, construction workers and domestic help. They know about the surge in COVID-19 numbers and the uncertainties here, but say they can’t sustain themselves without working.

However, a substantial number of migrant returnees hope that the talk about developing rural-centric economies would have translated into action on the ground.

The reverse migration has brought a spectrum of people – those who wanted better social and economic prospects; Dalit and tribal families who wanted to overcome caste discrimination and grow beyond the jobs linked to their caste; people who wanted better schooling for their children; and those who wanted sustain their family – right back to their villages, where they started.

But they don’t see efforts being made to help them start a new venture or to generate employment opportunities in the villages.

Take the case of Anjaneya. After returning from Bengaluru, the 29-year-old mechanic nurtured dreams of setting up a vehicle service station in his native place, Ingalagi in Ballari district.

Read: Coronavirus Lockdown: MGNREGA provides relief, not enough to counter the crisis

He started with a couple of vehicles in the front yard of the house and his services were soon in demand. The slew of announcements and rhetoric from the Union government about strengthening local economies gave wings to his dreams.

“I prepared a project report for the service centre,” he told DH from his village. However, only after speaking to bank officials to get a loan under Prime Minister’s Employment Generation Programme, he realised that his skill and decade-long work experience didn’t matter unless it was backed up by an academic certificate.

Like him, around 20 youths in Ingalagi who returned from Bengaluru wish to continue working in their hometown if they find suitable livelihood opportunities. But they can’t find the capital or opportunities to put their skills to use.

Anjaneya’s elder brother is a commerce graduate. The two rode from Bengaluru to their village, some 400 km away, on the night Lockdown 1.0 was announced. The elder brother has been sitting idle at home for 80 days as all his efforts to find a job have been in vain.

Some graduates in the village have taken up the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) work to get immediate relief.

Karnataka is among the better performing states when it comes to accessing work under MGNREGA. People in the rural areas believe MGNREGA is the only project that can give them succour in this time of economic distress.

Even then, not all returnee families are fortunate enough to get a job card to qualify.

Over 57,000 applications for job cards are pending in Karnataka as on June 11. This is because officials are not able to process the applications on time as the server load is high.

“With normal capacity, we should be able to clear about 1,000 applications in a day. Now we are not able to clear even 400 applications. Initially, we could clear only 100 in a day,” said a district Management Information System in-charge.

The technical problem has also delayed other related activities, such as nominal muster roll generation and fund transfer order generation for the material.

“We have requested a separate server for Karnataka to expedite the process. The current server covers three states, which is causing the current delay,” L K Atheeq, Principal Secretary, Rural Development and Panchayat Raj, Karnataka told DH.

Atheeq says the state government is trying to diversify the nature of work, keeping in mind the current situation. “We are planning to make National Rural Livelihoods Mission and MGNREGA work in convergence. This will not only provide better livelihoods support but also ensure that water harvesting and agriculture are carried out smoothly,” he said.

However, the mandate doesn’t allow MGNREGA to support non-agriculture livelihood activities such as rural crafts and handloom, which grassroots activist Sharada Gopal feels is crucial for the rural population to stay back in their villages.

While people are working at thousands of worksites across the state, there is demand to increase the number of days per household from the current provision of 100.

In a recent pan-Karnataka survey conducted by 18 organisations, coordinated by Karnataka Janashakti, 84% of participants said each member of the family should be given work under the scheme, while 95% felt the wages should be increased to Rs 400 per day from the current Rs 275 per day for them to sustain themselves.

Interestingly, over the past five years, only 8.2% of the households that got employment under the scheme have worked for 100 days in the state, the least among the southern states.

“Action plans are in place and monitoring has been quite intense. There is consistent participation in the North-Eastern belt. In other places attendance is more seasonal. Workers seek MGNREGA work only in lean periods,” explained Atheeq.

Local politics, indifferent panchayat officials and the scheme’s dependency on organisational support for implementation are said to be the major hurdles for households to get the work they are entitled to.

Shift in approach

Rural development expert Dr R Balasubramaniam believes that a shift from creating assets to generating livelihoods is key to creating sustainable rural-centric economies.

While MGNREGA can provide the much-needed cushion, there is a need for a long-term approach that equips rural people as providers and villages as production centres, and not as consumers.

“Right now they are trained in skills that are required for the urban economy; instead, they should be empowered to create wealth in rural areas,” he told DH.

Whereas N P Swamy of the National Centre for Labour emphasises the need for a scheme like MGNREGA for the urban poor, currently deprived of opportunities.

Need for counselling

A majority of rural households depend on the migrants in the family to meet their financial needs. This year, bread-winners have returned empty-handed.

Ramesh, 28, working in Mumbai and Hyderabad for eight years, longed to reach home after the city abandoned him. People in his village are not yet prepared to embrace him and he understands their concern. “The COVID-19 fear and the lack of jobs have made life difficult for us,” he told DH from his village.

There are several families in his village Kalgi in Kalaburagi district who have returned from Maharashtra and Telangana.

Almost all the returnees DH spoke to felt the need for state support, particularly counselling, to help them plan their course of action.

Organisations working in these areas feel that at least 5% of these returnees would want to settle in the villages permanently, while many others won’t be able to move to the cities in the near future because of the lack of opportunities.

According to rural development experts, easy credit, socio-psychological counselling and encouragement for entrepreneurship will enable a smooth transition into life in their villages.

“Agriculture is at the centre of this transition. An overhaul is needed to empower farmers to not just grow their crops, but to process and add value. The immediate need is to develop a thorough infrastructure that supports a value-chain,” says Abhay Kumar, state-convenor, Grameena Koolikarmikara Sanghatane.

He says the country should look at both short-term support and long-term solutions to ensure sustainable livelihoods.

On the positive side, there have been efforts to revive fallow lands, develop kitchen gardens and provide support in some districts with the active involvement of civil society organisations and administration.

This, along with much-needed skill mapping, will facilitate the assimilation of returning migrants into rural societies.