Online National Workshop on Labour Migration: Issues and Way Forward

The precarious situation of India’s short-term and circular migrants was clearly highlighted in recent months during the lockdown induced by COVID-19. As the crisis unfolded, the absence of social protection measures for these vulnerable workers was made strikingly obvious. In the given context, policy measures could be further strengthened to improve the migration outcomes of the individual migrant, on the one hand, and reinforce the migration-development synergy, on the other. 

It is against this background that this Online National Workshop hosted by VV Giri National Labour Institute provided a forum to deliberate on contemporary themes and questions related to internal labour migration in India. The deliberations extended from the issue of effectiveness of secondary sources of data in India in capturing labour migration flows to the impact of various schemes and regulations in improving the basic social protections afforded to migrant workers. 

Dr. Srinivas, DG, VVGNLI set the context for the workshop by stressing on the structural transformation of the Indian economy and the impact that policy interventions can have to create a more productive transformation for the same. Kalpana Rajsinghot, Joint Secretary; Ministry Of Labour And Employment, GOI began by contextualizing the migration landscape and discussing the various levels of insecurities faced specifically by short term and circular migrants. She then identified the measures taken by the Central and State Governments for the welfare of migrant workers, ranging from immediate relief to various advisories and public schemes for migrants, such as registration, Cess Collection and its usage and portability of social welfare schemes. Finally while looking at issues requiring urgent intervention, she emphasized the need for evolving a more gender-sensitive policy perspective to address the concerns of the most marginalized workers, being women workers and their children.

Professor Srivastava brought to light the various challenges faced by the most precarious informal workers being the short term circular migrants. After setting out the data estimated by him for migration flows in the country, he discussed stakeholder responses to the migration crisis, ranging from registration, skill mapping, and relief packages. He criticized the dilution of labour laws by State Governments such as UP and Gujrat and stressed on the need to understand the complexities of migration streams, before framing policies for protection of rights and entitlements of migrants. He discussed how migrant women and children are the worst sufferers and migrant children’s integration through education and care strategies are critical. He also focused on removal of discrimination against migrant workers and strongly implementing Article 14, 15, 17 and 19  of the Constitution for addressing the same. 

During the panel discussion, Mihir Kumar Singh, Virjesh Upadhyay, Rahul Bannerjee and Sonia George came together to discuss bottlenecks within the institutional, regulatory, legal and infrastructural framework, which prevent accessibility of migrant workers to welfare benefits. Registration of workers was seen as a major concern, while distrust and job and social insecurities were also put forth as major barriers. Role of PRIs and ULBs, along with stringent implementation of government advisories was seen as critical.

In the second session, Dr. Ravi Raman discussed the success of the Kerala Model, argued for calling migrant workers guest workers to afford respect to them and suggested that safe housing and portability of health schemes has been made possible by implementing provisions of the ISMW Scheme and granting higher financial packages for the same. Dr. Tandon stated that although it was essential to learn from the functionality of the Kerala model, the same could not be implemented across India owing to lack of decades of investment in the sector which Kerala had successfully done. Dr. Tandon spoke of the various kinds of exclusions faced by migrant workers, discussed measures which must be undertaken by source and destination States, and elaborated on practical policy steps such as establishment of Migrant Support Resource Centers (MSRC) and better coordination between all levels of governments, stressing on the critical role played by PRIs and ULBs in last mile accessibility. Finally Professor Chandrashekhar argued that there was no need for a migration policy, rather integrating migration into the mainstream broader framework was crucial. He suggested building am overarching architecture and a common taxonomy for social protection of migrant workers. 

You can read more about Dr Tandon's presentation here.