Precarity as a Coping Strategy of the Gonds: A Study of Insecure and Long-distance Seasonal Migration in Central India

Introduction

The Gonds are a Scheduled Tribe (ST) community in Central India who are experiencing restrictions to their forest-based livelihoods and are facing migration as a permanent form of livelihood. Through family membership, their main source of security, both emotional and non-emotional needs of Gond households, are met. The Gonds undertake both long-term and short-term migration. This article discusses the impact of long-distance migration among the Gonds in Central India. These are forest-dependent communities and are among the one million tribals being evicted out from their forests and land theft actively pursued by the Indian state to make way for commercial, environmental and residential complexes. The Gonds take on non-farm labour, working in brick kilns and road construction. Through migration and wage work, they experience dignity, prestige and independence. The Gonds refer to migration outside of Madhya Pradesh as vides. The state of Madhya Pradesh in India has the highest number of labour migrating people in the country. Through various kinds of migration practices among the Gonds, the article asks how migration practices differ between Gond households, and how these reflect more personalised experiences of their engagement with the labour market and the informal economy compared to the weak welfare back in their village. Even though the Gonds are successful in escaping bondage, they still remain poor and bear the signs of fatigue and body decay due to over-exhausted bodies and no access to nutritious food. This is because Gonds are also subsistence farmers but farming in Central Indian states such as Madhya Pradesh have been experiencing increasing agricultural costs and depletion in water levels due to intensive farming and climate change which together results in migration, and effects landless and small-scale farmers such as the Gonds. Temporary migration, compared to permanent migration from rural to urban sites, is most popular among those with low economic, educational and social statuses in central and north India, and the same is true for the Gonds.

Below, I lay out the general description of migration among the Gonds in Panna. This is followed by an in-depth literature review of prominent studies of migration and livelihood which are typical with migrants and the topographies of the villages in predominantly agricultural rural societies of South Asia. This is followed by individual cases of Gonds which describe the migrants’ experiences. The article concludes with a summary showing how migration has made a difference in life experiences of the Gonds by offering them opportunities to viable means of work and shows their resilience to cope with growing forest restrictions.

Gonds, and Forest and Land Rights

The Gonds are one of the largest STs in India, after the Santhals and the Bhils. They are the largest tribe in Central India, in the states of Madhya Pradesh, eastern Maharashtra (Vidarbha), Chhattisgarh, northern Andhra Pradesh and western Orissa. The geographical location of the Gonds covered in the article is in Panna district, closer to the borders of Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh, also known as the Bundelkhand region. Forceful evictions of the Gonds by the Panna Forest Department at the behest of the local district collector are a regular occurrence. The Gond hamlets, which stand close to the Panna Tiger Reserve, are often the targets of such evictions. In Bundelkhand, Panna has the largest percentage of forest area: It is the only district where forest occupies over 50 per cent of its geographical area. Panna National Park/Panna Tiger Reserve is located within the wider territorial forest area of Panna North and Panna South forest division. The Forest Act of 1927 and the new policy under the Forest Conservation Act 1980 started to bear down negatively upon the Gonds in this region who are also in minority and completely dependent upon Forests for livelihoods. This was accelerated by the creation of the Panna Tiger Reserve which was built in 1981 and renamed Project Tiger Reserve in 1994. The reserve is the 5th in the state and 22nd in the country (Yadav, 2018). Currently, the tension between the Gonds and the forest officials focuses upon the uncertain status of land allotment. The Gonds do not have permanent rights to the land they have cultivated for decades. The sense of injustice felt by the Gonds is all the greater as, within the past 20 years, thousands of acres of forest have been cleared and occupied by affluent non-tribal people. Like most STs, the Gonds in Panna have suffered displacement from forest areas and disruption of their previous way of life. Other similar accounts of disruption from forest dependant lives of the tribal populations such as the Gonds, has focused around land rights (Yadav, 2018). This has involved conflicts with the forest authorities, on the one hand, and mining interests (both state and private/multinational), on the other. In such accounts, conflicts over forest land, the values of environmentalism/ecology/conservation are often pitted against tribal peoples. Both before and after independence, tribal people have been displaced from their settlements in the name of protecting wildlife. Mahesh Rangarajan (2005) has argued that the issue is not about adivasi (tribal) land rights claims versus forest survival but that of reconciling social justice claims in consonance with ecological concerns. The ability of tribals to defend their rights and livelihoods has therefore been very weak. Recourse to protests, both peaceful and violent, constituted one of the few avenues through which to seek redress (Guha, 2000).

Migration as a Livelihood Strategy in India: A Brief Literature Review

Before discussing various case studies of vides among Gonds in Panna below, I discuss briefly the wider literature from other studies focusing on rural and agrarian migration in India. Migration in rural and agrarian areas are often done to cope with constraints regarding agricultural productivity. These migration decisions all depend upon the household and their ability to access social networks, intra-household relations, institutional market and policy environment. As observed by De Haan (1999, p. 27):

The crucial question is not about migration itself, but what kinds of opportunities are available for what groups of people, and whether the type of migratory work allows the migrants and their families to improve their assets and human capital.

Further, many studies have identified the main drivers of migration as the worsening situation of dryland agriculture created by drought, crop failure and poor terms of trade (Deshingkar & Start, 2003). Migration is a part of the normal livelihood strategy of the poor (McDowell & De Haan, 1997).

Rural–urban permanent migration has been much studied but, in the context of work-related mobility, rural–rural “internal” migration (De Haan & Rogaly, 2002), inter-village and inter-district migration have now gained more attention, along with circular migration back and forth from the city or other rural destinations. The cycle of movement is typically short, seasonal and regularly repeated. Rogaly (2009), in their research on Murshidabad’s seasonal migrants in West Bengal, questioned whether security through such informal channels should be referred to as a protection, especially as Wood (2003) pointed out that security often comes at the price of adverse incorporation. Instead, they preferred “informal support” to “informal social protection” (Khan & Seeley, 2005) because such support is embedded in traditional institutions like kinship and incorporate expectations and kinship obligations that disadvantaged households might not be able to fulfil. Commenting upon the failure of state schemes such as guaranteeing rural employment and Public Distribution Scheme (PDS) in West Bengal, the authors (Rogaly, 2009) argued that there is an uneven and limited benefit. Their fieldwork showed that the poor farmers, who were also seasonal migrants in West Bengal, wanted more structural equality in the wider regional economy of their village.

Whether migration is forced or voluntary—“pushed” or “pulled”—is a key question. Studies linking migration and sustainable livelihoods in the Indian village context find that migration is caused by poverty and inequality and that the migrant perceives inequality based upon his/her social status (Lipton, 1982). This implies that migration is not entirely an “objective” or a “free choice” type of decision (Lipton, 1982). Deshingkar and Start (2003) state that, for people from Scheduled Castes (SCs) and STs, migration is usually an unavoidable “coping strategy,” driven simply by the need to survive.

In their study of tribal migrants from the states of Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat and Rajasthan found both “pull” and “push” factors as well as forced and voluntary patterns in migration of the Bhil community Mosse et al. (2002).

With the group being “pushed” into migration, “families having a slightly better food security situation,” young male workers (or, serially, other male family members) engage in migration that is “short-term, short-distance and combined flexibly with agricultural seasonal work” (Mosse et al., 2002, p. 69). For the group being “pulled” into migration, however, entire, usually poorer families undertake longer-term, long-distance migration. In fact, migration rates are high among the most and least educated (Deshingkar 2006, p. 3).

Mass migration is also a sign of rural poverty, low agricultural productivity, a lack of non-farm employment, poor access to rural benefits, corruption and lack of representation, especially for the tribal communities like the Gonds, who view themselves as being illiterate and unable to influence the state in a favourable way. This finding has been confirmed by research in other parts of northern and western India (Breman, 1996). In these accounts, dominant classes are shown to be fairly (but not often wholly) successful in manipulating the local police force and judiciary through bribery, influence and intimidation and rigging of the local Panchayat elections, capturing electoral booths and using pre-election tactics of intimidation in elections for the state assembly and central government (Jeffrey, 2002).

“Internal” (i.e., non-international) labour migration now seems more normal, more common than was thought before and is a key livelihood option for the poor (Deshingkar & Start, 2003) that can be used for poverty reduction and achieving the Millennium Development Goals (Deshingkar, 2006). Breman (1996) showed in his study of labour migration in Western Gujarat that “circular” migration between agriculture, construction, daily work in industry, brickyards and other unskilled work, with regular returns to the native village, was a typical form. Thus, the migration of the poor in Breman’s study is free and independent of the traditional patron−client relationships but still, dependency is replaced through debt, brokers and middlemen as the poor struggle coping with cash-based economy. De Haan’s case study (2002) showed that circular migration from Bihar to Calcutta and back has existed for over 100 years. Others have emphasised attractions “pulling” immigrants to new locations. Members of landed Thakur and educated Brahmin households also migrate but their reasons for leaving the village are opportunistic and driven by the desire for a better life (Deshingkar & Start, 2003).

Dominant theories of the migration of poor households show how migration is embedded within the complex networks of a migrant life cycle, gender, age and previous experiences and the stretched lifeworld between the “source” and “destination” point (Rogaly, 2003). At the same time, for some, migration is a type of emancipation and empowerment for the most vulnerable (Shah, 2006, 2010). Picherit (2012), in his studies of a community in Andhra Pradesh, shows that for migrant labourers, the social outcome of rural development in their village was more important than the workplace issue of rights and wages. In contrast to the Gollas in Andhra Pradesh, the Gonds of Panna seem to be unaffected by the various programmes which are slowly reaching and for some, are still inaccessible.

Deshingkar and Start (2003) distinguish between coping and accumulation as migration strategies. It must be noted, however, that migration is part of a mix of livelihood strategies and the methods of accumulation adopted by households. As noted by Deshingkar (2006), many rural migrant households cultivate one rain-fed subsistence crop and few choose to settle permanently at their migration destination, recognising that the connection to both the rural and the urban economies provides them with greater security (Deshingkar, 2006). Additionally, improved transportation infrastructure and the inter-linking of Panna with other states of India has bought more choice for labour contractors looking for labourers and so migration is slowly becoming a normal process that even widows, as single earners of the household, are participating in and receiving full wages and positive stories of economic freedom.

Looking at the migration destination point, some studies see migration as a source of vulnerability because of a lack of effective regulation of employment conditions, insecure jobs, the migrant’s lack of powerful allies, exploitative labour contracts and “brokered livelihoods” (Mosse et al., 2002; Rogaly et al., 2001). Hence, through migration, structures of oppression are frequently reproduced through labour contracting arrangements and involve exploitative working conditions (Deshingkar, 2006; Mosse et al., 2002; Olsen & Ramamurthy, 2000). Also, the potential benefits of migration may already be squandered in advance, as the study by Mosse et al. (2002) showed, as a result of usurious money lending and labour contracting, neobondage or other debt relations. Some have documented the lack of social protection and the vulnerable conditions that the poor migrants work in (Breman, 2010; Mosse et al., 2002; Rogaly et al., 2001) in their respective case studies in India and labour migration.

As Mosse observes on the Bhils in Maharashtra migrating to cities to labour:

Wages fall well below the legal minimum (especially for piece-rate jobs), but more importantly work is irregular and payment often late or withheld, especially towards the end of the seasons when migrants are under pressure to return home to their limited cultivation…. It is not labour migration itself is a cause of chronic poverty, but the social relationships of exploitation—the “adverse incorporation” involved. (Mosse et al., 2002, p. 1161)

Other studies have shown how migration allows people to use their “agency” (Sivaramakrishnan & Gidwani, 2003) in the pursuit of a livelihood even if the working conditions in the migration destinations are questionable. The ability to escape from the stifling social conditions in the village to the much more accommodating urban centres constantly reminds us how migrants are adventurers and entrepreneurs in trying to take control over their lives and break free from traditions and norms. However, for most practical reasons, migration is integral to people’s survival and diverse livelihood strategies (Deshingkar & Start, 2003), and not just a response to emergencies. The migrating poor labour works hard and do any kind of work, which Deshingkar and Start (2003) defined as “work that nobody wants to do.” Migration is one way by which the poor improve their living condition and is contingent upon social status, gender and landholding status. Beyond that, it is through migration that migrants experience emancipation, liberation from the social controls of their village and from traditional lives and aspire to improve their living condition (Shah, 2006). Through these new spaces of mobility and freedom, the rural poor also assert their “agency” as is documented by Gidwani and Sivaramakrishnan (2003) and Rogaly (2003).

At the same time, Rogaly and Thieme (2012) showed that a migrant’s life cycle analysis concerned not only experiencing “material ways of life” but as migrants, these labourers are also able to stretch their lifeworld across time and space and can experience multilocal subjectivities. For the people of Panna, migration is of two kinds: vides and pardes (inter-state and international migration). In this respect, Panna is a unique region in which to study both in-state- and out-of-state migration aspirations and the differentiation of household strategies into survival versus accumulative purposes. For the Gonds, the main priority is to remain close to their families which is the main source of security.

Family Circumstances and Migratory Patterns

Discussion and Conclusion

The Gonds are the most vulnerable populations who cannot access government benefits and even if they did, they would not add to substantial improvement in the quality of their lives as the government schemes are not targeted at the household level and each household is usually multi-generational making any form of assistance never enough. The article uses life-course perspective to show how this form of displacement and eviction driven migration is coped by tribal population who have recently started to venture into cities in search of livelihoods and how depeasantisation is gradually taking place and replaced by an emerging labour class engaging in informal and precarious forms of work reflects a very dynamic household-level decision shaped by social indicators such as age, gender, education level and landholding. I foreground everyday precarity as being embedded in the wider social relationships and navigating their way out of debt and bondage by doing informal forms of work. In the life-course perspective through various cases below, I show the impact of a dynamic and unorganised labour market embedded with that of the labour migrants’ households and their families.

It has been argued that the ability to diversify successfully depends on access to resources such as knowledge, education and literacy, as well as institutional resources (e.g., access to cheap credit, effective social and kin networks in the new area of economic activity; Scoones, 1998). In the Scoones’ sense of institutions, it is the “informal precarious economy” in which the Gonds seem to find these resources that help to diversify as shown in the above case studies. Securing a livelihood is about more than simply economic and financial security. It assures care for the old and young, helps to fulfil social obligations of marriage and to enhance their social position.

From the case studies above, overall, the returns on migration (vides) have improved household conditions. There are lot of positive stories about going outside of the village and working. Most have experienced less stigma being attached due to their tribal identities. They like the practical wage/labour relations with their contractors. This kind of practical setting makes the Gonds feel secure, at least temporarily. The result is that some streams that previously ensured only survival have now become cumulative, as in the case of Nishant Singh. Bhushan’s case is a successful/positive story of migration which shows migration is not just about labouring but also involves improving social networking skills and their knowledge of the market, the work, how to bargain for fair wages and how to understand contracts. It also helps in paying off debts and enables saving and investment in improving the standard of living of their families in a couple of years (Waddington, 2003).

There is a lot of household member cooperation required to make migration a successful strategy. In all Gond households, all the household members get involved in making migration a successful outcome by performing their respective roles. They will cover for each other in case of sickness, and to cook and look after their dwellings in the workplace. Where migration contributes to an accumulative livelihood strategy, it can enable households to lift themselves significantly above the poverty line (Deb et al., 2008, p. 6). Migration is still preferred despite its risks because it is the most lucrative action for the most vulnerable like the landless and de facto female-headed household as widows. According to Rogaly and Thieme (2012, p. 2098), it is a

difficult and dangerous journey, cramped temporary living quarters, anxiety over loved ones back home, deteriorating body capital and low pay which often characterises the worker’s experience. In spite of such conditions, the work provides much-valued cash earnings for a people with no alternative…

Over time, migrants usually see an improvement in the returns from migration. However, those improvements are specific to each household’s ability to pool their resources in their households. Rogaly et al. (2003), observe that the poor realise that they cannot risk being unemployed in migrating places for too long without any social security which is provided by the accompanying family members (2003, p. 431). Younger families, as in the case of Hetlal Gond and Hitendra Gond, reveal that with young children, vides is a challenge. Vides is for survival whereas pardes is for economic and social enhancement. They need, at least, one older child to accompany them so that the youngest child can be looked after whilst the adults work. This is unlike Hetlal Gond who lives alone with his small children and wife, and they do not want to seek support from neighbours or extended kinship to look after their children. However, another pattern of migration occurs when the children are grown up enough to look after themselves. They will migrate with their parents, and those who stay back will stay with other extended families in the village and study at school at the same time. They also help with domestic chores or agricultural work. Such children will not be expected to work for money but will have to be around for household duties.

On the other hand, Vishal’s story of migration, even though he has been migrating for the longest time, is not considered to be successful by many in the villages. This is because they see Vishal as a young wanderer migrating not helping his family financially but out of curiosity or to find an escape from Panna. This shows that only circular and seasonal migration is valued and is considered to be a successful strategy for most rural households. Ties back to the village are still of the utmost priority. Being an adventurer, traveller or wanderer like Vishal is regarded as less important compared to migrating for fulfilling their obligations toward their families. However, working conditions at migrating destinations have been criticised by many scholars from the perspective of human rights and fair wages (Mosse et al., 2002; Rogaly et al., 2003). They point to a lack of social security and social care, as well as lack of any healthcare, sanitation and, above all, highlight the relationship between exploitation and dependency that migration produces (ibid). Different households have different purposes for migrating depending upon how well they can cope and how much they are affected by the forest restriction and stone-quarry closures. There are many reasons why people migrate and these depend on their level of vulnerability, aspirations, motivations, on one the hand, and resources, assets and strategies to organise migration, on the other. At the same time, not everyone finds migration easy as they have to agree to work with the risk of securing only half the wages with the risk that they might lose their wages if they do not return work for the same labour contractor and company or if there is a delay in their payments form the labour contractor—as we saw in the case of Raghu, he had to use his muscle power in order to recover his rest of the wages.

From another perspective, it is interesting to map the economic mobility of the Gonds to vides and to the state’s recent initiatives to guarantee jobs through the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA). This allows reflection on whether these permanent patterns of migrations are an indication of the failure of the various programmes that are devised to contain migration. Such schemes warrant the poor to “stay put” as beneficiaries of these programmes in order to “show” that there is progress happening in the village and therefore no need to migrate. However, other components required to take advantage of such social assistances are absent like education and basic literacy. Mass migration is a sign of rural poverty, low agricultural productivity, a lack of non-farm employment, poor access to rural benefits, corruption and a lack of representation especially for the tribal communities such the Gonds. As a result, they are dependent on contractors who, as recruiters, have control over the Gonds by withholding wages until they return next season, along with the risks of not being paid. In addition, the Gonds view themselves as being illiterate and unable to influence the state favourably. Above all, the Gond strategy in Panna is to remain as debt-free and independent as possible. Further, as was shown, the informal market forces have bought a working relationship between capital and labour that mutually benefits the two even though it makes the state redundant. This also includes migration, which is carefully considered so as to avoid debt. However, some are forced into either leasing or selling their lands no matter their income or possessions. This is due to increasing agricultural costs and water scarcity. Migration as a livelihood strategy is growing more common among the Gonds as it helps them to cope at many levels as discussed above.