Abstract
Studies on the informal economy in India show how precarious it is to be a migrant worker in an informal economy and how migrant workers are perpetually at risk of being exploited by market forces. They show how horizontal networks in India along the exploited class of labourers have never worked due to vertical social base (Pattenden, 2010). Therefore, they call for a stronger role of the state in organising and regulating the livelihoods in rural India. On the other hand, scholars studying changing labour, land and capital relations in rural India (Breman, 2010) have shown that there is a constant precarious condition of debt that such workers have to navigate and contest. The article shows how Gonds, a Scheduled Tribe population, who are facing forest evictions and are internally displaced, have resorted to long-distance migration in India. In the absence of state provisioning and formal recourse to law due to the inability to read and write, the Gonds are left to fend for themselves. Precariousness has become a normalised way of life to avoid starvation and indebtedness. However, this article also shows that circular and seasonal migration is valued and considered to be a successful strategy for most rural households. It also involves improving social networking skills and their knowledge of the market and the work. Above all, this strategy helps Gonds to be debt-free and independent as possible.
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 in Panna: Who Goes on Vides and Why?: An Overview
Apart from permanent or semi-permanent migrants, 30–50 per cent of MP’s rural ST households migrate every year, seeking casual or seasonal employment (Directorate of Institutional Finance, 2007). In Panna, the incidence of casual or seasonal migration was 49 per cent among all rural households and 63 per cent among ST households (Directorate of Institutional Finance, 2007). The Below Poverty Line (BPL) report provides a more detailed breakdown, showing a high proportion of migration by tribal people: Taking migration as a whole, 75 per cent of ST households versus 6 per cent of all households in the Panna district are involved in some type of migration (Directorate of Institutional Finance, 2007) which could be (male) individuals (more likely casual labour migration) or entire households (typical of seasonal migration). In sum, rural households such as Gonds in India use migrant labour offered by their (members) to improve their well-being by both raising household’s income levels and moving out of poverty. The most popular destinations for vides are Rajasthan, Jammu, Delhi, Gujarat, Chandigarh and Hyderabad. Vides has recently become popular and in fact, around the time I arrived in 2011, new types of migrants were found such as widows and young children.
However, in the case of the Gonds and migrants in Panna, migration is still at the stage where migrating households are only recently coming back with positive experiences. A high percentage of migrants are seasonal and circular which shows that the migrants are mostly small-scale marginal subsistence farmers with a very large household size.
Migration as a strategy for livelihood diversification among the Gonds has become a more popular pattern since 2008 although it was scattered and more random before that. The forest restrictions, especially on the amount of forest wood that may be taken for household consumption, were the main trigger. Keshri and Bhagat (2012) found that temporary migration, as against permanent migration from rural to urban sites, is most popular among those with low economic, educational and social status in central and North Indian states. Migration by Gond women is also being rapidly accepted. Three interrelated factors now combine to affect the Gonds, and in particular their access to resources, in ways that are reinforcing and exacerbating their poverty and creating a new world of “neobondage.”
First, Panna is dominated by a forest/tiger reserve so extensive that a railway line cannot run into Panna town (population approximately 50,000).
Second, Gonds’ s lives are greatly affected by their experience of national and regional forest policy.
Third, Gonds’ s lives are also shaped by mining; Gonds have long worked in “artisanal” mining and quarrying. Since 1960, however, Panna has been the site of India’s only mechanised diamond mine, which is state owned.
The Gonds in the village in Panna migrate for many reasons. Migration is undertaken by all age groups. After the monsoons, almost 70 per cent in the village migrate. This includes 80 per cent of the young (above 12). Most are illiterate but some of the young are semi-literate. Both individuals and households migrate. Migration to work outside of the state of Madhya Pradesh (Vides) is circular but the young might continue to hop from one destination to another if they do not get along with the contractor, do not like the weather, the food or the people in the place of migration. The Gonds in Panna are pushed into migration by a combination of stringent forest laws and the neglect and oversight of rural and tribal welfare by the rural administration.
Like most STs, the Gonds are poor and have suffered displacement from forest areas and disruption from their previous way of life. In the Gonds’ case, this has occurred through the creation of the new tiger reserve. They are among the poorest peoples in MP and India, and have high illiteracy rates as well as high rates of seasonal and permanent migration. Panna, the district of the fieldwork on Gonds, itself rates low on both the Human Development and Gender Development Indices, and despite efforts from the state, levels of child labour and migration are so high that many schools do not function.
The young (above 12) migrate in small groups with their friends. They migrate less out of financial desperation and more out of curiosity in order to get to know the world outside of Panna. A second reason is that they have stopped attending school, and so are moving away beyond the world of education and towards the world of livelihoods for their households. The perception of what work is best suited to them in order to meet their needs is not homogeneous.
Working in Vides: Contracts and Labour Contractors
Going vides is done through various ways. One way is through labour contractors. These labour contractors are hired by the construction and big cement making companies miles away from labour colonies like Panna. These labour contractors are in touch with labour brokers who first start as migrant labourers before becoming labour brokers in such labour contractors. Construction companies in migrating destinations use labour contractors to find and hire migrant labourers. The companies issue labour permits to the contractors. The pick-up points for the labourers are the bus stands as many of the migrant labourers come in by bus from remote areas. Sometimes, if the Gonds are coming by train, it is because the labour contractor had picked them up from the villages, discussed the work contract with them in situ in their village and made an advance payment to them which provided them with their travel costs. The Gonds prefer such contractors because they know them well and do not have to worry too much if their money is not paid on time as they know where to track the contractor to recover the balance amount. Some Gonds in Panna, like Naresh, do not mind using physical force and bullying strategies to recover their wages; as in his case, the contractor could not pay him because the building that he took the contract for collapsed due to poor raw materials. The responsibility of such accidents is not on the shoulders of the migrant labourers. When the contractor delayed paying Naresh his wages, Naresh went straight to the contractor’s in-laws house, not too far from Panna, one day when he was there to visit. Naresh had to use mildly threatening language to recover his wages. However, some migrant labourers are vulnerable to being cheated. Those who get picked up from bus stands usually complain of being cheated of their wages. The contractor might not pay them the full wages if the labourer decides to leave before their “contract” is finished. In the Gond village, migration is now the highly sought after source of income and is highly informal and unorganised as it is marred with labour intermediaries and contractors. Labour and capital undergo a verbal contract through both solicited migrant (secured social network) and unsolicited migrant network to cities (through unsecured social networks). I borrow this distinction of solicited and unsolicited from Rafique (2003) from their study on migrants in Murshidabad, West Bengal. Unsolicited types of migration also entail working in insecure and precarious working environments (Rafique, 2003) including the risk of not being paid. Also, through social solidarity and sharing newer sources of work, the Gonds demonstrate their autonomy to choose which contractor they want to work with depending upon the reputation of the contractor for paying on time. In a rural Indian context, class, caste and gender’ relations, and their complex interactions with local politics (Jeffery, Jeffrey, & Lerche, 2014; Pattenden, 2010) are of central importance.
Most Gonds conservatively choose the labour contractors that they want to work with. Only those contractors who have a good reputation for paying all the wages and have established a good word-of-mouth reputation in the village are dealt with. In the past, there have been some unsavoury stories of the Gonds being cheated by a labour contractor, who would take them to the place of work but not pay them, and they did not have enough to buy their tickets to get back. Most of those who have gone to Delhi and Rajasthan seem to have had such experiences. The contractor would cheat both the company that provides the work and the labourer. He would take lakhs of rupees from the company, saying that he needed it to give advance wages to the labourers and instead, flee with the money.
Those who travel to Jammu seem to be the happiest because the weather is cooler there and so work feels less strenuous than in hotter places like Rajasthan. This shows that they are exposed to outdoor and labour intensive work and feel lucky that there is work available in cooler locations. However, there are concerns about running out of work in these places and so there is a tendency for the contractors to exploit them because the competition for work in cooler locations reduces the Gond’s bargaining power. This awareness on the part of both parties, the Gonds and the contractors, of such competition for cooler work results in the likelihood of more vulnerable working conditions elsewhere and therefore the risk of exploitative conditions increasing. More research needs to be done on the connection between the migrant labourers’ perception of what is an acceptable working condition and how they can carefully negotiate their wages and contracts in order to avoid exploitation and still get full wages.
The reason why a contractor can hold back wages is if the migrant labourers suddenly decide to leave when the work is incomplete. The contractor does not have money in advance to pay their full wages and will ask them to wait until he gets their full payments from the company for whom the labour contractor has committed to working. Sometimes, the labour contractor will not keep his word and not pay even after the work is completed as per the initial agreement between the migrant labourer and the labour contractor. However, there is a provision in the law where the labourer, in such situations where if not paid on time, can lodge a complaint with the police about the company that the labour contractor was working for, and the police can coerce the company into paying them. Unfortunately, it sometimes happens that the police are in cahoots with the company or the labour contractor and might not help the labourers to recover their money, and instead they share that money among themselves. Mosse (2007) on his work on the Bhils of Madhya Pradesh shows how migrant labourers are vulnerable to being cheated by labour contractors who often extract work without paying. This shows that there is discrimination in private firms of the informal economy because of the tribal/poor status of migrant labourers and the increasing exploitation of the poor labourers and their vulnerability.
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).
For some, labour migration is indeed a forced livelihood response, although it arises from a complex set of social relations (including relations of debt and dependency) rather than simply ecological crisis and subsistence failure. For others, however, migration provides a positive opportunity to save, accumulate capital or invest in assets. (Mosse et al., 2002, p. 60)
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
Case Studies: Everyday Labouring Lives
The following households were selected based on a wide range of patterns observed in my ethnographic fieldwork. The fieldwork was conducted between 2010 and 2012 as part of the PhD dissertation fieldwork. Informants were selected using a snowball sampling method and careful attention was paid that anonymity and consent of the informants were maintained, and only willing participants were approached. I conducted most of the migration-based in-depth interviews after the harvest season when the whole village had returned to attend marriage festivities.
I describe these different migratory patterns and their different aspirations to choose vides and by whom as per my fieldwork. This section discusses the different types of vides and explains why these patterns are observed and what are their household circumstances. In recent years, labour migration has come to play an increasingly important role in the lives of the Gonds. Even though they are able-bodied, because they do not have a permanent or secure job, migration can help to make up for being landless. While financial security and economic freedom are the main motivators of migration for the Gonds, not all Gonds migrate for these reasons. Alpa Shah (2006, 2010) has looked at Bhil migration, emphasising the emancipation and empowerment it offers to the most vulnerable. Shah (2006) shows how migration by tribal people to brick kilns in the village near Jharkhand, Tapu, was not just for economic reasons but to complement other social needs and relationships which were not possible in a “home” village setting. Although working in the brick kiln is temporary (only 6 months), it was still favoured by some in order
[T]o explore and roam; for example to escape from a problem at home; or live out a prohibited amorous relationship. Therefore migration meant escaping constraints and obligations of kinship, from domestic disputes and a narrow-minded and oppressive village environment. (Shah, 2006, p. 106)
So it can be seen that migrating to work in the brick kiln area allowed people to do certain things that could not be done at “home.”
Migration is done with either family or friend. Entire families along with extended family members will migrate. The extended family will be there to support the wage earners by cooking and sibling care.
For instance is the case of Hetlal Gond. Hetlal migrated with his wife Rani Bai and two small daughters aged 1 and 3 years old. A year before I came in 2011 was the first time that the couple had migrated. They returned from Jalandhar in the state of Punjab. They are unsure about whether to migrate again. In the meantime, the wife is looking after their children and the husband. Hetlal, after returning to Panna, works in a stone quarry not too far from Panna. Besides, Hetlal does not have to worry about food security and is not as vulnerable as other households. He is free to choose his work options and is not forced into migration.
In Jammu, they were getting good wages of ₹150 per day but later they had to leave because one of their associates got into a dispute with the contractor over a delay in their payment. This delay resulted in sour relations with the labour contractor. The couple worked together with the wife working as a carrier of crushed stones from one construction site to another. They returned to Panna with about ₹16,000 and relaxed for a few days, bought a music player, paid off their debts, bought jewellery and recovered back the gold that they had left with a jeweller. This sounded like a huge achievement for them. They returned to Panna from Jammu for a few days and again migrated to Punjab. There, they received nearly ₹110 as wages. Here, their wages were paid on time. They remained there for seven–eight months. They were also able to do overtime work (upri kamai) which went into their savings. In this way, during the last 10 months or so, they have saved about ₹40,000. Out of this, they bought two mobile phones at ₹7,000 and then they had a budget of about ₹15,000 to spend in the upcoming marriage season. The remainder was invested into a rural insurance system called Pearls which is quite popular among agrarian households in Panna.
Migrating for Survival
Even though most of the migrants are initially reluctant to migrate due to the fear of going to an unknown place, they soon realise the benefits of improving their current situation in Panna. In fact, for many, just the availability of work is enough to migrate to obtain work, especially for the landless.
At the same time, some find Panna less appealing after they return when compared to the destination point of migration which appears to them far more accommodating and non-judgmental. For instance, Ramesh Gond, who is “vulnerable” compared to most and landless at age 30, had migrated with his parents and children (3 boys and 2 girls). He began to migrate in 2010 to Jammu. In Jammu, his wages were around ₹200 a day and the labour contractor deducted about ₹50 as commission. His family including his old parents and brother and sister migrated. They migrated to raise money for Ramesh’s sister’s wedding, food, clothes and health care. When they go, they do not feel like returning, and feel like settling outside of their migration destination. There they experienced snow, highways and expressways and different kinds of animals and birds than the ones in Panna. Ramesh says,
We have to go out for work because there is no work available anymore in Panna. We also like to go out because we feel we are not being judged. We feel very accepted there.
They do not own any land and return around March until July before going back to Jammu to work. They say that it is a very practical world where only wages and work are discussed, and they prefer that.
It is same for Hitendra who migrated to Jammu. He helps support the agricultural cost through remittance in the form of migration. He migrated with his wife, nephew and their infant child. The nephew looked after his infant child while Hitendra worked on-site. Hitendra likes migrating to different cities. He says he feels good about migration as he has some work to do unlike here in Panna where there is nothing. His daily wages are ₹160 and he could make up to ₹4,000 per month between him and his wife out of which around 10 per cent is deducted by the contractor. The contractor can hold back up to half amount say if they come back to work. This time, he worked outside for nine months and made about ₹35,000 out of which he has already spent ₹10,000, and ₹22,000 has been held back by the labour contractor. This money will be released once he returns after the monsoon to resume work. The money is held back to make sure they return and the migrants undergo this kind of arrangement knowingly and only then do they agree to begin the work. It will be a loss to the labour contractor if Hitendra does not return as he too has borrowed money from the company upon the assurance that there will be a constant flow of labour to finish the contract that the labour contractor has accepted. He cannot blame the broker because he says that he voluntarily agreed to the terms and conditions of working and wages and so will be more cautious next time.
Another migrant worker is Ganesh Gond, aged 30, who migrated with four children (3 boys and 1 girl). Ganesh says,
Considering my economic condition, I migrate to meet basic needs like food and clothing. We liked our experience of going outside because unlike in Madhya Pradesh, people are more receptive and accepting of us and we like their way of eating and living. We do not feel like returning to our village in Panna but we have to because someone has to look after the house. But the food is more expensive outside. We had to return around this time because my elder daughter-in-law was very sick.
When asked if he suffered any wage loss, he said:
We did not undergo a major loss due to leaving the work incomplete as we left behind only about. ₹1,000.
The wages are around ₹160 out of which the contractor would deduct ₹10 as commission. Along with him, his three sons migrated with the elder and able-bodied children also working and the younger ones helping to cook. He started to migrate as recently as 2011. Returning back is part of a “stretched lifeworld” (Rogaly & Thieme, 2012) for the vulnerable poor like Ganesh Gond who tries to balance their social, cultural and economic needs. This is fulfilled by living and working in multiple locations. These accounts describe how the experience of the merged “stretched lifeworlds” of the migratory worker can prove modern and liberating.
Through the continuous migratory experience of working with a range of labour contractors, some workers are able to demand better wages for their skills as they have become known for their efficient and good quality work. For instance, not long before, Bhushan, aged 22 and landless, was just another migrant, but in the space of two–three years, he has now established himself as a professional mason and so his wages have increased. What is so interesting about Bhushan, according to other villagers, is that at a very young age, he became a professional mason and so now demands more wages or dihadi from the contractor. His story is one of the consistencies, successes and hard works in learning skills and adapting to newer economic opportunities. Such an ability to adapt has enabled him to establish himself so that he does not have to worry about the next job as the work now comes to him. Bhushan and his wife Preeti first migrated to Chandigarh in 2007. There they worked for 2 years constructing new homes. Later, they were in Agra in 2010 where they got ₹180 daily. In 2011, they went to Jammu and there both earned wages of ₹120. They had met in 2009 and married in Panna within a year. In 2011–2012, they migrated to Punjab, and Bhushan started to act as a master “masonry.” He learnt the difficult art of stone cutting and was earning up to ₹350 daily. They worked there for 11 months and returned in 2012 to Panna. His wife Preeti worked as a manual transporter carrying stones on her head. This is known as a circular pattern of migration.
Migration as a Cumulative Strategy
Migration has not profoundly influenced the social customs and norms of marriage for the Gonds. However, remittances from migration have bought social prestige and status for landless households who are able to display their status by their ability to spend money on marriage ceremonies. Migration is about social and economic improvement rather than food security or survival for a handful of households like Nishant who migrated to raise wedding expenses for his daughter. This is a very positive result of migration for the Gonds as their social status has enhanced due to their ability to spend money on their children’s marriages. The marriages have become expensive compared to past costs, especially money spent on transportation and practising Hinduised wedding ceremonies, weddings with an orchestra, buffet, an expensive saree for the bride, her jewellery and a ring. This kind of commercialisation of marriage was absent until quite recently but now it has become a matter of prestige and status to spend money on weddings. So, some well to do households, like Nishant Singh, will use migration not for survival but to accumulate and save for the future weddings of their children. Rajesh, son of Nishant who migrated to Jammu this year along with his wife and two daughters, says:
Migration helps in savings. While in Panna, all the earnings get exhausted by the end of the week, but migration money goes towards saving and my father went to vides. While his and my mother’s earnings were spent on paying for their living, my sister’s earnings were saved up for her wedding in the next three years.
Migrants as Wanderers
While the village of Panna is dynamically changing and adapting to newer economic activities, for some, routine village life and agriculture seem unappealing and they want to experience the adventurous life outside of Panna. For such people, Panna seems to not change fast enough in comparison to modern and urban cities like Mumbai or Delhi. For Vishal, aged 24, Panna represents an unchanging world and migration offers a chance to explore the world outside even if it is only on a temporary basis. Vishal, unlike most Gonds, is not vulnerable and does not migrate to support his family but to escape the poverty and the slow-changing pace of Panna. Vishal has been migrating for almost eight years. The migration started in his family with his elder brothers who began to migrate with their wives. Then they became dependent upon migration.
However, Vishal’s case is different. He would disappear for years at a time and not call home and tell his family his whereabouts. There were rumours that he was probably dead because his family were unaware of his whereabouts. It turned out that he fell in love with a girl from a village near Panna who also migrated to work. They are now married and living together. His parents are old but his mother continues to bring wood from the forest. Vishal’s father is sick and remains at home. His elder brothers have also been migrating for a very long time, but unlike Vishal, they do keep in touch with the parents and inform them of their whereabouts.
Vishal tells me that he decided not to bother his parents about his movements outside because then it would be a burden for them if they found out that he was not keeping well or in turn, if they were not well. It would stress him mentally. Previously, in his early days of migration, he was in Surat, Gujarat. He liked the work there, but most of his co-workers were from Bihar and there was a problem with food because most Biharis eat rice but he prefers wheat. Later, he went to Punjab. He loved working there because he could eat wheat bread (rotis) and the lifestyle suited him. Also, the people in Punjab show a lot of acceptance towards him and he was not discriminated against. He made quite a lot of money in Punjab. He would usually get a job on a daily basis or a contract basis by standing at the main bus depot along with other labourers. They would then be picked up in groups by the labour contractor. He never told me in the interview but I found out from Pappu later that Vishal had lost some money as he had left the work half done. It seems that this was part of the contract between him and the contractor.
Vishal learned the value of education outside of Panna and realised how powerless he was because he could not read or write. He thinks that if he were literate, he would have a secure job working as a control room operator. Being adventurous and social cannot compensate for jobs that require basic literacy. Or maybe he would work in a big construction firm. The case of Vishal shows how the young use migration as a release for their heightened curiosity of the world outside of Panna as well as an escape. He had returned to take a break from work and to marry his girlfriend.
This also shows that for some, migration relieves the need to maintain social and moral pressures needed to cope with life back in the village. A temporary sojourn away for work helps the Gonds to free themselves from their conservative and stifling social relationships embedded in the kinship structures and extended family relations (Shah, 2010). In the village, it becomes difficult to balance social pressure with family economic needs and migrating helps to release this social pressure and explore other cultural contexts.
Migration, Challenges and Risks
Some of the Gonds feel that going vides is a risk because they do not know the labour contractor personally or cannot trace his whereabouts. In cities such as Delhi, the Gonds will park themselves at the Inter State Bus Terminal (ISBT), the country’s largest bus terminal where people use buses to go as far as Mumbai from Delhi. It is also a labour-pick-up point as most rural and temporary labourers who travel by bus to Delhi terminate at ISBT. Most labour and wage negotiations take place at the bus station and there are many options in terms of work and labour contractors that the labourers can choose from. However, negotiating a return means negotiating the lack of work and loss suffered by the contractor due to delay or a complete halt of the work. To compensate for this loss, the labour contractor, in almost all the cases that I have found, will withhold 50 per cent of the Gonds’ wages, telling them that the rest will be released upon their return to the worksite. This is a condition under which the Gonds agree to work. If the Gonds have a good relationship with the contractor, they will get paid as agreed, but, if the contractor is not known to Gonds, then there is a risk the might not see the rest of the wages. For instance is the case of Raghu. When he did not receive wages on time from the labour contractor who was also cheated by the company who did not release funds to him, Raghu found out where the contractor lived and went to his house, and after only getting physical with the contractor did he managed to recover his remaining wages.
It is important to note that migration is a new experience for the Gonds, and as a result, they have not experienced a wide variety of labour contractors and prefer to work for someone whom they trust and has established his reputation as someone who will securely release the funds when they return and will guarantee work. They usually work for someone who is familiar to them from the past experiences of other migrants and sometimes they even know where his house is just to ensure that they can track the contractor in case there is any delay in their wages.
Another factor that prevents migration are feelings of isolation and the need to settle permanently. The Gonds say that when they are abroad, they are in a foreign land and cannot communicate with other people, and as they age, they increasingly miss their home. This shows that the idea of returning home and the need to settle in one location becomes important for some households that have very small children and their safety while they are working on the sites is not worth the risk. The household is the world for the Gonds. It is their source of social security, stability and prosperity in the embodiment of their family (Yadav, 2018).
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.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author received no financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.