Migration of workers from rural areas of Bihar to other parts of India has grown steadily. In a paper published in the Economic and Political Weekly (July 30, 2016), Amrita Datta argues that migration has played a key role in determining the economic and social structure of rural Bihar in recent times.

Datta’s paper is based on data obtained from research carried out by the Institute for Human Development (IHD), New Delhi, in rural Bihar in 1999 and 2011. In both studies, the sample comprised the same set of 904 households chosen from 12 representative villages spread across seven districts of Bihar. The 12 villages covered by the IHD study were among the 36 villages surveyed as part of an earlier study conducted by the A. N. Sinha Institute of Social Studies and the International Labour Organization in 1981-83. More details of this longitudinal research project are available in Rodgers et al. (2016).

There are several interesting findings about the changing sources of income of sample households in rural Bihar covered by the 1999 and 2011 studies. Sources of income have been categorized as income from agriculture, income from local non-agriculture, income from government programmes and transfers, and income from remittances. Income from agriculture comprises net income from self-employment in agriculture and allied activities, net income from livestock, and income from agricultural labour. Income from local non-agriculture comprises net income from self-employment, income from casual or contract labour, and income from salaries.

First, Datta finds that agriculture is not the primary source of income for households in rural Bihar covered by the 2011 study. As a share of all incomes, the average income from local non-agriculture (30.4 per cent) was higher than the average income from agriculture (26.1 per cent) for households in the sample of 2011. Incomes from agriculture and labour incomes (from agriculture and local non-agriculture) were more important for relatively poor households than for rich households. At the same time, labour income from local non-agriculture was more important than labour income from agriculture even for households in the lowest income quintile.

Secondly, Datta shows that the contribution made by government wage programmes such as MGNREGS (Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme) to the incomes of sample households in rural Bihar was negligible in 2011. In comparison, incomes from government transfers (including pensions, Indira Awaas Yojana, Balika and Balak Poshak Yojana, and Cycle Yojana) were higher, and reached poor sections of the population more effectively.

Thirdly, Datta finds that remittances from migrant Bihari workers formed a crucial source of income for households in the study region. Of all sample households, those with at least one migrant member comprised 45 per cent of all households in 1999, and 62 per cent of all households in 2011. In 2011, remittances accounted for 43 per cent of the overall incomes of households with migrant members and 29 per cent of the overall incomes of all households in the sample in 2011.

Migrant workers from rural Bihar belong to households with diverse economic and social backgrounds. At the same time, Datta observes that the propensity to migrate was least among the poorest households, owing perhaps to the high initial costs of migration.

Datta’s opinion is that Bihar’s agrarian economy has moved towards a market-based system, and that semi-feudal relations in the labour market have disappeared. Migration and the inflow of remittances have contributed to a tightening of the local labour market and a rise in rural wages over time. They have also resulted in an increase in household incomes and a reduction of absolute poverty in rural Bihar (Datta 2016, p. 92).

References

Datta, Amrita (2016), “Migration, Remittances and Changing Sources of Income in Rural Bihar (1999–2011): Some Findings from a Longitudinal Study,” Economic and Political Weekly, vol. 51, no. 31, Jul 30, pp. 85-93, available at

http://www.epw.in/journal/2016/31/special-articles/migration-remittances-and-changing-sources-income-rural-bihar-1999, viewed on August 22, 2016.

Rodgers, Gerry, Mishra, Sunil K, and Sharma, Alakh N (2016), “Four Decades of Village Studies and Surveys in Bihar,” in Himanshu, Praveen Jha and Gerry Rodgers (eds) (2016), The Changing Village in India: Insights from Longitudinal Research, Oxford University Press, New Delhi.