Migration, remittances and the moving workforce

Migration is one of the largest forces shaping India, and one of the least counted. The Census of 2011 recorded 45.36 crore internal migrants by place of last residence — about 37 per cent of the population — including both inter-state and intra-state movers. Most moved within their own state, and most migrants are women, largely for marriage or family reasons; the Economic Survey estimated the migrant workforce at roughly 20 per cent of the workforce, over 10 crore people, in 2016. Circular migration — workers who move seasonally between village and city without permanently relocating — is large but poorly captured by surveys that assume a fixed home.

People move for work, education, marriage, and safety, and the flows run in many directions: from villages to towns, from poorer states such as Uttar Pradesh and Bihar to industrial and construction centres, and from small towns to metros. The 2020 lockdown made the scale visible, when millions of workers tried to return to their villages after losing urban work overnight, revealing how little protection — housing, food, health cover — migrants had in destination cities. Since then, portability measures have mattered more: One Nation One Ration Card, which lets ration card holders draw subsidised grain anywhere in the country, is the most important example.

International migration adds a second flow. Indians working abroad — in the Gulf, North America, Europe and elsewhere — send money home, and the World Bank estimated remittances to India at about 129 billion dollars in 2024, the largest of any country. Remittances raise household consumption, fund schooling and housing, and cushion the balance of payments. They also create dependence: some districts rely heavily on Gulf incomes, and return migration after oil downturns or conflicts can strand workers without savings or support.

Policy for migrants is split between governments: source states lose workers, destination states gain labour but bear service costs, and neither fully owns the migrant's welfare. Voting rights are a further gap, since migrants usually remain registered in their home constituency and cannot easily vote where they work. The core challenge is portability — of food, health cover, schooling, banking and political voice — so that moving for work does not mean losing citizenship in practice.