Republic of India Livelihoods in intermediate towns

6.4: Migration and Networks: The process and decision of migrations is one that occurs when abetted by networks. Like the thirty-two years old Mohammad Jafir told us:

I work in Delhi where I drive a vehicle. I went there because other members of our community already work there. They managed to find me a job. I stay there for 8-9 months in a year. I make 10,000 to 11,000 rupees every month of which I spend around 4000. The rest can be saved.

Whereas Mohammad Jafir found it convenient to rely on community networks to help him find a job and home to stay in his place of destination, the experience is not the same for everybody. Raj Kumar Mallick, a 16 year old Dalit boy of the Dom community from (Bhagwatipur/Satghara) went to Gujarat and worked with a contractor for a few months for a monthly salary of 6500 rupees. After having worked for 2 months, when he asked for the due payment, the labour contractor threatened him with violence. Even though some other workers from his village worked there, none of them supported him in his demand for his wage. Raj Kumar has since returned from Gujarat. He is not the only one who complained of lack of support at the destination for work; he is one among many such migrant workers, most of whom belong to the Scheduled Castes. Several other individuals from the Dom tola in Satghara informed us that they had gone to Gujarat for work but came back because of the lack of friends and social support. -they did not have anyone to fall back upon when ill or when they felt the need to solicit support for any other reason.
Even though most of the migrant workers managed their own and their family’s lives through the incomes they earned in combination with the work their wives and other family members undertook in the village, a large number also narrated their stories of hardship, both at the destination as well as at home in the village. Most of them lived a life of “subsistence” and struggled to make ends meet. They often had to borrow money from the local moneylenders, for which they paid interest at high rates, ranging from 3 to 5 percent monthly. Jag Deo’s story is emblematic of many others’ -
Jag Deo Mochi, a forty five year old resident of Satghara has three sons, all of whom have been working in a hotel in Sonepat in Haryana for the last eight years. He sent them away with his brother, who lives and works there. Jag Deo is unhappy about the fact that his sons have to live away from their family and village but he doesn’t have a choice since his sons’ income supports the entire family resident in the village. He wishes to open a shoe shop in Satghara if they are able to save money. But the ‘cycle of illness, marriage and of paying interest on previous debt does not seem to come to a close’, he said.
Social identities also seem to matter for the kind of work that migrants are able to find at the destination. A much larger proportion of SC (38%) and EBC (34%) respondents reported being employed in casual work when compared with the upper caste respondents (8%). However, even those from the upper castes often do jobs at the site of migration, which they are unlikely to do in the village; they perceive migration’s privilege in its anonymity. One of upper caste respondents, condescendingly told us about the migrants and their attitude towards work:
They feel embarrassed doing labouring job in the village. They find it shameful do certain kinds of job in the village. They will do anything outside. They will even sell ice-balls.

(Gaon mein labour log kaam nahin karenge. Gaon mein sharam mante hain,

Bahar jaayega to baraf ka gola bhi bechega!)
6.5. Migration, women and agriculture: Based on a research survey of groups of women in 12 selected villages across seven districts of north and south Bihar, Datta (2011: 12) reports that ‘the burden of work tremendously increased for women who worked in family farms, and as sharecroppers, after male members of their families migrated’. Such migrations are male dominant phenomena. As has been reported by Sharma for Bihar, only 3 per cent of the seasonal migrants and 7 per cent of the long-term migrants are females (Sharma 2005). However, male predominant migration has ‘profound changes’ for the range of work that women do within and outside the household (Rodgers et al 2013), especially an increase in the range of agricultural activities that they have to perform. These include overseeing work in the farms, making decisions related to sowing and harvesting, usage of seeds and fertilizers among others. Women now constitute the dominant share of agricultural labour in both the settlements and especially for activities like sowing, transplanting and harvesting, which takes up most of their time during the peak seasons.
Shiv Kumar, an elderly farmer from the Mallah community in Bhagwatipur confirmed our understanding when he told us:
Agriculture has become women’s job, they are the ones who do most of the agricultural wage labour. Men also work as labour but they generally go out for construction or brick-kiln related wage labour. If there weren’t women, there would be no agriculture. Men also work on farms but only if they need to. In my assessment, 75 percent of all agricultural work is done by women.
It is also interesting to take note of the gendered division of wage labour that emerged as a widespread trend in both the settlements. Like Shiv Kumar indicated, wherever there is an opportunity for ‘brick kiln’ or ‘construction’ related labour, it is men who choose to go for wage labour whereas in the event of requirement of agricultural labour, it is women who go⁶. This distinction has emerged in response to the nature of remuneration associated with the two different kinds of wage labour. Whereas non-agricultural wage labour is paid in cash, most agricultural labour in both Bhagwatipur and Satghara continues to be paid in kind i.e. in grains. Though the quantity may differ over farms and owners, we gathered that the standard practice in both the areas was to pay 1 bojha (approximately 15 kilo of grains) for every 12 bojhas they can harvest in the field. Most women, in the Mallah community reported that it took them an average of five days at least to be able to gather 1 bojha from the landowners (See Qualitative Information: Case Study for the Mallah Tola).
However the pattern of women’s participation in the agricultural labour force also differs across their caste and community backgrounds. Whereas women respondents from both the Muslim Fakir Tola in Satghara and the Muslim Ansari Tola in Bhagwatipur informed us that they did not go out of their settlements to seek work, including agricultural labour, women from the Mallah (EBC), Badhai (EBC) and Dom (Mahadalit) caste groups reported a fairly regular participation in the agricultural labour force. Respondents from the Brahmin tola in Nahar, Bhagwatipur stated clearly that women from their families did not perform any work or labour other than their household chores. It can therefore be determined, with a fair degree of certainty that whereas women from Muslim and Brahmin groups did not undertake agricultural labour, most women from both the EBC and SC groups did so, hence constituting a bulk of the total agricultural labour force in both Bhagwatipur and Satghara.
The impact of the out-migration of men on the intra-household structure and dynamics also seems to vary across the caste and community backgrounds of the households. Across the sample, it is clear that nearly all migrant men migrate alone i.e. they leave their families which, on average, includes their wife, children and parents, in the village. ‘We can’t take our families with us, it is too expensive to maintain a family in the city. Here in the village, we can be assured of their safety and well-being rather than in the city’, said a young Dalit man in Satghara who was visiting from Delhi, where he stays and works. He has a wife and an infant child who stay with his parents in the village.
On the contrary, in the Nahar tola of Bhagwatipur, which is a Brahmin settlement, both men and women were conspicuously missing. Most households constituted a set of grandparents with school going grandchildren. The grandparents preferred to live in the village, most of the men had a prior experience of migration whereas the grandchildren studied in school in the village and eventually moved out to stay with their parents in the city for further education and work. Therefore, in the cycle of migration among the residents of the Nahar tola, both the migrant man and his wife moved out, to be joined by their children later, and then return to the village at a later date.
What do these different patterns of gendered migration and of ensuing household structures mean for the agency of women in the household decision making structure, given the historically patriarchal context of the agricultural economy in rural Bihar? From our experience of research and analysis in Bhagwatipur, two facets emerge with more clarity than others. Firstly, an impact on women’s mobility within the village and secondly, on the performance of caste based traditional occupations.
Remittances not only have an impact on the economic capital of a migrant household, they also determined, to a great extent, its social capital. The absence of a male member means that the range of tasks that women have to perform on a regular basis increase, including those outside the house – buying ration supplies from the market, accompanying the elderly and children to the hospital in case of ill health and discharging social obligations. Therefore in addition to their household duties, women from migrant households reported keeping busier in the absence of their husbands. This also means that women now have to be more mobile than before – to be able to go to the market, the hospital or the nearest town. Like a young mother of two from the Badhai tola in Bhagwatipur told us, ‘A lot of us have begun to use the auto-rickshaws by ourselves to move between Madhubani and Bhagwatipur. Sometimes, we have to go out to do what must be done, we can’t just fold our arms and sit and wait for our husbands to come, can we?’
However, financial literacy of most women continues to be low. It is interesting to note that a large number of the migrant households reported receiving remittance via banks, which means that someone in either the immediate or extended family held a bank account. Though the institutionalization of sending and receiving remittances can be the subject of a separate enquiry, it is interesting for us to have a snapshot understanding of who withdraws them from the bank? Most women respondents told us that they depended on another male relative – a young nephew or brother-in-law or the ‘guardian’ (father-in-law) to withdraw money from the bank rather than doing it themselves. It is also interesting to note that Rodgers et al. (2013) report that ‘while not a single upper caste group of women reported change in the management of money after male migration, a majority of OBC II and Scheduled Caste groups, and all Muslim groups, reported that women were more involved in the management of money in the household’ (Rodgers et al 2013: 115) which merits further investigation.
Therefore, even though the physical mobility of women in the village may have increased as a direct corollary of the absence of men, other forms of mobility continue to be limited. Women’s physical mobility also varies across caste and community – Muslim women respondents reported limited physical mobility and a higher dependence upon male relatives.
The other element that has been significantly impacted due to the gendered nature of migration for work in both Satghara and Bhagwatipur is the performance of traditional caste-based occupations. Like we have discussed before, the need for cash pulls out men from the village and women continue to perform non-monetized forms of work like agricultural labour. However, in the case of monetized but very small-scale caste - based traditional occupations within the non-farm economy, women are the primary workers. Whether it is the trade of making and selling bangles among the Lehri community, that of washing and ironing clothes among the Dhobi community or that of making and selling bhuja (puffed rice) among the Kanu community of Halwais – men move to higher paid or larger-scale activities like barber shops among the Nai community or furniture shops among the Badhai community, and women perform most of the other traditional occupations, at the margins of the economy⁷ (See Qualitative Information: Case Studies C I & D I).