Migration: Salvation or Purgatory

A permanent feature of Bhil adivasi lives now is seasonal migration. Due to the devastation of their resource bases and the increasing pressure of population their traditional agriculture, forest produce collection and animal husbandry based subsistence lifestyles do not provide them with adequate sustenance anymore. So they perforce have to migrate to the more industrially and agriculturally developed areas for work as construction labourers, cable layers, trench diggers or agricultural labourers. As a result they do come back with more money and also learn new skills and so augment their livelihood situation. However, taking advantage of their weak economic situation contractors in their areas of work exploit them greatly paying them low wages for long hours of work without any side benefits. So currently a debate is raging as to whether migration is a positive phenomenon or not. Given the fact that there is no investment in the Bhil areas and so lack of both employment and resource regeneration there is no alternative to migration. However, given the extremely exploitative conditions of work this alternative is a bad one. So the way out is for greater investment in employment generating natural resource development projects in the bhil areas as well as for greater organisation support to the migrating adivasis so that they can get a better remuneration for their labour.