Migrants

The Census 2011 estimated the presence of 450 million internal migrants in India, which is an increase of 45% over the Census 2001. As a corollary, the domestic flow of remittances has seen a significant rise. This paper aims to understand how this financial support affects the perceived economic well-being of households in rural India. The analysis shows that the recipient family’s estimation of their economic status improved dramatically after receiving these payments. It discusses the importance of frequency of receiving the remittances in order to understand the impact on the economic sentiment. For households who got continuous payments over the study period, the effect is positive and appears to be stronger.

With there being almost no housing policies for lower income migrant workers in the country, Kerala has attempted to address this problem by introducing a state-level housing policy called Apna Ghar. This article examines the policy’s effectiveness by exploring the “housing–work” relation in the existing housing sub-markets in Kerala’s Ernakulam district, in which the residential typologies inhabited by such worker groups are examined as to their economic affordability, service/amenities adequacy, workplace accessibility and ease of renting/shifting habitations.

In the most perilous situations, those that are least protected by the state are the first to be compelled to make a choice between disease and starvation.

Migrant workers in one of Mumbai’s most industrially dense areas with 3,500 small manufacturing and recycling units face a number of hazards, with fires being among the common ones. This article looks closely at the causes and aftermaths of these fires and notes how the workers cope with them even as their skills and knowledge prevent even bigger accidents.