Agrarian Distress and Seasonal Out-migration: Insights from a Field Survey in North Bengal

A substantial section of India’s migrant labour force is pushed into precarious livelihoods in the informal economy. The circular dynamic of seasonal migration, taken to fill the recurrent voids in earnings and employment, is the only distress-ameliorating strategy of marginalised households and should not be equated with accumulative and aspirational forms of livelihood diversification. We analyse the processes behind the emergence of a mobile labour force in the backdrop of the declining viability of agriculture. We have documented illustrations of livelihood distress of two villages using data from a primary field survey conducted in the northern region of West Bengal. Our findings show that the multiple modes of migration in both villages were outcomes of migrants’ relentless efforts to continuously evolve and explore new routes for livelihood and, in the process, develop ways to minimise risks and social costs. With rising employment insecurity in the urban economy, migrants were building resilience against different forms of vulnerability and redundancy from traditional modes of reproduction. The linkages between the crisis of survival of the agrarian classes in rural India and the continued vulnerability of the seasonal and circular migrant workers point to the specific ways in which labour is getting absorbed, most often in adverse forms, in a rapidly globalising Indian economy.