Internal migration in India is a coping strategy for families facing low agricultural yields. Improvements in farming can lead to more stable healthy lives.
Migration in India is is one of the largest movements of people in the world: more than a third of India’s population, about 450 million people, were internal migrants as of the last census.
The migration is largely of two types, according to UNESCO: long-term and short-term or seasonal/circular migration.
The State of Odisha in India experiences marked circular migration. Eleven of its 30 districts are ‘migration prone’, experiencing a yearly outflow to more prosperous states, such as Andhra Pradesh and Gujarat. In the dry winter season, hundreds of thousands of farming families leave home to labour at brick kilns and on construction sites. To give a sense of the scale of out-migration from Odisha circular or permanent over half a million people had returned home by 14 June 2020 owing to the COVID-19 lockdown.