Migrant workers

Story hook

It is 24 March 2020, 8 PM IST. PM Narendra Modi addresses the nation. "From midnight onwards, for the next 21 days, the entire country shall be in lockdown." The world's largest peacetime lockdown for 1.4 billion people takes effect in 4 hours.

Within 48 hours, the largest reverse migration since Partition begins. Approximately 1-2 crore inter-state migrant workers, stranded without work + transport + ration in cities like Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Surat, set out on foot toward their home states — UP, Bihar, Jharkhand, Odisha, Madhya Pradesh, West Bengal. Some walked 1,500-2,000 km.

Sixteen workers were crushed to death on 8 May 2020 by a freight train near Aurangabad, Maharashtra, while walking home on the tracks. Pregnant women gave birth en route. The COVID-19 emergency exposed what the NCEUS (Arjun Sengupta Report 2007) + PUCL v. UoI (2001-2013) had been arguing for decades: India's 50-crore informal-sector workforce has no statutory entitlement, no portable benefits, no database.

In response, on 26 August 2021, the Centre launched the e-Shram Portal — India's first national database for unorganised + migrant workers. As of March 2024, 28+ crore workers are registered. The Code on Social Security 2020 + Inter-State Migrant Workmen Act 1979 + **Building

• Other Construction Workers (BOCW) Act 1996** + new One Nation One Ration Card (ONORC) form a layered, partial framework. The Migrant Worker Welfare Boards in Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Odisha show what state-led delivery can look like.

For UPSC GS-II, "migrant workers" emerged from obscurity to become a top-3 Mains topic post-2020. PYQs: 2020 (lockdown

• migrant crisis), 2022 (e-Shram + unorganised workers), 2024 (internal migration + welfare framework).

Why this matters for UPSC

India has ~45 crore internal migrants (Census 2011, includes intra-state + inter-state, marriage + work); inter-state migrants alone estimated at 5.4 crore (NSSO + working group estimates). Unorganised workforce = ~93% of India's workforce = ~50 crore.

Mains PYQs since 2020: 2020 (migrant crisis), 2021 (informal labour), 2022 (e-Shram), 2024 (migration governance).