(Picture supply: Asia Instances/Wikimedia Commons)
“Nobody cares about ‘bhaiya’ [a Hindi slang word for poor migrants] like us,” says Suman (30), adjusting the kettle on the flickering range at her roadside tea stall. Initially from Hardoi, a city within the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, Suman has been residing in Punjab—India’s Sikh state—for nearly 14 years along with her husband and two kids. Now settled in a migrant-dominated village, she has seen how shortly tempers can flare—and the way simply her household’s considerations are ignored.
Nearly a 12 months in the past, a battle broke out between just a few males at her tea stall. When she intervened, she too was dragged into the chaos. Suman referred to as the police, however nobody got here. “Not the police, not even the native leaders—they don’t hearken to us,” she says, her voice carrying the burden of resignation that many like her have come to simply accept.
Suman’s expertise is way from remoted. Over the previous 12 months, Punjab has witnessed a rising wave of hostility towards migrant employees from different Indian states, with communities not solely treating them as outsiders however actively pushing them out.
That is in stark distinction to Punjab’s long-standing legacy of mobility. For many years, the state has proudly worn its popularity as India’s migration capital, sending waves of its personal folks to nations like Canada, the UK, and Australia in pursuit of alternative and status. Remittances from this diaspora have helped construct not solely houses and gurdwaras (Sikh locations of worship), however a shared cultural creativeness of alternative and aspiration.
But, as working-class migrants from poorer Indian states like Uttar Pradesh and Bihar arrive in Punjab to fill its labor shortages, they discover themselves unwelcome. The Sikh state, constructed on migration overseas, is now grappling with migration inside, revealing a deep discomfort with inside mobility that mirrors the very exclusions its personal emigrants as soon as confronted abroad.
This rising hostility additionally jars with Sikhism, Punjab’s dominant religion, which upholds values of equality, hospitality (seva), and look after the susceptible. These beliefs, embodied within the precept of sarbat da bhala—the wellbeing of all—stand in distinction to the exclusion migrants usually face. But in on a regular basis politics and public discourse, such moral commitments are sometimes overshadowed by rising considerations over land, jobs, and identification.
A Village Decision In opposition to Migrants
In August 2024, the village council of Mundho Sangtian, a village in Punjab’s Mohali district, handed a controversial decision ordering migrant employees to vacate the world. The decision bans native residents from renting houses to migrants and blocks them from acquiring official identification paperwork throughout the village.
The crackdown is very jarring given the demographics: out of the village’s inhabitants of 1,500 folks, solely about 50 are migrants, principally from the Indian states of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, and Rajasthan. A minimum of 30 have lived there for over a decade and have voter ID playing cards registered at their present addresses—proof of their integration into the village.
Native villagers justify the transfer by citing rising crime and “anti-social actions,” which they declare threaten the security and well-being of the neighborhood. “The choice was unanimous,” says Manjit Singh, a village council member. “There was an incident involving a migrant lady’s misconduct, and there have been thefts the place migrant kids had been concerned.”
The narrative of crime linked to migrants is a well-known one, however it’s usually fueled by long-standing prejudices quite than verified information. On this case, not less than 300 residents of Mundho Sangtian signed the decision, successfully barring migrants from staying within the village. Fearing additional backlash, most migrant households moved out within the following months.
The hostility towards migrants isn’t confined to Mundho Sangtian. In Jandpur, a village in Kharar, Punjab, related anti-migrant sentiment took a extra seen type. Banners have been put up throughout the village, displaying a set of 11 strict guidelines focusing on migrant residents.
One notably alarming rule prohibits migrants from being exterior after 9:00 PM, successfully imposing a curfew on them. Different restrictions embrace obligatory background checks of migrants by the police, and a ban on smoking cigarettes, chewing tobacco (gutka), and chewing betel leaf (paan)—the latter two framed as efforts to stop spitting on village roads. Landlords are additionally required to supply dustbins for tenants, a directive that initially utilized solely to migrants however has since been prolonged to all renters.
The preliminary backlash from migrant employees led to minor revisions. After protests by migrant laborers, the wording of the banners was modified to interchange “migrants” with “tenants,” making the curfew and different restrictions ostensibly relevant to everybody. Nonetheless, the underlying intent stays clear.
“We had a gathering with the police and the administration, and thus we acquired the boards modified,” says Govinder Singh Cheema, the world councilor. “The identical guidelines will apply to everybody.”
Kharar Deputy Superintendent of Police (DSP) Karan Sandhu maintains that the scenario is underneath management. However for a lot of migrant employees, the message is loud and clear: they don’t seem to be welcome.
The decision by the village council was quickly challenged within the Punjab and Haryana Excessive Court docket in late August. Migrant rights advocates and authorized consultants argued that the transfer violated constitutional protections of equality and freedom of motion. The Excessive Court docket issued notices to the state authorities, in search of a response. As of now, the case stays pending, however the court docket’s intervention has stalled the rapid enforcement of the decision. The result will possible set a precedent for the way far native our bodies can go in regulating migrant residency in rural India.
However as villages tighten their grip on who belongs and who doesn’t, the exodus of migrants from Punjab’s rural pockets could be starting.
Punjab and its Infamous Migration
Punjab, the Sikh state of India, has lengthy been an agriculture-dominated state. Sometimes called India’s “meals bowl,” the Inexperienced Revolution of the Sixties introduced a transformative shift to its economic system and rural panorama, introducing high-yielding types of crops, mechanized farming, and elevated irrigation. This era of agricultural increase not solely ensured nationwide meals safety but in addition elevated Punjab to probably the most affluent states within the nation. Nonetheless, this prosperity got here with a rising demand for labor—one which the native workforce alone couldn’t maintain.
Concurrently, Punjab has additionally emerged as one among India’s main areas for worldwide migration.
Traditionally, Punjab’s excessive migration stems from colonial-era recruitment of Punjabi males—particularly Sikhs—into the British military and as laborers in nations like Canada, the UK, and East Africa. Put up-independence, components like land fragmentation, restricted native alternatives, and well-established diaspora networks additional bolstered migration as a viable and aspirational route overseas.
(Picture supply: Encyclopedia Britannica)
The Punjabi diaspora is well-documented, with almost a million folks emigrating from Punjab and Chandigarh between 2016 and February 2021. A 2023 research reveals that Punjab has the second highest proportion of households concerned in worldwide migration, after Kerala. In Punjab, 13.34% of rural households have not less than one member of the family residing overseas, primarily concentrated in Britain, Canada, the US, Western Europe, Southeast Asia, the Center East, Australia, and New Zealand.
Whereas a number of Indian states reminiscent of Kerala and Uttar Pradesh have additionally witnessed large-scale worldwide migration, what units Punjab aside is the sheer focus of its diaspora in Western nations and the ensuing per capita affect. Remittances from overseas have considerably contributed to the state’s economic system, whereas additionally fostering robust transnational household networks and cultural exchanges. However this large-scale emigration has additionally created a paradox: as Punjabis transfer overseas in massive numbers, a vacuum has emerged within the native labor market.
This scarcity of labor, notably in agriculture and building, has over time been crammed by migrant employees from different Indian states—primarily Bihar and Uttar Pradesh. Students and policymakers alike have famous this shift. In line with Manjit Singh, a professor of sociology at Panjab College, the inflow of migrant labor into Punjab started with the Inexperienced Revolution, when the agricultural increase dramatically elevated the demand for labor. “The dependency on migrant laborers has been so vital,” he notes, “that Punjab’s agricultural economic system would battle to operate with out them.” Over the many years, this dependency has solely deepened. Because the cropping sample in Punjab shifted towards monoculture—notably of wheat and rice—the demand for intensive handbook labor grew, particularly throughout sowing and harvesting seasons.
Sikal Yadav’s journey from Bihar to Punjab is emblematic of how migration—each inward and outward—continues to reshape the state’s agrarian panorama. He arrived in Diwala village, Ludhiana, in 2004, initially taking over a sequence of menial jobs: loading tractors, engaged on building websites, and helping native farmers. Through the years, as he grew to become accustomed to the rhythms of agricultural life, Sikal transitioned into farming—however not on land he owned. He now cultivates greens, corn, and cumin on a sublet plot of land, a uncommon alternative that emerged solely when the native landowner’s kids moved overseas.
“The sardar’s [a term commonly used in Punjab to refer to a Sikh man] two sons had little interest in farming,” Sikal explains. “They at all times needed to settle abroad, and as soon as they did—one to Canada, the opposite to Australia—he managed the land himself for some time. However with age catching up and nobody within the household prepared to take over, he finally sublet the farmland to me.”
For Sikal, it was a turning level. What had begun as seasonal, precarious labor slowly reworked right into a steady livelihood.
Sikal Yadav’s story is way from distinctive. In each villages and concrete facilities of Punjab, the presence of migrant employees is unmistakable. Whether or not in industrial belts, sprawling farmlands, or behind the counter of the closest paan store, these employees—usually accompanied by their households or members of their prolonged village networks—type a necessary a part of the state’s labor power. Regionally, they’re generally known as “bhaiya”, a time period that, whereas seemingly benign, carries with it delicate undertones of class-based disdain.
In line with 2016 information from the Shiromani Akali Dal, Punjab is dwelling to roughly 3.9 million migrants. Through the years, this quantity has continued to rise. Among the many tens of millions are people like Sikal Yadav, who left Bihar seeking higher alternatives.
The inflow of migrant employees from states like Bihar and Uttar Pradesh has additionally been pushed by a mix of things. Power poverty, restricted employment alternatives, and underdeveloped rural economies of their dwelling states push many employees to look elsewhere. Punjab, with its comparatively greater wages for agricultural labor, presents a gorgeous various. Migrant employees within the state usually earn greater than they’d again dwelling, notably throughout peak harvesting seasons.
A 2008 research revealed within the Agricultural Economics Analysis Evaluate discovered that earlier than migrating, 64% of surveyed laborers earned lower than ₹20,000 yearly ($230 USD) of their dwelling states, and 60% struggled to safe even 200 days of labor in a 12 months. Practically 1 / 4 of them had been utterly unemployed, however migration dramatically altered their financial trajectories. In Punjab, 63% of those self same employees reported annual earnings between ₹20,000 and ₹50,000, whereas 34% earned greater than ₹50,000. The affect ripples far past the people themselves—an estimated 60% of their revenue was despatched again as remittances, serving to to assist households and communities in a few of India’s poorest areas.
On the similar time, many Punjabi farmers reportedly favor hiring migrant labor because of the rising scarcity of native employees and the seasonal tendency amongst native laborers to demand greater wages. Migrant employees, in distinction, are seen as extra constant, out there, and cost-effective throughout probably the most labor-intensive instances of the agricultural calendar.
A Migrant Takeover?
This interdependence, nevertheless, is just not with out its tensions. The rising reliance on migrant employees in Punjab—each seasonal and everlasting—has additionally triggered a variety of socio-economic challenges. Problems with identification, exclusion, and labor rights continuously come up, particularly because the state continues to grapple with demographic modifications pushed by each outbound and inbound migration.
Whereas the Sikh neighborhood in Punjab has lengthy upheld the values of neighborhood and sarbat da bhala (welfare of all), tensions surrounding the inflow of migrant employees have often surfaced within the political enviornment. A notable occasion occurred in February 2022, when then-Chief Minister Charanjit Singh Channi, throughout an election rally in Rupnagar city, urged Punjabis to stop outsiders from ruling the state. In April 2024, throughout his marketing campaign as an Impartial candidate for the Bathinda Lok Sabha seat, Lakha Sidhana publicly criticized the inflow of migrant employees from Bihar and Uttar Pradesh. He accused them of “stealing jobs” meant for Punjabi youths and altering the state’s demographic composition. Sidhana urged native villagers to stop these migrants from being enrolled as voters, arguing that their participation within the electoral course of might additional marginalize native Punjabis in employment alternatives.
However on the bottom, labor organizers say the difficulty is much less about identification and extra about economics. In line with Dharmveer Jaura of the Asangathit Mazdoor Union, the confrontation between locals and migrant employees stems from job insecurity and wage disparity. “Once we consider Biharis in Punjab, the dominant picture remains to be that of a poor laborer,” he says. “However that picture is quick altering.” Jaura notes that in a number of areas, migrants from Bihar and japanese Uttar Pradesh are now not confined to low-paying, menial jobs. “Migrants are all over the place. Some are working their very own companies, establishing small outlets, and in sure circumstances, even incomes greater than locals. That’s the place friction begins.”
He attributes this rigidity to the notion that migrant employees—notably in sectors like agriculture, brick kilns, and building—are sometimes prepared to work for decrease wages than locals. “When labor is available at cheaper charges, employers naturally favor it. This leaves many native employees struggling to search out constant employment,” Jaura explains. “The result’s a way of displacement among the many native inhabitants, which typically expresses itself in resentment and even aggression towards the migrants.” He warns that except addressed by way of higher labor rights and coverage safeguards, these underlying tensions might deepen within the years to return.
In recent times, demographic shifts caused by large-scale in-migration have turn into more and more seen in Punjab’s social and political material. Migrants haven’t solely established deep roots within the state however have additionally begun contesting native elections—marking a rising assertion of their political presence. Nonetheless, this participation has additionally sparked tensions in some quarters, the place the rising affect of migrant communities is considered with apprehension, often resulting in socio-political friction.
Who Belongs, and Who Decides?
India’s Structure ensures each citizen the appropriate to maneuver freely and reside in any a part of the nation underneath Article 19(1)(d) and 19(1)(e). These provisions shield the liberty emigrate, search work, and reside with out concern of discrimination. Therefore makes an attempt to limit these rights—based mostly on area, language, or identification—are illegal.
In that gentle, the rising tensions towards migrant employees in Punjab increase troubling questions. The rhetoric of “outsiders stealing jobs” or altering demographics echoes a sentiment that’s legally unfounded and socially corrosive. Efforts to stop migrants from voting, deny them tenancy, or prohibit their entry to employment are usually not simply discriminatory—they’re unlawful.
These anxieties are additionally not new. Way back to 2004, the Punjab authorities’s Human Improvement Report devoted a complete chapter to the difficulty, titled “Migrant Labour: Issues of the Invisible.” The report acknowledged how migrants are sometimes seen as the issue, quite than as folks dealing with issues. “Because the migrant labourer is taken into account an ‘outsider’ in a cultural, linguistic and sophistication sense,” it said, “the main target is at all times on ‘the migrant as an issue’, quite than the ‘issues of the migrant’.” The irony wasn’t misplaced on the report’s authors, who famous that in a state famed for its international diaspora, home migrants deserve much better therapy.
The report laid naked a system during which migrant employees had been routinely denied rights. Many weren’t registered as voters, had no position in native governance, and remained invisible within the planning course of. “Harassment and extortion by police, different departments reminiscent of railways, publish workplace and delinquent parts on the office, in employees’ residential colonies and through the journey,” had been listed among the many power challenges migrants confronted. Although commerce unions tried to advocate for them, their efforts had been restricted by weak organizing and the entire dependency of employees on their employers.
20 years later, little has modified. Migrant employees nonetheless stay straightforward scapegoats in instances of financial misery, underpaid and undervalued at the same time as they energy the economic system’s most important sectors. They’re talked about when it comes to burden and menace, however hardly ever when it comes to rights, dignity, or justice.
As Dharmveer Jaura places it, the hostility migrants face right now in Punjab isn’t just unjust—it’s deeply ironic. “It is a state the place most of its personal youth is desperately pushing themselves to go overseas,” he says. “But we deny dignity to those that come right here chasing the identical dream.”
Anuj Behal is an unbiased journalist and researcher specializing in problems with city justice, gender, and migration in India.
(Picture supply: Asia Instances/Wikimedia Commons)
“Nobody cares about ‘bhaiya’ [a Hindi slang word for poor migrants] like us,” says Suman (30), adjusting the kettle on the flickering range at her roadside tea stall. Initially from Hardoi, a city within the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, Suman has been residing in Punjab—India’s Sikh state—for nearly 14 years along with her husband and two kids. Now settled in a migrant-dominated village, she has seen how shortly tempers can flare—and the way simply her household’s considerations are ignored.
Nearly a 12 months in the past, a battle broke out between just a few males at her tea stall. When she intervened, she too was dragged into the chaos. Suman referred to as the police, however nobody got here. “Not the police, not even the native leaders—they don’t hearken to us,” she says, her voice carrying the burden of resignation that many like her have come to simply accept.
Suman’s expertise is way from remoted. Over the previous 12 months, Punjab has witnessed a rising wave of hostility towards migrant employees from different Indian states, with communities not solely treating them as outsiders however actively pushing them out.
That is in stark distinction to Punjab’s long-standing legacy of mobility. For many years, the state has proudly worn its popularity as India’s migration capital, sending waves of its personal folks to nations like Canada, the UK, and Australia in pursuit of alternative and status. Remittances from this diaspora have helped construct not solely houses and gurdwaras (Sikh locations of worship), however a shared cultural creativeness of alternative and aspiration.
But, as working-class migrants from poorer Indian states like Uttar Pradesh and Bihar arrive in Punjab to fill its labor shortages, they discover themselves unwelcome. The Sikh state, constructed on migration overseas, is now grappling with migration inside, revealing a deep discomfort with inside mobility that mirrors the very exclusions its personal emigrants as soon as confronted abroad.
This rising hostility additionally jars with Sikhism, Punjab’s dominant religion, which upholds values of equality, hospitality (seva), and look after the susceptible. These beliefs, embodied within the precept of sarbat da bhala—the wellbeing of all—stand in distinction to the exclusion migrants usually face. But in on a regular basis politics and public discourse, such moral commitments are sometimes overshadowed by rising considerations over land, jobs, and identification.
A Village Decision In opposition to Migrants
In August 2024, the village council of Mundho Sangtian, a village in Punjab’s Mohali district, handed a controversial decision ordering migrant employees to vacate the world. The decision bans native residents from renting houses to migrants and blocks them from acquiring official identification paperwork throughout the village.
The crackdown is very jarring given the demographics: out of the village’s inhabitants of 1,500 folks, solely about 50 are migrants, principally from the Indian states of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, and Rajasthan. A minimum of 30 have lived there for over a decade and have voter ID playing cards registered at their present addresses—proof of their integration into the village.
Native villagers justify the transfer by citing rising crime and “anti-social actions,” which they declare threaten the security and well-being of the neighborhood. “The choice was unanimous,” says Manjit Singh, a village council member. “There was an incident involving a migrant lady’s misconduct, and there have been thefts the place migrant kids had been concerned.”
The narrative of crime linked to migrants is a well-known one, however it’s usually fueled by long-standing prejudices quite than verified information. On this case, not less than 300 residents of Mundho Sangtian signed the decision, successfully barring migrants from staying within the village. Fearing additional backlash, most migrant households moved out within the following months.
The hostility towards migrants isn’t confined to Mundho Sangtian. In Jandpur, a village in Kharar, Punjab, related anti-migrant sentiment took a extra seen type. Banners have been put up throughout the village, displaying a set of 11 strict guidelines focusing on migrant residents.
One notably alarming rule prohibits migrants from being exterior after 9:00 PM, successfully imposing a curfew on them. Different restrictions embrace obligatory background checks of migrants by the police, and a ban on smoking cigarettes, chewing tobacco (gutka), and chewing betel leaf (paan)—the latter two framed as efforts to stop spitting on village roads. Landlords are additionally required to supply dustbins for tenants, a directive that initially utilized solely to migrants however has since been prolonged to all renters.
The preliminary backlash from migrant employees led to minor revisions. After protests by migrant laborers, the wording of the banners was modified to interchange “migrants” with “tenants,” making the curfew and different restrictions ostensibly relevant to everybody. Nonetheless, the underlying intent stays clear.
“We had a gathering with the police and the administration, and thus we acquired the boards modified,” says Govinder Singh Cheema, the world councilor. “The identical guidelines will apply to everybody.”
Kharar Deputy Superintendent of Police (DSP) Karan Sandhu maintains that the scenario is underneath management. However for a lot of migrant employees, the message is loud and clear: they don’t seem to be welcome.
The decision by the village council was quickly challenged within the Punjab and Haryana Excessive Court docket in late August. Migrant rights advocates and authorized consultants argued that the transfer violated constitutional protections of equality and freedom of motion. The Excessive Court docket issued notices to the state authorities, in search of a response. As of now, the case stays pending, however the court docket’s intervention has stalled the rapid enforcement of the decision. The result will possible set a precedent for the way far native our bodies can go in regulating migrant residency in rural India.
However as villages tighten their grip on who belongs and who doesn’t, the exodus of migrants from Punjab’s rural pockets could be starting.
Punjab and its Infamous Migration
Punjab, the Sikh state of India, has lengthy been an agriculture-dominated state. Sometimes called India’s “meals bowl,” the Inexperienced Revolution of the Sixties introduced a transformative shift to its economic system and rural panorama, introducing high-yielding types of crops, mechanized farming, and elevated irrigation. This era of agricultural increase not solely ensured nationwide meals safety but in addition elevated Punjab to probably the most affluent states within the nation. Nonetheless, this prosperity got here with a rising demand for labor—one which the native workforce alone couldn’t maintain.
Concurrently, Punjab has additionally emerged as one among India’s main areas for worldwide migration.
Traditionally, Punjab’s excessive migration stems from colonial-era recruitment of Punjabi males—particularly Sikhs—into the British military and as laborers in nations like Canada, the UK, and East Africa. Put up-independence, components like land fragmentation, restricted native alternatives, and well-established diaspora networks additional bolstered migration as a viable and aspirational route overseas.
(Picture supply: Encyclopedia Britannica)
The Punjabi diaspora is well-documented, with almost a million folks emigrating from Punjab and Chandigarh between 2016 and February 2021. A 2023 research reveals that Punjab has the second highest proportion of households concerned in worldwide migration, after Kerala. In Punjab, 13.34% of rural households have not less than one member of the family residing overseas, primarily concentrated in Britain, Canada, the US, Western Europe, Southeast Asia, the Center East, Australia, and New Zealand.
Whereas a number of Indian states reminiscent of Kerala and Uttar Pradesh have additionally witnessed large-scale worldwide migration, what units Punjab aside is the sheer focus of its diaspora in Western nations and the ensuing per capita affect. Remittances from overseas have considerably contributed to the state’s economic system, whereas additionally fostering robust transnational household networks and cultural exchanges. However this large-scale emigration has additionally created a paradox: as Punjabis transfer overseas in massive numbers, a vacuum has emerged within the native labor market.
This scarcity of labor, notably in agriculture and building, has over time been crammed by migrant employees from different Indian states—primarily Bihar and Uttar Pradesh. Students and policymakers alike have famous this shift. In line with Manjit Singh, a professor of sociology at Panjab College, the inflow of migrant labor into Punjab started with the Inexperienced Revolution, when the agricultural increase dramatically elevated the demand for labor. “The dependency on migrant laborers has been so vital,” he notes, “that Punjab’s agricultural economic system would battle to operate with out them.” Over the many years, this dependency has solely deepened. Because the cropping sample in Punjab shifted towards monoculture—notably of wheat and rice—the demand for intensive handbook labor grew, particularly throughout sowing and harvesting seasons.
Sikal Yadav’s journey from Bihar to Punjab is emblematic of how migration—each inward and outward—continues to reshape the state’s agrarian panorama. He arrived in Diwala village, Ludhiana, in 2004, initially taking over a sequence of menial jobs: loading tractors, engaged on building websites, and helping native farmers. Through the years, as he grew to become accustomed to the rhythms of agricultural life, Sikal transitioned into farming—however not on land he owned. He now cultivates greens, corn, and cumin on a sublet plot of land, a uncommon alternative that emerged solely when the native landowner’s kids moved overseas.
“The sardar’s [a term commonly used in Punjab to refer to a Sikh man] two sons had little interest in farming,” Sikal explains. “They at all times needed to settle abroad, and as soon as they did—one to Canada, the opposite to Australia—he managed the land himself for some time. However with age catching up and nobody within the household prepared to take over, he finally sublet the farmland to me.”
For Sikal, it was a turning level. What had begun as seasonal, precarious labor slowly reworked right into a steady livelihood.
Sikal Yadav’s story is way from distinctive. In each villages and concrete facilities of Punjab, the presence of migrant employees is unmistakable. Whether or not in industrial belts, sprawling farmlands, or behind the counter of the closest paan store, these employees—usually accompanied by their households or members of their prolonged village networks—type a necessary a part of the state’s labor power. Regionally, they’re generally known as “bhaiya”, a time period that, whereas seemingly benign, carries with it delicate undertones of class-based disdain.
In line with 2016 information from the Shiromani Akali Dal, Punjab is dwelling to roughly 3.9 million migrants. Through the years, this quantity has continued to rise. Among the many tens of millions are people like Sikal Yadav, who left Bihar seeking higher alternatives.
The inflow of migrant employees from states like Bihar and Uttar Pradesh has additionally been pushed by a mix of things. Power poverty, restricted employment alternatives, and underdeveloped rural economies of their dwelling states push many employees to look elsewhere. Punjab, with its comparatively greater wages for agricultural labor, presents a gorgeous various. Migrant employees within the state usually earn greater than they’d again dwelling, notably throughout peak harvesting seasons.
A 2008 research revealed within the Agricultural Economics Analysis Evaluate discovered that earlier than migrating, 64% of surveyed laborers earned lower than ₹20,000 yearly ($230 USD) of their dwelling states, and 60% struggled to safe even 200 days of labor in a 12 months. Practically 1 / 4 of them had been utterly unemployed, however migration dramatically altered their financial trajectories. In Punjab, 63% of those self same employees reported annual earnings between ₹20,000 and ₹50,000, whereas 34% earned greater than ₹50,000. The affect ripples far past the people themselves—an estimated 60% of their revenue was despatched again as remittances, serving to to assist households and communities in a few of India’s poorest areas.
On the similar time, many Punjabi farmers reportedly favor hiring migrant labor because of the rising scarcity of native employees and the seasonal tendency amongst native laborers to demand greater wages. Migrant employees, in distinction, are seen as extra constant, out there, and cost-effective throughout probably the most labor-intensive instances of the agricultural calendar.
A Migrant Takeover?
This interdependence, nevertheless, is just not with out its tensions. The rising reliance on migrant employees in Punjab—each seasonal and everlasting—has additionally triggered a variety of socio-economic challenges. Problems with identification, exclusion, and labor rights continuously come up, particularly because the state continues to grapple with demographic modifications pushed by each outbound and inbound migration.
Whereas the Sikh neighborhood in Punjab has lengthy upheld the values of neighborhood and sarbat da bhala (welfare of all), tensions surrounding the inflow of migrant employees have often surfaced within the political enviornment. A notable occasion occurred in February 2022, when then-Chief Minister Charanjit Singh Channi, throughout an election rally in Rupnagar city, urged Punjabis to stop outsiders from ruling the state. In April 2024, throughout his marketing campaign as an Impartial candidate for the Bathinda Lok Sabha seat, Lakha Sidhana publicly criticized the inflow of migrant employees from Bihar and Uttar Pradesh. He accused them of “stealing jobs” meant for Punjabi youths and altering the state’s demographic composition. Sidhana urged native villagers to stop these migrants from being enrolled as voters, arguing that their participation within the electoral course of might additional marginalize native Punjabis in employment alternatives.
However on the bottom, labor organizers say the difficulty is much less about identification and extra about economics. In line with Dharmveer Jaura of the Asangathit Mazdoor Union, the confrontation between locals and migrant employees stems from job insecurity and wage disparity. “Once we consider Biharis in Punjab, the dominant picture remains to be that of a poor laborer,” he says. “However that picture is quick altering.” Jaura notes that in a number of areas, migrants from Bihar and japanese Uttar Pradesh are now not confined to low-paying, menial jobs. “Migrants are all over the place. Some are working their very own companies, establishing small outlets, and in sure circumstances, even incomes greater than locals. That’s the place friction begins.”
He attributes this rigidity to the notion that migrant employees—notably in sectors like agriculture, brick kilns, and building—are sometimes prepared to work for decrease wages than locals. “When labor is available at cheaper charges, employers naturally favor it. This leaves many native employees struggling to search out constant employment,” Jaura explains. “The result’s a way of displacement among the many native inhabitants, which typically expresses itself in resentment and even aggression towards the migrants.” He warns that except addressed by way of higher labor rights and coverage safeguards, these underlying tensions might deepen within the years to return.
In recent times, demographic shifts caused by large-scale in-migration have turn into more and more seen in Punjab’s social and political material. Migrants haven’t solely established deep roots within the state however have additionally begun contesting native elections—marking a rising assertion of their political presence. Nonetheless, this participation has additionally sparked tensions in some quarters, the place the rising affect of migrant communities is considered with apprehension, often resulting in socio-political friction.
Who Belongs, and Who Decides?
India’s Structure ensures each citizen the appropriate to maneuver freely and reside in any a part of the nation underneath Article 19(1)(d) and 19(1)(e). These provisions shield the liberty emigrate, search work, and reside with out concern of discrimination. Therefore makes an attempt to limit these rights—based mostly on area, language, or identification—are illegal.
In that gentle, the rising tensions towards migrant employees in Punjab increase troubling questions. The rhetoric of “outsiders stealing jobs” or altering demographics echoes a sentiment that’s legally unfounded and socially corrosive. Efforts to stop migrants from voting, deny them tenancy, or prohibit their entry to employment are usually not simply discriminatory—they’re unlawful.
These anxieties are additionally not new. Way back to 2004, the Punjab authorities’s Human Improvement Report devoted a complete chapter to the difficulty, titled “Migrant Labour: Issues of the Invisible.” The report acknowledged how migrants are sometimes seen as the issue, quite than as folks dealing with issues. “Because the migrant labourer is taken into account an ‘outsider’ in a cultural, linguistic and sophistication sense,” it said, “the main target is at all times on ‘the migrant as an issue’, quite than the ‘issues of the migrant’.” The irony wasn’t misplaced on the report’s authors, who famous that in a state famed for its international diaspora, home migrants deserve much better therapy.
The report laid naked a system during which migrant employees had been routinely denied rights. Many weren’t registered as voters, had no position in native governance, and remained invisible within the planning course of. “Harassment and extortion by police, different departments reminiscent of railways, publish workplace and delinquent parts on the office, in employees’ residential colonies and through the journey,” had been listed among the many power challenges migrants confronted. Although commerce unions tried to advocate for them, their efforts had been restricted by weak organizing and the entire dependency of employees on their employers.
20 years later, little has modified. Migrant employees nonetheless stay straightforward scapegoats in instances of financial misery, underpaid and undervalued at the same time as they energy the economic system’s most important sectors. They’re talked about when it comes to burden and menace, however hardly ever when it comes to rights, dignity, or justice.
As Dharmveer Jaura places it, the hostility migrants face right now in Punjab isn’t just unjust—it’s deeply ironic. “It is a state the place most of its personal youth is desperately pushing themselves to go overseas,” he says. “But we deny dignity to those that come right here chasing the identical dream.”
Anuj Behal is an unbiased journalist and researcher specializing in problems with city justice, gender, and migration in India.
