Expert Speak Digital Frontiers
Published on May 09, 2020
What India’s digital divide means for migrant workers in a COVID19 world and beyond

Six weeks and a deluge of images, anecdotes, and protests for destitute migrant labourers later, the central government announced on the 29 April that stranded migrant workers  would finally be “allowed to move”. This perfunctory response is perhaps the first admission from the Centre that relief measures intended for them were inadequate. The exodus of migrants from cities in the early days of the lockdown, and the visible anguish of those who have remained, compels us to question why the state’s relief measures were so ineffectual, and whether these vulnerabilities are limited to the lockdown.

Measures under the Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Yojana (PMGKY) have relied almost entirely on the digitally-enabled features of key public schemes—electronic payments to beneficiaries of the MGNREGS, Aadhaar-enabled public distribution system (PDS), and cash transfers to PMJDY bank accounts.  It is telling that the current humanitarian crisis has presented itself despite the administration’s fervent efforts to harness digital identity in this manner. This is an indication that the vulnerabilities affecting migrant populations in accessing basic social safety nets are more entrenched.

It is unclear just how many migrant workers chose to make the arduous journey home once the lockdown was announced. According to the recent report by the central government, about 10.35 lakh migrant workers are currently being housed in government and NGO-run shelters. By Census 2011 figures, this is a mere 15 percent of the national migrant labour population. Despite the digitisation of beneficiary identities, it appears that migrant workers still lose tangible access to critical social safety nets when they leave their villages or cross state boundaries.

Inadequacy of digital identity-based measures

The scale of internal migration in India is substantial. According to Census 2011, there are 6.78 crore migrants enumerated as main and marginal workers in Indian cities, 83.5 percent of whom are employed in blue-collar jobs, mainly in the informal sector. Yet the patterns of migration flow are so complex and dynamic that policy measures have thus far fallen short of adequately providing any social security to migrants. This is immediately evident in the state response to the COVID-19 crisis. Most announcements made prior to the lockdown by state and central political representatives made no mention of measures for migrant workers. The number of migrants fleeing for their hometowns was grossly underestimated and utterly unanticipated by the authorities overseeing the lockdown. Crucially, however, criticisms of the finance minister’s aid package, which now appears virtually ineffectual for migrants, can be extended even to the ordinary functioning of these direct benefit transfer (DBT) schemes, whether cash or in-kind.

In-kind transfers

In-kind transfers present obvious challenges of physical access to public goods, which the current digitisation measures have not been able to overcome. For instance, entitlements to ration through the PDS are relatively out of reach to migrants, despite the introduction of Aadhaar-enabled authentication, digitisation of shop records and so on.

First, PDS suffers from beneficiary exclusion errors. The identification of beneficiaries by each state is most likely to exclude migrant workers who could not be physically present at the time of registration. The PDS has been notable amongst in-kind DBTs for enabling portability—allowing beneficiaries to access their entitlements at shops other than the one in which they are registered. This feature has so far only been enabled in 12 states, but will soon be rolled out across the country with the One Nation, One Ration Card Scheme in June 2020. In a pilot of the scheme, only 0.3 percent of the total e-POS transactions were recorded as inter-state or inter-district. Moreover, states like Bihar, Odisha and Uttar Pradesh, which report a significant number of people migrating out, aren’t even integrated into the system yet. Additionally, there is lack of clarity around how this distribution will be financed and logistically managed between central and state governments

Cash transfers

In the light of the Jan Dhan-Aadhaar-Mobile trinity efforts, DBTs in the form of cash transfers should at least be more accessible to migrants. However, most major cash transfer schemes have criteria for beneficiary identification or verification that impose constraints on the individual’s location. The MGNREGS, for example, provides security of livelihood only when the beneficiary is physically present to avail work in the village where they are registered. With 21 crore Indians having migrated from one rural area to another (Census 2011), the viability of a scheme like MGNREGS to provide livelihood relief to migrant workers at short notice is questionable.

Similarly, the central government has asked all states to utilise the Building and Other Construction Workers Cess fund—a corpus of INR 52,000 crore—to deliver cash transfers to construction workers through DBTs. However, this requires the potential beneficiaries to be registered (and periodically renewed) as construction workers, which is itself a formidable process requiring proofs of residence, prior employment and so on. Even during ordinary times, the reluctance of public officials to relax these barriers has resulted in the fund being grossly underutilised. It is also unclear to what extent DBTs from the Cess would benefit migrants, since neither the labour ministry nor the states register information on the number of migrant workers. Ultimately any electronic cash transfer that could surpass the limitations of location will require the beneficiary to have access to a bank account. However, according to the Centre for Digital Financial Inclusion’s survey on migrants’ financial practices, 35 percent of migrant workers did not have access to a bank account in 2017-18, well after the rollout of the PMJDY.

Ways forward

Suggested relief measures in response to the lockdown have included extending ration to migrants without digital barriers to mitigate immediate hunger, advancing and enhancing pension payments, and the prime minister’s somewhat-ineffectual appeal to employers to pay daily wage earners in full. However, the fundamental disadvantages that migrants face can be addressed only through concerted state efforts explicitly designed to reach mobile populations.

As our digital systems mature, so should the state’s ability to identify vulnerable populations across schemes. Digital databases of beneficiaries ought to be interoperable at least to the extent that the end service provider (an fair price shop owner or an ASHA worker) can establish the individual’s entitlements using any identification that they may provide. Databases of public schemes ought to enable migrants to identify themselves as such at the places they are migrating to, to avail social security benefits. Simultaneously, the norms on funding such ‘exceptional’ cases need to be clearly defined, perhaps with the establishment of a national contingency fund that is not state- or scheme-specific and intended solely for migrants to access social security.

A possible means of identifying and enfranchising migrant workers could be through the amendment and strengthened implementation of the Inter-State Migrant Workmen Act, which entitles out-of-state workers to a number of welfare allowances. The recommendation of the standing committee on the amendment of the Act to issue ID cards to all migrant workers would equip them with a digital identity to access public welfare—an effort that is likely to contribute towards a less disorganised migrant labour force.

The social security of the mobile and politically disenfranchised will only be realised when policy invests in a more democratic digital system.

The views expressed above belong to the author(s). ORF research and analyses now available on Telegram! Click here to access our curated content — blogs, longforms and interviews.

Contributors

Hemanth Guthala

Hemanth Guthala

Hemanth Guthala holds a masters degree in Quantitative Economics from Indian Statistical Institute Delhi and Bachelors in Economics from St. Xaviers College Kolkata. He is ...

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Ipsita Chatterjee

Ipsita Chatterjee

Ipsita Chatterjee is a Research Associate at Indian School of Business. She has been an Adjunct Faculty and an MPhil scholar at Christ University Bangalore. ...

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Nirali Bakhla

Nirali Bakhla

Nirali Bakhla is a Research Associate at Bharti Institute of Public Policy at the Indian School of Business Hyderabad. She holds a Bachelor's and Master's ...

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Ramya Rao Munjuluri

Ramya Rao Munjuluri

Ramya Munjuluri is a Research Associate at the Digital Identity Research Initiative at the Indian School of Business Hyderabad. Her research interests lie at the ...

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