Migration Policies in India: Challenges and Strategic Recommendations

Every year, millions of Indians pack up their lives and move – from villages to cities, from one state to another, from drought-hit farms to construction sites in booming metros. They build our skyscrapers, harvest our crops, drive our cabs, and stitch our clothes. Yet when crisis hits, as the 2020 lockdown so painfully revealed, migrants often find themselves invisible to the very systems meant to protect them. India’s migration policy landscape is a patchwork of well-intentioned laws and uneven implementation, and understanding it is essential to designing a future where mobility becomes a pathway to opportunity rather than a route to vulnerability.

The current migration policy landscape 🔗

India has no single, unified migration policy. Instead, protections for migrants are scattered across labour laws, welfare schemes, and constitutional rights – with responsibilities split between the Centre and the states. According to the 2011 Census, India had around 456 million internal migrants, roughly 38 percent of the population, a figure that has only grown since. Despite their economic weight, most internal migrants navigate a confusing maze of entitlements that rarely follow them across state borders.

Key legislation governing migrants 🔗

The cornerstone law is the Inter-State Migrant Workmen Act, 1979, which was designed to regulate the employment, wages, and working conditions of workers hired through contractors across state lines. However, the law has proved largely ineffective because its complex legal machinery is bewildering to the very workers it intends to protect, and registration of contractors remains poor across states.

The Unorganised Workers’ Social Security Act, 2008 attempts to extend social protection to informal sector workers, where most migrants are employed. The Street Vendors Act, 2014 provides legal recognition to vendors, many of whom are migrants. More recently, the four Labour Codes – particularly the Code on Social Security, 2020 – sought to consolidate fragmented protections, though implementation has been slow and uneven.

Welfare schemes with migrant relevance 🔗

Several flagship schemes indirectly serve migrants. The Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (PMAY) targets affordable housing for the urban and rural poor, while the Affordable Rental Housing Complexes (ARHC) scheme, launched in 2020, specifically addresses housing for urban migrants and the working poor. Ayushman Bharat-PMJAY offers health coverage, and MGNREGA provides a rural employment safety net that can reduce distress migration at source.

Perhaps the most significant recent reform is the One Nation One Ration Card (ONORC) scheme. Launched under the National Food Security Act, 2013, the scheme empowers around 81 crore beneficiaries to access subsidised foodgrains from any Fair Price Shop across the country. This portability is transformative for a migrant who earlier had to choose between food security at home and work in another state.

Gaps in rural-urban linkages 🔗

Despite the policies on paper, the lived reality of migrants exposes deep cracks in how rural and urban systems connect. Most cities continue to plan as if migrants do not exist, while villages remain under-equipped to retain working-age populations.

Documentation and identity barriers 🔗

Access to welfare in India is heavily document-dependent. Ration cards, voter IDs, and even Aadhaar are typically tied to a single address – usually the migrant’s village. The Unique Identification Authority of India system links migrants to a single address, effectively excluding multi-locational workers from a range of services. A worker from Bihar building flats in Bengaluru may be legally entitled to subsidised food, healthcare, and a bank account, but practically locked out of all three.

Urban planning that ignores mobility 🔗

City master plans rarely factor in seasonal or circular migration. As a result, migrant-dense neighbourhoods often suffer from inadequate water, sanitation, and transport. Affordable rental housing is in chronic short supply, pushing workers into informal settlements where rents are exploitative and tenure is insecure. The 2020 COVID-19 lockdown exposed this brutally – at least 2.6 million migrant workers were stranded across India, disowned by employers and landlords, with around 1 million walking home along highways.

Weak coordination between source and destination states 🔗

States that send migrants – Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Odisha, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan – and those that receive them – Maharashtra, Gujarat, Delhi, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka – rarely talk to each other in any structured way. There is no joint registry, no shared welfare protocol, no common grievance mechanism. Migrants fall through the gap.

Children, women, and the hidden costs 🔗

Children of seasonal migrants frequently drop out of school because their parents move with the agricultural or construction calendar. Women migrants face compounded vulnerabilities – limited access to maternal healthcare, higher risk of workplace harassment, and lower wages than male counterparts. These social costs rarely appear in policy documents but profoundly shape migrant lives.

Promising regional initiatives 🔗

Some of the most thoughtful migration responses have come not from the Centre but from individual states and civil society. Kerala has emerged as a leader, with its Aawaz health insurance scheme for migrant workers, the Apna Ghar housing project, and a state-level migrant registry. Kerala treats migrants as “guest workers” – a framing that, while imperfect, marks a clear policy intent to include rather than exclude.

Civil society has filled many gaps. Aajeevika Bureau, set up in 2005 in Udaipur, operates walk-in resource centres at both ends of migration corridors, providing registration, photo ID cards, skills training, legal aid, and assistance accessing banking and social security. Similarly, Labournet in Bengaluru links certified workers with employers, integrating skill recognition with social security access. These models prove that the rural-urban corridor can be bridged with the right institutional design.

Strategic recommendations for effective migration management 🔗

Reforming India’s approach to migration does not require inventing entirely new systems. It requires connecting existing ones, plugging legal gaps, and recognising migrants as full citizens wherever they are.

Portable entitlements as the default 🔗

ONORC is a strong proof of concept, but portability must extend well beyond ration. Health insurance, pension contributions, school admissions for children, and bank KYC should all be portable across state lines. Aadhaar-linked benefit transfers can serve as the technological backbone, provided digital exclusion is actively addressed for workers without smartphones or biometric reliability.

A national migration policy framework 🔗

India needs a comprehensive national migration policy that explicitly recognises internal migrants as a category with specific rights and needs. The National Institute of Urban Affairs has recommended a framework that includes migration resource centres, helplines, registration and identity proofs, portability of entitlements, financial and political inclusion, and inclusive master plans that recognise migrants’ right to the city. Such a framework would also enable evidence-based policy by improving how migration is measured.

Skill upgradation linked to recognition 🔗

Many migrants already possess skills – masonry, welding, tailoring, driving – that go unrecognised because they were learned informally. Linking the Recognition of Prior Learning (RPL) component of the Skill India Mission with migrant resource centres can certify these skills, opening pathways to better wages and formal employment. Pre-departure skilling at source villages, combined with placement support at destination cities, can shift migration from distress-driven to opportunity-driven.

Political and civic inclusion 🔗

Migrants are systematically disenfranchised. Most cannot vote at their destination because their voter ID is registered at home, and travelling back during elections is expensive and impractical. Enabling remote or transferable voting rights – perhaps through the Election Commission’s ongoing pilot on remote voting machines – would give migrants political voice where they actually live and work. Civic inclusion also means representation in ward committees, residents’ associations, and labour boards.

Migrant-responsive urban planning 🔗

Master plans of major cities must account for seasonal inflows. This means designated affordable rental zones, night shelters that double as registration points, public transit routes that connect industrial peripheries to worker settlements, and primary health centres with extended hours for shift workers. The ARHC scheme is a useful start, but scale and quality of execution need significant improvement.

Strengthening source regions 🔗

Reducing distress migration requires investing in rural livelihoods. Strengthening primary healthcare through the National Rural Health Mission, expanding financial inclusion via Jan Dhan Yojana and MUDRA loans, and empowering Panchayati Raj Institutions through decentralised governance can make rural areas more self-sufficient and less dependent on out-migration. The goal is not to stop migration but to make it a choice rather than a compulsion.

Inter-state coordination mechanisms 🔗

A formal protocol between sending and receiving states – covering joint registries, shared welfare contributions, and crisis response – would close the coordination gap exposed during the pandemic. The Ministry of Labour and Employment’s e-Shram portal, which registers unorganised workers, is a useful foundation; linking it actively to state welfare boards would give it real teeth.

From vulnerability to shared prosperity 🔗

India’s migrants are not a problem to be managed but a workforce that powers the economy. When a worker from Jharkhand lays bricks in Mumbai or a domestic worker from Chhattisgarh cares for children in Gurgaon, they are participating in the same economic story as the engineers and entrepreneurs whose lives they enable. Policy must catch up to this reality. Comprehensive coverage, portable entitlements, political voice, and urban planning that accommodates mobility can transform migration from a survival strategy into a pathway for shared prosperity.

What do you think? Should India move towards a single national migration policy, or does the diversity of regional migration patterns demand state-led solutions? And in your view, which intervention – portable entitlements, urban planning reform, or political inclusion – would most meaningfully change a migrant’s everyday life?

References

1. https://idronline.org/article/diversity-inclusion/the-road-to-safety-and-security-for-migrant-workers/
2. https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/gaps-india-refugees-vulnerable-internal-migrants-pandemic
3. https://www.pib.gov.in/factsheetdetails.aspx?id=148563&reg=3&lang=2
4. https://ruralindiaonline.org/en/library/resource/vulnerable-internal-migrants-in-india-and-portability-of-social-security-and-entitlements/
5. https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/internal-labor-migration-india-raises-integration-challenges-migrants
6. https://niua.in/intranet/sites/default/files/2084.pdf
7. https://www.theeconomicsjournal.com/article/view/619/8-2-85