Caste of Marginality and Migration in Bihar

Abstract

In the world of ‘global capital—peripheral labour’, multiple strategies are employed to accumulate labouring bodies to augment accumulation, the lifeline of capitalism. Relations of inequalities have historically helped capitalism to accumulate and thrive. Growth in India and its accompanied en masse informalisation of labour is located at the intersection of caste, gender and migration. Foregrounding the cultural political economy of agrarian poverty, migration and informalisation of labour, we underline the criticality of caste in reproducing a labour force that is perennially insecure, unsettled and unorganised. Based on a qualitative study in rural Araria, Bihar, we argue that informalisation of labour is institutionalisation of vulnerability, which is sustained and reproduced through caste-based social relations in. Due to the wages in kind, repressive tenancy system and low productivity, indebtedness remains an annual necessity for the lowered caste workers and tillers even when the lowered ¹ castes move beyond the bounds of the village and into the wider informal economy, their lack of social capital and adverse incorporation in the urban labour market keep them off the benefits of migration and urban growth.

Introduction

The post-1990s rapid economic growth in India did not follow a structural change in employment. The workforce did not move from low-productivity activities to better-paid and high-yielding activities. Contrary to the assumptions, this phenomenon cannot be attributed to the predominance of agriculture, where almost the entire labour force can be categorised as informal. The non-agriculture economy also constitutes a significant chunk with 86% of the workforce being informal (Mehrotra et al., 2014). This phenomenon of people being stuck with one foot in agriculture and the other restricted to informalised and insecure work and precarious petty commodity production outside of agriculture remains rooted in the framework of ‘denial of development’, which rests on the socio-cultural edifice of caste. Based on case studies from nine villages of Araria district of Bihar, India, we argue that informalisation of labour is institutionalisation of vulnerability, which is sustained and reproduced through caste-based social relations in rural Araria, Bihar. Thanks to the wages in kind, repressive tenancy system and low productivity, indebtedness remains an annual necessity for the lowered caste workers and tillers—forcing them to enter the informal economy every year.

The informalisation of labour exemplifies how capitalism flourishes through inequality. Labourers in the informal sectors are not outside the formal labour market; on the contrary, they are adversely included in it, both directly and indirectly (Ghosh, 2014). It is a common misconception that the informal economy exists because of its ability to compete with the formal sector due to low wages. The informal economy does not actually compete with the formal sector; it serves to complement it. In fact, the low wages that are prevalent in the informal economy play a significant role in the accumulation of profits in the formal sector (Ghosh, 2014). Capitalism thrives on job insecurity, short-term and temporary contracts, part-time work, the disguised form of self-employment as wage labour, the decrease of state-provided social welfare, and the transition from time-based to piece-rate employment. As Jonathan Parry (2009) argues, the most important divide among the working classes in India is between the 8% of the labour force that holds permanent and secure positions (naukri) and the rest who engage in precarious wage labour (kam). The division between formal and informal labour reinforces the historical boundaries of caste and ethnicity/tribe-based social oppression in India. This division has resulted in the disproportionate representation of Adivasis and Dalits (erstwhile untouchables), in the informal economy. The dominant castes dominate the formal economy (Harriss-White & Gooptu, 2001; Kannan, 2011; Shah et al., 2018).

Methodology

Focusing on the intersections of socioeconomic factors such as land and caste, we have explored the dynamics of migration in Araria. An interpretive approach was employed to delve into the subjective experiences, motivations, and challenges that shape migration patterns. The research was conducted in nine villages in four blocks—Araria, Raniganj, Palasi and Forbesganj—during the month of June 2022. To develop an understanding of migration encompassing various caste groups, participants were chosen through purposive sampling. Six different tolas—Rishidev (Musahar) Tola, Chamar Tola, Yadav Tola, Mandal Tola, Brahmin Tola and Noniya Tola—were selected in collaboration with a local collective, Jan Jagaran Shakthi Sanghathan.

Data were collected through in-depth interviews. A total of 58 participants were interviewed, with each tola contributing approximately 10 participants. This ensured a balanced representation of different caste groups within the study. The semi-structured interviews allowed participants to share their personal narratives, perspectives and experiences related to migration.

Unpacking Migration

Inequality is central to capitalism. Capital can function as such only when it is accumulating, and it can only accumulate by producing and moving through relations of inequality. Caste enshrines the inequalities that capitalism requires. Informalisation of work and precarity in internal migration appears to be structured along caste lines, giving capitalism in India its racial hue. The footprints of caste in determining patterns of labour circulation and informalisation, however, have a geo-political dimension as well. Labourers found in the most precarious jobs come from the poorer states in India, like Bihar, which have the lowest Human Development Indices and perform poorly in terms of multidimensional poverty.

People have historically taken to migration to navigate crises that threaten their survival. The nature of crises has a bearing on the nature of movements. Desertions, immigrations, migrations—seasonal, temporary or permanent—are different ways in which people have responded to extra-economic zamindari repressions, rack-renting, floods and famines, low wages and loss of livelihood opportunities. In his authoritative work on the agrarian system in Mughal India, Irfan Habib underlines the ‘capacity of mobility on the part of the peasant … as one of the most striking features of the social and economic life…. It was the peasant’s first answer to famine or man’s oppression’ (Habib, 1999, p. 117). Anand Yang (1989) narrates similar stories of peasants of Saran district during the colonial period.

Desertions were a common option, especially for those who ‘lived close to the margin of subsistence in normal agricultural years in the late 18^th century’ (Yang, 1989, p. 182). The same was true for migration, Yang observes: the migrants were usually of the lower castes: Tanti, Ahir, Kurmi, Kalwar, Bhar, Dusadh, Nuniya, Bind, and, Chamar.’ (p. 195). He further adds, [T]he push was felt particularly by persons of low economic and social status because this class of population had little inducement to stay at home for agricultural wages were notoriously low (p. 196).

In contemporary times too, migration is an important factor affecting the course of socio-economic development. Data from the National Sample Survey (NSS) in 2007–2008 (the limited available data from Census 2011 does not include workers) reveals that about 28.3% of the workforce in India are migrants. ²

At India level, out of the 454 million migrants in the country in 2011, 41.4 million reported work as the reason for migration. Estimates of temporary labour migration in the country vary from 15 million to 100 million migrant workers, a variance that indicates the ambiguity of the phenomenon in the nation’s register. Temporary labour migration within India is seven times larger than permanent movements (NSS Report 2007–2008) and that in the case of the poorest households or those from the Scheduled Castes/ Scheduled Tribes (SC/ST hereafter), temporary migration is up to 16 times the volume of permanent migration. A deeper look into this data shows that SC and ST are over-represented in short-term migration streams and under-represented in long-term migration streams. When one considers the employment structure of male migrants from these social categories, there is a considerable difference in the share that is engaged in agriculture and mining, with 35% for ST and 23% for SC, compared to 13% for others. However, once one considers the share within non-primary occupations, the differences are not that sharp. Construction does constitute a much larger share for both SC and ST, 20% and 24%, respectively. Further, among brick kiln workers, 95% of whom are rural, 48.7% of all migrant workers are from the SC category and 16.1% from the ST category. Even of the remaining 35.2%, an overwhelming 30.1%, are OBC (Other Backward Classes, consisting of middle-rung castes). This division of labourers has a significant role in economic growth and income distribution as a few are persistently relegated to low paid, hazardous and filthy work. Even within informal work, they are categorically excluded from certain job positions.

Bihar: An Alluvial Landscape of Bountiful Misery

The present state of Bihar, comprising about 3% of the total geographical area of India and about 9% of its total population (102 million as per the 2011 Census), is the most densely populated state of the country. However, with an urban population of just 11%, it is the least urbanised among the major states of India.

A total of 76% of Bihar’s population is engaged in agriculture that accounts for about 24% of the state GDP. Bihar has more than 56% of agricultural labourers in its total agricultural (main) workers. The percentage of small and marginal holdings (less than 2 ha) is 96.5%, which is extremely high (Mishra & Harris-White, 2015). They own about 66% of the total land. The medium and large farmers, that is, 3.5% of the landowning community, own roughly 33% of the total land (ActionAid, 2016). Analysing the 2011 Census, Mishra and Harris-White conclude that north Bihar falls under the category of preponderant wage labour; the villages we studied in Araria, however, confirm the contrary.

Dalits own a sheer 9% of the total agricultural land and among landless labourers, their presence is reported to be 71% (The Agricultural Census, 2015–2016). In the rural areas, 58.4% of Dalit households do not own land at all. In most districts of Bihar, 90% of Dalits engaged in agriculture are labourers (ActionAid, 2016). Access to land accords dignity and a fall-back option. A large chunk of small and marginal households, who overwhelmingly come from Dalit and OBC groups depend on wage labour in urban or rural areas as a subsidiary or main source of income.

Marginal farms constitute 91% of the farm households and own 57% of the operational landholdings. The fragmented landholdings and low productivity define rural Bihar. The per annum household income of farmers in Bihar is ₹3,558. This is 45% lower than the national household income for the agricultural year July 2012–June 2013 (NSSO, 2010). Since 67% of the adult population is employed in agriculture, it is understandable why Bihar remains poor. About 55% of households in Bihar have at least one migrant (Datt et al., 2021).

Araria: Class, Caste, Debt and Bondage

Araria, located in the northeastern part of Bihar, is identified as one of the most vulnerable districts to climate change. ³ The region is perennially flood-prone. Every participant in our study has spoken about the changes in rainfall patterns experienced in the last 10–15 years.

Araria district has a population of 2,811,569 (Census of India, 2011). A total of 94% of its population is rural. It has a population density of 993 persons per square kilometre. The total literacy rate stands at 53.53%, with 62.30% for males and 43.93% for females. The sex ratio in the district is 921.

A total of 38.05% of its workforce is engaged in economic activities, which can be categorised as 24.77% main workers and 13.28% marginal workers. A total of 20.84% of them are engaged in cultivation, 64.67% in agricultural labour and 14.49% in other professions.

The experiences of agrarian distress and migration vary across different caste groups in Araria. The historical powerlessness of Dalits continues to mark their lives and livelihoods, even when they move beyond the bounds of the village and into the wider informal economy. Many Dalits in our study migrate because everyday caste-based humiliation and extra-economic extractions in the village are no longer acceptable to them. Even today, the dominant caste landowners in Araria district serve food to Dalits on separate plates, often made of leaves. They are asked to take their shoes off before entering the precinct of the landowner. Most Dalits in our study prefer doing agricultural labour work in Punjab as, they say, they are treated with respect. ‘The landowner in Punjab is a “kind” person; we always sit together and eat with him’, shared one Dalit we spoke with.

In three out of nine villages, wage payment is still made with bags of rice for most of the agricultural operations. When Dalits insist for cash, as it offers them choices, they are summarily refused. One Dalit labourer summed up the angst, ‘if paid in cash, I can save it and possibly send my son to a private school. Rice does not allow me this possibility’.

The following two stories pithily bring out the social cosmology of the villages in Araria.

Rukmini Devi is a 22-year-old widow from Jamua village who lost her husband in an accident in 2019. She had to take a substantial loan from the local moneylender for his treatment. They do not own any agricultural land. They have one cow. The only land that she owns is the homestead land, part of which she sold for his treatment. She lives with her ailing mother-in-law and two children aged 5 and 3, respectively. When asked how she manages financially, she says she does nothing. Her husband’s savings are drying up and neighbours (mostly extended family) help out. When asked if she considered agriculture labour or MGNREGA work, she said, ‘we do not do labour work. It is against our honour’. On our enquiring, if she had tried doing any other work in the city or in the village, she said, ‘I have not tried anything yet. I have completed my matriculation. If I get a job as an ASHA (Accredited Social Health Activist) worker or in the Jeevika programme, I will do it. But I will not do any mazdoori (labour)’.

Rukmini is a Brahmin, the caste that sits at the top of the social hierarchy.

Previously that day, we had met two more widows, Bichhiya Rishidev, 37, and Champa Devi, 29. Both were landless. They too had accumulated debt for their husband’s treatment and had children. They, however, worked throughout the year as labourers in the village and sometimes in the city. They are both non-lettered and live in thatched houses at the end of the hamlet. They never aspired for a naukari or anything other than mazdoori.

Bichhiya, is from the Musahar (Dalit) and Champa from the Yadav (OBC) community. Both are condemned to negotiate a different reality, compared to Rukmini.

As per an ActionAid report published in 2016, 96% of the total workforce in Bihar comes under the unorganised sector of which 55% are landless while 70% of them are agricultural labourers. Almost 59% of the agricultural landless labourers are engaged in share cropping or other allied farming activities. The predominant class relation in such a society has non-cultivating dominant caste landlords, maliks, at one end and lowered castes or tribal sharecroppers, bataidars, on the other. The landlords are the legal owners of the land and the sharecroppers are the actual producers. Typically, the tenant provides all the inputs to production, often using a high-interest loan from the landlord to defray relevant costs, and has to surrender half of the gross output as rent at harvest time. On top of this, the tenant and his family members have to regularly render unpaid labour services, begar, for the landowner. In the eventuality of natural calamities, the land owners reap all the benefits of the government’s compensation over crop loss, subsidies on seed, diesel, Kisan Credit Cards, etc., due to inadequate tenancy or sharecropping laws.

Chakravarti (2001) has argued that with little or no surplus, the tenant, the actual producer, had no incentive for improving methods of production or introducing technological changes. Second, low productivity of crop production and a small share of the gross output for the direct producer made taking the loan from the malik an annual necessity; the result was the perpetuation of poverty-ridden semi-servile life conditions for lowered caste tenants and their families. Thus, what emerged from tenancy was a landowners-fashioned labour arrangement that allowed the continuation of dependency and ‘unfreedom’ even within the framework of wage labour.

In Bihar, we see tenancy being replaced by debt-bonded wage labour. As per a Communist Party of India-Marxist Leninist socio-economic survey ⁴ of Bihar conducted in 2014, 36.61% of surveyed families were indebted to private money lenders, with the average loan amount pegged at ₹34,346 per family. They were forced to pay interest as high as 60–120% per annum, and at times the indebted families had to work for free for moneylenders. The oppressive socio-political structure has continuously put pressure on the resource-poor to migrate. This seems to have increased the bargaining power of the agricultural worker and poor peasants and elements of dependency and unfreedom appear to have weakened over time (Sharma, 2005). Our findings from Araria strongly corroborate this conclusion.

Circular Migration

Capitalism has long relied on the availability of migrant labour that is paid less, works longer and more flexibly, and is more easily controlled than local workers (Castells, 1975; Kelly, 2003; Smith & Winders, 2008). Neoliberalism has further accelerated accumulation and dispossession that has in turn led to the growth and exploitation of a precarious migrant workforce (Ferguson & McNally, 2015; Hanieh, 2019). Casualisation and informalisation of workers have become the hallmark of India’s growth story. Around 96% of India’s workforce is in the informal sector. Unlike the popular narrative, the casualisation of workers began much before the pandemic. According to one study that surveyed 198,628 organised factories, 98.4% of them employed contract workers in 2019–2020, significantly up from around 71% in the previous year. ⁵ In 2011, only 28.3% of factories employed contract workers. The number of contract workers in the total workforce of the organised sector swelled to 5.02 million in 2019–2020 from 3.61 million in 2011–2012 (Ferguson & McNally, 2015; Hanieh, 2019).

For an economy so heavily leaning on casualisation and informalisation of workers, migration, especially circular, is critical, as it reproduces vulnerability. Low incomes and insecure occupations outside the village ensure that landless Dalit migrants predominantly from the poorest states in India, continue to have a relationship of impermanence with the destination. The relationship between growth and circular migration is pithily summarised by Meillassoux:

‘[t]he implication of permanent migration for capitalism would be the need to pay for both the immediate labour time of the worker and the costs of biological and social reproduction of the labour force. Circular migrants can be exploited by drawing their labour during the long duration when they have no work at home, in a context of mono-cropping, yet have the backup of their domestic production to meet the costs of family maintenance and reproduction. Such rotating migration establishes a double labour market, where the labour is divided between self-production at home and production for the employer…’ (1981, p.115).

Globally, ILO estimated 164 million such international migrant workers in 2017 (ILO, 2018). But low-wage international migrants are numerically dwarfed by low-wage domestic migrants within countries (Kofman & Raghuram, 2015); in China alone, this involves 281 million ⁶ people and in India, 100 million. Over the years, there has been an increased dependence on non-agricultural incomes within and outside the rural economy (Basole & Basu, 2011). Our observation from Araria suggests that this dependence varies across different caste groups.

Circular migrants disproportionately belong to lowered caste and poor households. They encompass some of the most vulnerable women and children. ⁷ In entirety, they are a subset of casual workers, the least secured and worst paid of Indian workers, and many of them are bonded labourers. Analysing the data of the 13 million temporary migrants, Keshri and Bhagat (2012) show how the propensity to migrate mirrors poverty and low caste. Those in the lowest Monthly Per Capita Expenditure ⁸ quintiles are twice as likely to undertake seasonal migration as those in the middle quintile, and four times as likely as those in the highest. The authors also show the extent to which seasonal migration is weighted to STs, and to SCs, though to a lesser extent STs are more than twice as likely to migrate seasonally as OBCs and a little less than three times as likely, as General castes. SCs are significantly more likely to migrate than OBCs and General castes (Ruthven, 2012).

Our research shows that internal circular labour migration is between rural-to-rural areas for agriculture work and between rural-to-urban for construction, brick kiln and factory work. During the agriculture season, Dalits and OBC migrate to rural Punjab and Haryana for agriculture work. After completing sowing or harvesting, they migrate to Delhi, Sonipat, Surat or Himachal Pradesh for construction work. In India, the construction sector is the largest employer of circular migrants. During 2000–2010 the construction workforce increased by 26.5 million (Srivastava, 2011). The majority of circular migrants come from India’s northern and eastern states (Bihar, Eastern UP, Jharkhand, West Bengal and Orissa). The sector is divided into infrastructure, where the government remains the commissioner (client), and buildings and real estate, now dominated by private corporates and developers.

The Musahars are the most marginalised even among the Dalits. Every year they wade through knee-deep flood waters and reconstruct their kutcha houses made up of mud and bamboo. Even today, like all Musahars in this hamlet, they do not have homestead land in their name. ‘Our parents and grandparents were also agricultural labourers on others’ lands. We have always only done mazdoori’, says Tuliya, from Bajraha village of Raniganj block. Tuliya is a 30-year-old female from the Musahar community.

Neither Tuliya nor her husband Nagor Rishidev can recall when they exactly started going to Punjab but Nagor (38) says that he was not even married when he first went. Ten years back, they used to earn about ₹80–100 for agriculture work in Araria and about ₹150 in Punjab. Today Nagor earns ₹300 and Tuliya ₹250 in Bihar and ₹500 in Punjab. The entire household migrates for a month in June and again in October. They have five children. Their children after the age of 12 also start doing agricultural labour work. All the children have dropped out of school with the maximum level of education being Class 8 for the son. In this hamlet, they only migrated to Punjab for agriculture work. When asked about other occupations like construction, Nagor says, ‘we are scared of that contractor. He is a cheat and won’t give us full payment’.

Musahars, mostly landless in the villages we studied, either migrate for agricultural labour work to Punjab or as brick kiln workers to UP. In India, there are an estimated 10 million brick kiln workers, overwhelmingly from SC and ST communities and working as circular migrants. In 2005, an ILO study estimated 5 million registered brick kiln workers (50,000 kilns with an average of 100 workers each) which gives the estimate of 10 million altogether since many will not be registered including women who make up a huge proportion (Dorairaj, 2009).

The higher the caste hierarchy, the better we find the occupations and wages. Caste inequality translates to the narrowing down of entitlements, economic and social rights from the top to the bottom of the caste hierarchy. We find medium landholding OBCs working as skilled workers in factories and construction sites of better-paying Southern states like Kerala and Tamil Nadu. Land, education and lucrative occupations, like jobs in the public or private sector, remain the prerogative of the dominant castes. The story of Tuliya and Nagor Rishidev underlines the intergenerational nature of poverty among Dalits. Contrary to the modernisation theories that expected migration to be a transitory, and transformative, phenomenon, migration fails to uplift the lowered castes, as only low-paying jobs seem to come their way. It is important to examine why, generation after generation, migration remains circular and non-transformative for the lowered castes.

Caste of Social Networks

Madhukant Mishra (46) is a Brahmin. He owns 4 bighas of land. The Yadavs and Musahars till his land. He has studied till Class 12 and has two sons who work as labourers in Delhi and have settled down there. They visit once every year. The older son has studied till Class 12 and works in a hotel belonging to people from their caste. He earns ₹15000 per month. He worked in a factory before he found this work. Seeing the lack of opportunities in the village, the younger son too left for the city after his Class 11. He works in a computer centre and earns ₹12000 per month.

They learnt about these jobs in the city through extended family members in the neighbouring village.

In our study, we find that inherited and accumulated social capital, that is, support from networks of family, relatives and friends, as well as household savings, play a significant role in accessing information and financing the cost of migration. Caste continues to be the bedrock of social networks, as familiarity and recommendation to a region, opportunity, employer and support in a new location are heavily informed by the caste system. The first-generation migrating Dalits and OBCs often find it harder to support themselves for a long period in the city as they end up with the least paying insecure jobs in the informal sector primarily because they lack this social capital.

Despite it being non-transformative, Dalits undertake migration because the caste-based atrocities and extra-economic extractions in the village are no longer acceptable to them. The OBC with landholdings of 4–10 bighas also migrate, but they do so for better-paying jobs. The following story illustrates this point.

Sanjit Mandal (28) is an OBC. He dropped out after class 11. His father works on the 10 bighas of land he owns. The father is very proud that his son is the first one in their family to work in a city. Sanjit also does agricultural labour work but only on his land. For 8–9 months of the year, he stays in cities like Delhi, Sonipat, Bangalore and Chennai. He wanders from city to city looking for work as a mason (where he earns about ₹12,000 per month) or as a tailor in a garment factory for ₹15,000 per month. When asked about how he got his work, he said ‘just like others, I knew another Mandal who was working in Sonipat. The income from agriculture is uncertain. I wanted something stable, so like many others in my hamlet, I too went with him’.

In the organised sector, they get naukari/recruited through labour contractors, often known to, and from the same area as, the workers. In the unorganised segment, workers rely more on kin networks and smaller contractors; but in some cases, workers migrate through kin networks but are recruited by contractors. Workers recruited by contractors are sometimes paid advances, to ensure availability for the duration of the season. Adjustment of advance against wage payments does not take place until the final settlement. Some of the most exploitative types of migration labour contracts are found in the case of those who migrate after taking loans from labour contractors and their agents.

Mandan Rishidev and his wife, Sita Rishidev, both in their 20s, non-lettered, with three children, recently came back from UP where they worked in a kiln. They belong to the Musahar community. They migrate there every year for a few months with the entire family. Around seven years back, they were in desperate need of money and the contractor was the only one willing to loan ‘them’. He gave them ₹3,000 in return for their labour work in brick kilns. This cycle of taking loans for meeting survival needs and paying it back with labour work appears rampant in Araria.

Mandan and his family are certain that for about two years, the contractor cheated them by miscalculating their payment. Later, they learnt a way to keep tabs of the number of bricks they made per day. Now the entire household together earns approximately ₹8,000. Showing a stained paper which has the number of bricks and money due, he says that the entire payment is based on the amount of work the entire household does. Explaining his situation, Mandan says that the contractor is the only one who will give money without any paperwork. We have no land even for a home. We pay back the debt by working for 6–7 months in the factory.

While this has been the story of landless and small landholding marginalised castes, agrarian accumulation has led to investments in non-agrarian activities and livelihoods for several dominant caste cultivators with large landholdings like Mithilesh Jha. A 50-year-old Brahmin, Mithilesh holds two Masters degrees and lives in Lakshmipur. Having worked as a bank manager for 15 years, he quit his job to manage his 100 bighas of land. He grows maize, jute and rice. This year he plans on growing Dragon fruit and mango, which he says depends on the availability of trained labourers. He says that for the last 20 years, his agricultural yield has improved exponentially because of fertilizers, pesticides and improved quality of seeds. The main problem he and many landholding Brahmins in his village face is the ‘availability of labour’. He says, ‘these lazy labourers are willing to slog for 10–12 hours in other states but refuse to work for a mere 4–5 hours in their own state! We now even pay them ₹300 per day, but they still find reasons to work in Delhi and Punjab’. (The minimum daily wage for an ‘unskilled’ worker in Bihar is ₹366 today.)

Incessant Informalisation: The Political Economy of Vulnerability

Caste effects are not locational; they travel from the village to the city (Mosse, 2018). Historically, Indian class relations have been inseparable from caste associations (Lerche & Shah, 2018; Vijay, 2005). In India, an estimated 100 million internal migrant labourers primarily from the most impoverished regions serve as a means to drive down labour costs for capital, fragment the labour force, and impose discipline (Government of India, 2017; also see Datta, 2015; Mosse et al., 2002). Adivasis and Dalits are engaged in the most arduous, insecure and poorly compensated employment and form a disproportionate chunk of the seasonal migrant labour force (Shah & Lerche, 2020). The plight of racialised groups such as Adivasis and Dalits shows that they are not just an ‘outsider to the place to which they migrated but also that they are “exterior” to the places from which they have migrated’ (Chowdhory & Poyil, 2021).

Capitalism seems to have developed a caste-based working class in India, where the skilled–unskilled division between workers is reinforced by caste hierarchies. Since caste is a system of graded inequality, it is practised among the OBC and Dalits as well who compete among themselves for unskilled jobs. Given the pervasiveness, it is safe to assume that informality has been institutionalised and that informal workers have become an integral part of the neoliberal capitalist order, providing a channel for flexible production, profit and cost reduction. Globalisation—the deregulated national markets to ensure uninterrupted flow of capital, mostly from the Global North, and the outsourcing of the bulk of manufacturing, to the Global South—significantly rests on the informal and ‘cheap’ labour. In this sense, informalisation appears as a ‘core component of the new sub-contracting and outsourcing arrangements emerging under de-regulated global capitalism, as well as a means of livelihood for marginalised populations with no alternative sources of support’ (Williams & Martinez, 2008). This is systemic, as globally capitalism employs about two billion individuals, that is, over 60% of the total workers, in the informal economy (ILO, 2022). The persistent ‘othering’ of Dalits and Adivasis is rooted in the caste system that legitimises their position at the bottom of socio-economic hierarchies. Fatalists, this ideology justifies their inhuman condition and lack of control over land and other resources. Conceptualising similar processes, Gilmore talks about the role of racism in capitalism as a technology of antirelationality (a technology for reducing collective life to the relations that sustain neoliberal democratic capitalism (Melamed, 2015). She terms this process as a ‘partition’ in which forms of humanity are separated (made ‘distinct’) so that they may be ‘interconnected’ only in terms that feed capital.

The expansion of capitalism in the Global South has increasingly come to rest on insecure informal labour, especially since the onset of the neoliberal world order. Barely 8% of the Indian workforce is in the formal-sector regular jobs; the rest—92%—are in the informal sector. This means that low-wages, insecure jobs, wage-theft, violence, poor work conditions, limited or no social security and no space to unionise have become the norm. Those with meagre social capital are likely to be more vulnerable. As per the latest National Labour Bureau of 2016, the total number of registered labour unions has declined from 64,847 in 1999 to 12,392 in 2016. There were 8.9 million workers who became trade union members in 2016, while the total number of workers in India stood at 487 million that year. In other words, only 1.87% of the Indian workforce is organised by trade unions (Menon, 2020).

Civic and political rights in India are not easily portable. The country’s social protection mechanism hinges on the provision of entitlements to sedentary populations and excludes the mobile populace (Roy, 2020). Voting rights in the country remain tied to people’s place of origin, effectively disenfranchising migrants. Key dimensions of citizenship—the right to vote and the right to social entitlements, such as food subsidies—are invalidated the moment a migration is undertaken. This is disempowering to migrants. A Supreme Court ruling in 2018 held that members of SC and ST community from one state cannot claim the benefit of Reservation in government jobs in another state, if their caste is not notified there. ⁹ This robs migrants of their affirmative action schemes. The net result of such policies is that both the government and the market, working in tandem, benefit from the vulnerability of the poor, who are overwhelmingly from the lowered castes. Even though, there are studies to suggest that in the long term there is a high cost to the government and to the society if individuals are kept away from the benefits to which they are entitled, it is not a cost that society avoids but a missed opportunity to reduce poverty and inequalities. ¹⁰

Conclusion

Many Dalits in our research believe that capitalism has allowed them to enter the market they were conventionally barred from. Migration for lowered castes is often about freedoms and the preference for labour outside of oppressive local power structures (Deshingkar & Akter, 2009). There is also widespread evidence that migration has had the effect of raising local wages for those who stay behind (Deshingkar & Kumar, 2006; Lerche, 1995). The historical powerlessness of Dalits vis-a-vis dominant social groups and institutions continues to mark their livelihoods, even as they have a greater chance to migrate from repressive villages and into the wider informal economy.

The socio-historical powerlessness of Dalits legitimises the denial of land, capital, education and political voice to them and it keeps them tied to the low-end work. Ambedkar’s analysis in 1936 still rings true: ‘Caste System is not merely division of labour. It is also a division of labourers. Civilised society undoubtedly needs division of labour. But in no civilised society is division of labour accompanied by this unnatural division of labourers into water-tight compartments’ (Ambedkar, 2014, p. 47). The system of profit-making continues to exploit the existing social relations of power. Centuries of inequality of inheritance diminish the scope of overall growth and it doesn’t seem to correct itself automatically.

Our study of villages in Araria confirms that the outcomes of caste remain inescapable. Inclusion in the workforce does not ensure escape from poverty, as, caste, gender and migration are central to the question of who is included, where and on what terms. By treating neoliberal economic growth as the means to reduce poverty, state and national policies conceal the issue and simplify the relations between the two groups of people who have remained poor are not just those who have been excluded and in need of incorporation into markets but those in unfavourable positions by relations of production, capital and power (Hickey & du Toit, 2007).

Policies in India are informed by neoliberalism, where deregulation and the absence of a developed welfare state appear crucial to economic growth. About 82% of Dalits and Adivasis are still beneath the international poverty line of PPP 2 dollars a day (Kannan, 2011). Despite economic growth, the rate of poverty decline for these social groups between 1999 and 2009 was a little over half the rate for all other communities (Kannan, 2011).

After 1931, it was only in The Census 2011 that India officially recognised that caste remains a significant maker of inequality (Shah et al., 2018). In global analyses of inequality, caste remains on the margins and is not acknowledged along the side of gender, race or age. It is not highlighted in inter-governmental ties such as the Sustainable Development Goals. This is despite the fact that caste-based discrimination affects 25% of the world population, that is, 260 million people globally (Mosse, 2018).

Migration studies that render the migrant homo-economicus, struggle to explain different choices that migrants make, with regard to duration and destination, depending on their socio-cultural locations. We need an analytical framework that is sensitive not only to the economic reasons behind migration but the whole social-ecology of exploitation, including the one in which economic ‘reasons’—access to land and other assets and extra-economic extraction (forced labour, debt bondage, child labour, physical and sexual excesses, etc.)—are defined and reproduced. After all, economic exploitations are sustained by turning them into social relations. Throughout India, Dalits, Adivasis and Muslims are worse off than all other groups. Some activists and scholars have gone as far as to argue that there is a hidden apartheid in India (Narula, 2007; Teltumbde, 2010). Historically developed and inherited social relations between Dalits and other groups need to inform any analysis of the supposedly booming growth and development narratives in India.

Human history is replete with poverty. It is the capacity of a given economy to reduce it that must be laid bare. As of now, the caste of marginality remains the other side of the caste of growth.