As children, we learned that most major Indian rivers flow eastwards and empty into the Bay of Bengal. However, we were also taught that the Narmada and Tapti rivers flow from the Vindhya and Satpura ranges in the central highlands into the Arabian Sea.
I now imagine people as water, and waves of migrants as rivers that flow hither and thither, and, like the Narmada and the Tapti, it is time to think of rivers of people flowing from the north to the south in what one might call ‘osmotic migration’. We have come a long way from when maritime trade, colonialism, the Industrial Revolution and the abundance of opportunities in the north drove people from the south to Calcutta, Bombay and New Delhi, besides new industrial hubs. Much like the names of cities changing to Kolkata and Mumbai in a cultural shift, we now have migration patterns that reflect a new India —both within and outside the country.
These thoughts on the reverse swing in migration came to me last week as I heard news from Tamil Nadu and Kerala cheering the offspring of migrant workers from Bihar. Tamil Nadu cheered Jiya Kumari on her acing of the state-level board examination. Jiya, a government school student in southern Chennai, scored 93 out of 100 in her Class X Tamil exam and an impressive 467 out of 500 overall. Her Bihari parents settled in Chennai as construction and industrial labourers in 2008.
Across the Western Ghats, in Kerala, a letter written in Malayalam by Dharaksha Parveen, the 19-year-old daughter of a Bihari migrant worker, to Pushpa, the daughter of a migrant from Uttar Pradesh, is now part of a prescribed school textbook for sixth-standard students. The letter describes how a school teacher in Ernakulam bought a sewing machine to encourage Dharaksha’s interest in tailoring, setting her off on an ambitious foray into the fashion world.
It showcases Kerala’s Roshni scheme, designed to help migrant children overcome language barriers and improve educational outcomes. Roshni is part of a series of initiatives in Kerala that help migrant workers. Tamil Nadu has comparable government benefit initiatives that live up to an old saying Tamilians are increasingly fond of: “Vandharai vazha vaikkum Tamizhagam” (Tamil country makes visitors thrive).
Migration patterns can be fascinating. About 20 years ago, I wrote a story about how Bengaluru’s IT boom reshaped the city’s multicultural character by pointing to how the weekend buzz in the fashionable hangout area of Brigade Road had shifted from Kannada and English to more of Hindi.
A few years before, I had seen a Tamilian teenager cleaning restaurant tables in Thiruvananthapuram and heard someone remark: “Kerala is to him what the Gulf is to Keralites.” But a few years can make a dramatic difference, as the next decade showed. Tamilians, significantly empowered by mushrooming engineering colleges, are found in places as far-flung as Nigeria, Kenya and Indonesia, besides the US and Europe. Things have come a long way from the 19th century, when Tamilians slogged in the plantations of Malaysia and the then Ceylon. That fits another Tamil saying by the Sangam-era poetess Avviayar, who said about 2,000 years ago: “Thirai kadal odiyum dhiraviyam thedu” (Run the high seas to seek wealth).
English, as a language of upward mobility, is to Tamil Nadu what Tamil might be to Bihari girl Jiya. Tamil Nadu’s government mandates reading and writing of English besides Tamil in all government and state-aided schools up to the eighth standard in a scheme called Ënnum Ezhuthum (Numbers and Words).
Guest workers in Tamil Nadu get a happy deal. Many of them are from the blue-collar league and work in the automobile hub of Coimbatore and the textile hub of Tirupur, in addition to Chennai. Migrant workers typically enjoy all the organised sector benefits that local workers do.
In 2023, when there was a temporary panic over alleged attacks on migrants, the DMK government led by M K Stalin launched several budgetary support schemes for them, including doorstep healthcare service. Chief Minister Stalin personally called his Bihar counterpart Nitish Kumar to say, “All workers are our workers.”
Workers from anywhere must register online in Tamil Nadu, and the increasing formalisation of industries helps migrants settle easily. Special camps to ensure registration are part of the drill.
Kerala has a similar outreach and benefit list to help migrant workers. The Migrant Workers Welfare Scheme introduced in 2010 includes accident care, educational allowances, and retirement benefits for inter-state migrants, while the Roshni project helps language skills for migrant children through special classes that teach Malayalam, English, and Hindi. The scheme includes a nutritious breakfast.
The most fascinating part about waves of migration is the way they carry stories back to the lands from which the migrants arrive. We can visualise a new generation of Biharis speaking about Kerala and Tamil Nadu the way metropolitan Indians talk about America or Europe. With that will come new ideas, new values, new ways of doing business and changing governance.
Reverse Swing
Madhavan Narayanan
Senior journalist
(Views are personal)
(On X @madversity)