The only sound in the village these days is crickets, according to Alila, 74, who lives there with her husband in a village 20 kilometers from Mokokchung Town.”Recently, there haven’t been many young men and women in the village,” she says.
Saku, 79, another resident in the village continued, “Everyone has left the village to pursue education, and the majority of people are working outside”.
She acknowledges that her children have now relocated to Kohima and haven’t come to see her in the past five years.
It is obvious from those statements as well as from the table below, that Nagaland has experienced an 11-fold increase in its urban population since its founding in 1963.
According to a study by Ezung, Prof. (2020), issues of migration in Nagaland, it was found that migration in the state was mostly attributed to economic factors. He explained this by analyzing wage difference, employment, urbanization and the ineffectiveness of Inner Line Permits.
He asserts that the disparity in pay between local and migrant laborers is what has caused migration in the state to increase recently. He pointed out the disparities in pay between migrant casual workers and local casual workers in the state up close to support his claim.
In his 2020 study, he asserted that hiring a local worker for a day’s worth of work would typically cost Rs. 350 (2020 labor hiring charge) per person per day, in addition to paying for the workers’ lunch and tea.
Accordingly, the total cost of hiring one local worker will be about Rs. 500 per person per day. In contrast, the cost of labor when hiring migrant workers will depend on the individual. These factors contribute to the state’s high demand for migrant labor. Accordingly, migrant workers are swarming into the state, according to his study.
In his research, Prof. Ezung also highlighted how the Nagas’ definition of employment includes only working for the government or in a public sector organization.
“The mindset of the people in defining employment is limited to a narrow field/area. Thus, the definition of employment for the native people differs from the general views of employment,” he reasoned.
The unwavering love for government employment, he continued, increases the demand for labor in the private sector and opens up job opportunities for citizens from outside the state.
According to his research, migrants fill almost all positions in the private sector, including those for both skilled and unskilled workers in the education sector and among business owners.
He also emphasized how little the native worker, who is uneducated and unskilled, has gotten into jobs like cobbler, hairdresser, construction worker, coolie, etc.
“The main reason behind this is because many native people mentally distinguish between local work and non-local work for their conveniences. They do not feel that the above mentioned works are employment or rather downgrade jobs, excepting ladies salons where many Naga Ladies have entered as a growing business,” he stated.
Thus, he asserted, “more than 90% of the employees or workers are not locals.” He also explained how native casual workers frequently end up working as drivers, wood cutters, stone cutters, and quarry workers without having the opportunity to learn the skills necessary for those positions.
Speaking about entrepreneurship, he asserted that almost all (roughly 90%) of the business establishments, ranging from grocery stores to district headquarters, are run by outsiders.
He also made note of how, despite the fact that the state’s agricultural products are entirely organic and have high market values when used properly, the local agricultural industry has not grown significantly.
Because native people still engage in self-sufficient production and the state’s infrastructure is underdeveloped, they were unable to benefit from the markets. As a result, we discover that the majority of farmers’ market vendors are from other states, according to him.
Implications of Migration
According to his research, the number of people employed in rural areas has decreased due to the rapid migration of rural residents to urban centers in search of better jobs outside of agriculture and better educational opportunities.
Only children and elderly people make up the majority of the population in most rural areas, with the exception of those villages on the outskirts of urban areas. Therefore, there is a labor shortage in the majority of rural areas, which results in low agricultural production and a need for goods from other states to fill the supply side of the agriculture industry.
The reason for low agriculture production and migration from rural areas is because agricultural entrepreneurship has not taken its root among the villagers due to bad and insufficient physical infrastructure as well as inadequate education regarding commercialization of agriculture products.
He also noted that, despite the migrant workers’ admirable contributions to the labor-scarce state, there are drawbacks to migration, such as the loss of jobs and income for the local population. As a result, his study suggested that state policy needs to be adjusted to stop the unabated flow of migration in the state policy.