Seasonal Migration in India: A Cyclical Pattern of Labor Mobility

Every year, millions of workers in India pack a few belongings, lock up their village homes, and travel hundreds of kilometres for work that lasts only a few months. When the season ends, they return. This back-and-forth movement of labour is not random or accidental. It follows a rhythm set by harvest cycles, construction booms, and the lean months when there is simply no work to be found at home. This is seasonal migration, and it sits at the heart of how the Indian labour market actually functions.

What seasonal migration actually means 🔗

Seasonal migration is the temporary movement of workers from one place to another for a specific work period, after which they return to their place of origin. The defining feature is its predictability. The movement follows a consistent annual pattern tied to agricultural calendars or sectoral demand. A worker leaves when there is no work at home and comes back when there is.

This makes it different from permanent migration, where a person relocates for good. It is also distinct, though closely related, to circular migration, which involves repeated back-and-forth movement that follows economic opportunities rather than strict natural seasons. A construction worker who spends eight months in a city and four months in the village every year is a good example of the overlap between the two.

The root cause is structural. In large parts of rural India, farming provides employment for only about 100 to 150 days a year. During the lean season, when there is little farm work, rural households face unemployment and underemployment. Migration becomes a survival strategy. The National Commission on Rural Labour concluded that uneven regional development was the main driver of seasonal migration, alongside disparities between socio-economic classes. [Image: A map of India showing major seasonal migration corridors, with arrows indicating flows from Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Odisha, and Madhya Pradesh toward destination states like Punjab, Haryana, West Bengal, Maharashtra, and Gujarat]

Where seasonal migrants work 🔗

Two sectors dominate seasonal labour: agriculture and construction. Both are labour-intensive, both have sharp seasonal peaks, and both rely heavily on workers who can be hired and let go as demand rises and falls.

Agriculture 🔗

Agricultural migration is timed to the cropping calendar. Workers move during sowing and harvesting periods when local demand for hands shoots up, then return home. A well-documented example is the movement of agricultural workers from Bihar and Uttar Pradesh to Punjab and Haryana during the harvesting season. Similarly, labourers migrate to the rice-growing regions of West Bengal for the harvest, drawn by the demand created by the agricultural cycle there.

Construction 🔗

Construction is the other major absorber of seasonal labour. According to one study cited by the Migration Policy Institute, around 90 percent of labourers in the construction industry are internal migrants. Cities like Mumbai, Delhi, and Kolkata are the largest destinations. Workers from drought-prone districts of Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, and Karnataka migrate seasonally to work in brickmaking, construction, and tile factories. The garment industry, brick kilns, and informal urban jobs such as rickshaw pulling and street vending round out the list.

The faces behind the numbers 🔗

Seasonal migration is not spread evenly across society. It is concentrated among the poorest and most marginalised, particularly Dalit and Adivasi (tribal) communities. Long-term, settled migration tends to be dominated by men, but seasonal migration is more frequent among the poorest of the poor and involves large numbers of women and tribal populations. Two cases make this concrete.

Tribal labourers in the sugar mills 🔗

The sugarcane belts of Maharashtra, Gujarat, and Karnataka run on the labour of seasonal tribal migrants. In Maharashtra, around 1.5 million people migrate each year with their children to cut cane, with nearly half a million coming from Beed district alone. Workers from drought-hit, caste-marginalised communities in the Marathwada region travel to the western Maharashtra sugar belt for the harvesting season.

The pattern repeats across state lines. Tribal workers from Madhya Pradesh’s Nimar region, including Barwani district, migrate to Maharashtra and Gujarat for cane cutting during the October to March harvest. In Gujarat, the sugar mills around Bardoli attract roughly 1.5 to 2 lakh workers a year from the Dang and Tapi districts of Gujarat and the Dhule and Nandurbar districts of neighbouring Maharashtra.

The hiring system itself deepens vulnerability. A couple, locally called a koyta (named after the sickle used to cut cane), is hired by a contractor known as a mukadam, who pays an advance for the season. Workers then labour off this advance for months. The advance system, ranging from Rs 60,000 to Rs 100,000 per season, effectively traps families in conditions resembling debt bondage, since there are no written contracts to fall back on in a dispute.

The interstate flows 🔗

Beyond sugar, there are broad interstate streams of seasonal labour. Adivasi and Dalit workers from Jharkhand travel to carry bricks in kilns in West Bengal, Bihar, and Uttar Pradesh, and work as agricultural labour in West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh, and sometimes Gujarat and Punjab. These corridors connect India’s poorer states to its richer agricultural and industrial zones, with workers occupying the lowest rungs of the labour hierarchy, paid at piece rates and housed in makeshift accommodation. [Image: A temporary shelter made of plastic sheets and bamboo at the edge of a sugarcane field, with workers’ belongings stored outside]

Why welfare rarely reaches them 🔗

Seasonal migrants are among the most poorly protected workers in the country. The reasons are partly legal and partly practical.

On paper, several laws exist to protect them. The Inter-State Migrant Workmen (Regulation of Employment and Conditions of Service) Act, 1979 was enacted specifically to regulate interstate labour, requiring registration of employers, licensing of contractors, payment of displacement and journey allowances, and provision of welfare facilities. The Building and Other Construction Workers Act of 1996 covers construction labour, and the Minimum Wages Act of 1948 applies to agricultural workers. The 1979 Act has since been subsumed under the Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions Code, 2020.

In practice, these protections collapse. The 1979 Act assumes that a worker migrates through a registered contractor, but a great deal of seasonal migration happens informally through intermediaries who never register. Workers often lack documentation, which makes formal registration difficult even when they want to comply. Migrants are usually not unionised and are often unprotected by effective legislation against travel and workplace risks. Allowances they are legally owed frequently never reach them.

Living and working conditions 🔗

The day-to-day reality reflects this protection gap. Research on temporary labour migrants found that employers in both construction and agriculture do not provide adequate housing and sanitation facilities at destination sites. Workers live in temporary settlements or labour camps with inadequate access to clean water, sanitation, electricity, and healthcare. Most work under daily-wage or contract systems with no written agreements, leaving them exposed to wage theft and unsafe conditions.

The harm extends to families. For the children of seasonal migrants, schooling is often disrupted; many studies report low enrolment and weak attendance among migrant children. In the cane fields, women face an especially severe burden, with reports documenting how contractors’ reluctance to hire menstruating workers has pushed some women toward unnecessary hysterectomies for fear of losing work.

The connection to the 1991 reforms 🔗

Seasonal migration is not new, but its scale and character shifted after the economic liberalisation of 1991. Between 1971 and 1991, overall migration rates had actually been declining. The trend reversed in the decade that followed, driven largely by the rapid expansion of the informal sector, which absorbed large numbers of rural workers.

The reforms reshaped the economy in ways that pulled labour into motion. Liberalisation spurred growth in construction, manufacturing, and services in urban areas, creating new demand that attracted migrants to metropolitan cities through the 1990s and 2000s. The absolute number of economic migrants rose from 26 million in 1991 to 33 million in 2001 and 51 million in 2011.

The shift was uneven. Researchers note that since the 1991 reforms, male migration declined while female migration increased, with weak job creation in the organised sector pushing more workers into informal, short-term, and seasonal arrangements rather than secure permanent employment. In other words, growth did happen, but it produced a labour market that depends on flexible, disposable, seasonal hands rather than absorbing workers into stable jobs.

Why this matters for state politics 🔗

Seasonal migration is a deeply political issue, even though migrants themselves are usually politically invisible at their destinations. They typically remain registered voters in their home states, so politicians in destination states have little incentive to invest in their welfare. Enforcement of protective laws is weak partly because the political economy of construction and infrastructure tends to prioritise rapid project completion over worker welfare.

Recent policy steps have tried to close some gaps. The One Nation One Ration Card scheme aims to make food entitlements portable across state lines, so a worker from Bihar can draw rations in Maharashtra. Whether such portability genuinely reaches a tribal cane-cutter living in a plastic-sheet tent remains the real test of these reforms.

What do you think? If seasonal migration is essential to keeping India’s farms and construction sites running, who should bear the responsibility for migrant welfare: the home state that the worker votes in, or the destination state whose economy depends on their labour? And can portable schemes like One Nation One Ration Card actually overcome the deeper problem of informal, undocumented hiring through contractors?

References

1. https://socio.health/population-studies-introduction/seasonal-circular-migration-india/
2. https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/internal-labor-migration-india-raises-integration-challenges-migrants
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6. https://bridginggenderandpolicy.wordpress.com/2025/03/01/a-collaborative-approach-to-address-the-exploitation-of-women-sugarcane-cutters-in-the-marathwada-region-of-maharashtra/
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8. https://labour.gov.in/whatsnew/inter-state-migrant-workmen-regulation-employment-and-conditions-service-act-1979-30-1979
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12. https://www.dalvoy.com/en/upsc/mains/previous-years/2015/general-studies-paper-i/labour-migration-trends-india
13. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s41027-020-00294-7
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15. https://bhattandjoshiassociates.com/inter-state-migrant-workers-enhanced-protections-and-registration-mandates/