key: cord-0869430-yuubqvji
authors: Guha, Pradyut; Islam, Bodrul; Hussain, Md Aktar
title: COVID‐19 lockdown and penalty of joblessness on income and remittances: A study of inter‐state migrant labourers from Assam, India
date: 2020-09-18
journal: J Public Aff
DOI: 10.1002/pa.2470
sha: 7edd7e48e552ded3093fce6ec243de85d21c62a2
doc_id: 869430
cord_uid: yuubqvji

Present study made an attempt to examine the penalty of joblessness following coronavirus induced lockdown on income and remittances of inter‐state migrant labourers from Assam. The primary data for the study were collected through telephonic‐based survey of 451 labourers during May–June 2020. The results of this study showed that, on an average, labourers in the study area remained jobless for nearly 2 months and incurred income loss of INR 28,955 thereby failed to send remittances towards their families by an amount of INR 12,215 during the reference period. As per the analysis of covariance the income loss and remittances unsent amount was higher amongst the elderly labourers engaged in professions which remained non‐operational during lockdown period. Further, the additional days of joblessness increased their hardship in terms of income and remittances. With coronavirus being more than a health crisis, in short term it is necessary to minimise the loss of life, forwarding social and financial security for the families of migrant labourers and vulnerable sections for extended period of crisis, strategies for supporting agriculture and allied activities, promotion of small and medium‐size enterprises, imparting skill training for the unemployed and reverse migrant labourers, financial assistance for self‐employment may be helpful. Suitable coordination of monetary and fiscal policy would be helpful for reducing the unemployment heading from the recessionary trend of the economy in the long run.

Present study made an attempt to examine the penalty of joblessness following coronavirus induced lockdown on income and remittances of inter-state migrant labourers from Assam. The primary data for the study were collected through telephonic-based survey of 451 labourers during May-June 2020. The results of this study showed that, on an average, labourers in the study area remained jobless for nearly 2 months and incurred income loss of INR 28,955 thereby failed to send remittances towards their families by an amount of INR 12,215 during the reference period. As per the analysis of covariance the income loss and remittances unsent amount was higher amongst the elderly labourers engaged in professions which remained non-operational during lockdown period. Further, the additional days of joblessness increased their hardship in terms of income and remittances. With coronavirus being more than a health crisis, in short term it is necessary to minimise the loss of life, forwarding social and financial security for the families of migrant labourers and vulnerable sections for extended period of crisis, strategies for supporting agriculture and allied activities, promotion of small and medium-size enterprises, imparting skill training for the unemployed and reverse migrant labourers, financial assistance for self-employment may be helpful. Suitable coordination of monetary and fiscal policy would be helpful for reducing the unemployment heading from the recessionary trend of the economy in the long run.

Individual's willingness to live a better life and overcome hardship was associated with the decision to migrate throughout human history (United Nations, 2006) . By reducing unemployment, poverty and earning foreign exchange through remittances migrant labourers contributed to the engine of growth in the countries of origin (Ahn, 2004) and growth and development of destination countries. It is estimated that there are 164 million migrant workers worldwide, comprising 4.7% of the total labour force of the world (ILO, 2020a). Across The Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand, Odisha, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh, West Bengal and the north-eastern states are major sources of working-age Indian population who migrated to other Indian states in search of remunerative engagement (Singh, Patel, Chaudhary, & Mishra, 2020) . Beside her global importance as a country of origin, the internal migration of labourers has played an important role in every sector of Indian economy, especially the informal sector and micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs). Nearly 20% of the Indian workforces are engaged in informal sector and MSMEs (Puri, 2020) .

Though migrant labourers contribute substantially across sectors of the economy as invisible citizens but many of them are underprivileged, especially low skilled labourers, enjoy only limited human and labour rights and face exploitative working conditions (Diop, 2010) . Several researches in the past expressed the vulnerability of migrant labourers relative to local counterparts (Bustamante, 2011; Derose, Escarce, & Lurie, 2007; Mehra, 2017) .

The social insecurity and high deprivation from basic amenities is common amongst the migrant labourers (Bhagat, Reshmi, Sahoo, Roy, & Govil, 2020; Mukherjee, Paul, & Pathan, 2009 ) are often denied adequate healthcare, nutrition, housing and sanitation (Nair & Verma, 2020 India and Assam (GoI, 2020) . To minimise the spread of transmission of the virus Indian government declared a nationwide full lockdown for 40 days in two phases during 25th March-3rd May, 2020 and partial lockdown for 28 days in two phases during 4th May-31st May, 2020. The prolonged period of lockdown paralysed the economy by fully or partially affecting the three sectors of economy viz. agriculture, industry and services. Consequently there was a fall in aggregate demand, affecting production process and labour market, trade and industry, supply chain, public health system and society at large. There was a massive disruption in offline and manual work and employment with the announcement of nationwide lockdown. Consequently tens of millions of migrant workers, forced to return home after losing their employment and income in their home countries (ILO, 2020a). The tragedy of migrant labourers marked by homelessness, hunger and unforeseen human miseries with continuation of nationwide lockdown (SWAN, 2020). During the initial phase of full lockdown, there was no access to ration from government outlets and non-payment of salary for more than 90% of migrant labourers in India (The Hindu, 2020). Millions of migrants and informal sector workers in India left jobless at the announcement of the lockdown, with enough savings possibly to feed themselves for a week or two at the most.

Many of them did not have ration cards to access food aid (The Hindu, 2020) all of these prompted a mass exodus of people fleeing cities to go back to the villages on foot travelling hundreds of kilometres (The Times of India, 2020) and many more remain trapped in cities.

With factories and workplaces shut down due to nationwide lockdown, millions of migrant workers had to deal with the loss of income, food shortages and uncertainty about their future (Abi-Habib & Yasir, 2020; Slater & Masih, 2020) . With no work and money, and lockdown restrictions hindering public transport, thousands of migrant workers were seen walking or bicycling hundreds of kilometres for returning back to their native villages, some with their families (Pandey, 2020; Rashid, Anand, & Mahale, 2020) . Many were arrested for violating the lockdown, after being caught at inter-state borders, forests between states and even on boats to cross rivers (Babu, Saini, & Swaroop, 2020) . Many migrants also died with reasons ranging from starvation, suicides, exhaustion, road and rail accidents, police brutality and denial of timely medical care.

As a rescue measure, towards the March end 2020, the Indian government passed sweeping order for no deduction of employees' wages and landlord seeking of rent during lockdown period, offered relief package which was essentially top up off food and cash transfers on existing programs (Ohri, 2020) , arrangement of Shramik Special trains (Gunasekar, 2020) , announcement of economic stimulus package of US $260 billion for farmers and migrant labourers to large scale businesses (Raj, 2020) , announcement of National Migrant Information System, opened thousands of quarantine centres to house migrant labourers, spending plan of US $24 billion for the poor ensuring cash transfers and food security, launching of Garib Kalyan Rojgar Abhiyaan and announcement of Atmanirbhar Bharata Abhiyan.

The poor and marginalised were the hardest hit by coronavirus because of their non-accessibility to the public healthcare system (Banik, Nag, Chowdhury, & Chatterjee, 2020) . With 90% of Indian workers engaged, the informal sector is at risk of falling deeper into poverty with nationwide lockdown following COVID-19 pandemic (Sengupta & Jha, 2020) . Suryahadi, Al Izzati, and Suryadarma (2020) predicted COVID-19 pandemic will push 1.3 millions of people in Indonesia into poverty, with the rate of poverty likely to reach 9.7% by the end of 2020. The worries of migrant workers in informal sector drawn attention of several scholars with no access to ration, stuck at destination without food and money, loss of wages, fear of getting infected and anxiety in Indian context (Bhagat et al., 2020; Kumar, Padhee, & Kumar, 2020) and in Venezuelan migrants faced with a collapsed health system at home (Daniels, 2020) . Tedeschi (2020) noted that the pandemic brought severe suffering for those migrants who were looking for shelter and safety. The tragedy of migrant labourers as they are often stigmatised and unjustly blamed for the spread of disease (Lau et al., 2020) ; casual migrant workers death whilst asleep on railway tracks in India, the abandoned elderly in care homes of Spain (Maddrell, 2020) . The announcement of lockdown towards the end of March 2020 triggered exodus and reverse migration of unskilled and semi-skilled labourers from major urban and cities who walk back to their villages without food and money (Dandekar & Ghai, 2020; Singh et al., 2020) .

A group of researchers expressed worries about the job market and employment situation following COVID-19. Frightening projections being made about the number of jobs and related income losses following the lockdown induced by the spread of coronavirus (Coibion, Gorodnichenko, & Weber, 2020; ILO, 2020b) . Bell and Blanchflower (2020) mentioned the fall in the labour market in the wake of COVID-19 pandemic is 20 times faster and much deeper than the Great Recession. Projection of severe increase in unemployment being made for major economies of the world such as the USA, Canada (Béland, Brodeur, & Wright, 2020; Larue, 2020) . Zhang, Diao, Chen, Robinson, and Fan (2020) reported employment in China likely to fall by 8.6 million following COVID-19 pandemic whilst India is likely to experience 23.4% increase in unemployment with urban unemployment likely to increase by 30.9% (Sreevatsan, 2020) . During the period of lockdown the prevailing rate of unemployment increased threefolds in India and reached up to 26% and staff shortage was experienced even after unlock 1.0 in states which provided more than 50% of employment in India (Singh et al., 2020) . Sen (2020) reported income loss of casual workers and the selfemployed in the informal sector, which likely to increase the inequality of income (Kramer & Kramer, 2020) . ILO (2020b) reported labourers in the informal sector likely to be worst affected in terms of loss of employment and income following the COVID-19 lockdown.

Bell and Blanchflower (2020) Nearly 62.97% of respondents were from most affected states whilst 37.03% were from less affected states.

The consequences of joblessness on income and remittances of interstate migrant labourers of Assam have been examined using Analysis of Covariance. Two sets of equations have been fitted for the purpose with the first set of equations measured the effect on lost income is as in Equations (1) and (2);

Where Yl i stands for total amount of income lost by ith labourer; η is error term IIDN 0,σ 2 À Á

The interaction effect on income loss is estimated using Equation (2) as follows;

Another set of equations being estimated for remittances unsent or lost as in Equations (3) and (4);

The interaction effect on remittances unsent is estimated using Equation (4) as follows;

where Ru stands for remittances unsent by ith labourer;

ε is error term IIDN 0,σ 2 À Á

The fitted regression models are estimated using the OLS (ordinary least square) method and the results of regression estimate are reported in Table 2 .

Refer to Table 2 immediately after the outbreak of the pandemic thereby suffered greater income loss to a wider extent. Contrasting findings reported in the works of (Adams-Prassl, Boneva, Golin, & Rauh, 2020; Bui, Button, & Picciotti, 2020; Coibion et al., 2020) .

The income elasticity of demand for a number of days without any employment has been found to be positively significant with an pandemic.

Refer to the estimated coefficient of remittances equation (3) and

(4) as reported in Table 2 shows positive significant predictor of remittances unsent. Referring to estimated coefficient of equitation (3) and Karim, Islam, and Talukder (2020) came out with similar findings.

Surprisingly the coefficient of job dummy has been found to be positively significant. Thus it implies that transferability capacity of remittances was lower by 3.38 percentage points amongst the working and labourers with pay leave which was relatively higher than the labourers who lost or terminated from their job following the lock- the reason making it difficult for the migrant labourers in sending or depositing remittance for their families at distance, even though either they were working or on pay leave. The occupational dummy being positively significant in the remittances equation implying that labourers engaged in profession which remained non-functional during lockdown faced greater difficulty in sending remittances compared with profession which was operational during the lockdown period.

Sayeh and Chami (2020) pointed out that migrant labourers who lose their job are likely to decrease remittances to their families back home. The estimated results of equation (4) With coronavirus being more than a health crisis, in short term it is necessary to minimise the loss of life, forwarding social and financial security for the families of migrant labourers and vulnerable sections for extended period of crisis, strategies for supporting agriculture and allied activities, promotion of small and medium-size enterprises, imparting skill training for the unemployed and reverse migrant labourers, financial assistance for self-employment may be helpful.

Suitable coordination of monetary and fiscal policy would be helpful for reducing the unemployment heading from the recessionary trend of the economy in the long run. 

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Pradyut Guha is associated with teaching since 2003. He got nomination for UNCTAD-India Doctoral Fellowship (2008 -2010