Multidimensional poverty among migrants during COVID-19: A case study of rural households in Samastipur district of Bihar, India

Abstract

Sudden outbreak of COVID-19 forced the government to announce country wide lockdown and the migrant workers in urban area found themselves jobless. With no source of income, the urban cost of living could not be afforded. This triggered the mass exodus also termed as, reverse migration. Migrants returned back to their native villages only to face hostile situation with limited or no options for sustainable livelihood and they were pushed to situation of abject poverty. The current study was undertaken to capture the experiences of the returnee migrants in the rural areas of Samastipur district of Bihar. 400 migrant households in eight blocks of Samastipur district were included in the survey. The main objective was to develop a deeper insight of the precarious situation they were in with respect to their impoverishment as a consequence of the reduced income due to joblessness. Multidimensional poverty index has been constructed for the poverty stricken migrant population during COVID-19 to understand the deprivations they are facing along various dimensions. The results showed that all the participants of the survey are MPI poor as they suffered deprivation in at least a third of the indicators. The deprivation in nutrition is the most important factor contributing towards overall poverty. Education is the next important contributing factor followed by the indicator asset under living standard dimension.