Short and long-term impacts of the lockdown on young rural migrants from Bihar and Jharkhand

India’s national COVID-19 lockdown has had a tremendous effect on the economy. Labour migrants are among the most affected, usually employed in informal, low-paid jobs, many of them are now without work with no social protection, no assistance from previous employers, and no network to fall back to in their 'host’ states.

This project will provide unique evidence on the short and long-term impacts of the lockdown on labour migrants. The study will focus on trainees who were part of “Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Grameen Kaushal Yojana” (DDU-GKY), one of India’s most prominent skills and job creation schemes. The DDU-GKY programme offers training to rural poor youth as well as placement opportunities, often in urban centres outside of their own states. The researchers have been working for three years with state agencies in charge of DDU-GKY—the BRLPS in Bihar, the JSLPS in Jharkhand, and the central government’s MORD. Building on our long-term relationship with government partners, we will share the results of the study with state and national governments, with the goal of co-developing interventions that support migrants and help them re-integrate the labour market.

For the purpose of a recently completed Randomised Control Trial (RCT), 2600 DDU-GKY trainees were surveyed first as they enrolled in the programme, and then surveyed again three times as they continued the training and were placed. We conducted the last round of survey between February and April, three and five months after training completion. This project will take the form of two additional follow-up survey rounds with the RCT sample of 2,600 young rural migrants from Bihar and Jharkhand.

We will also carry out a complementary survey of the firms in which DDUGKY trainees were placed to assess the employment prospects from the firm side.