Relevance: GS-1 (Society), GS-2 (Governance, Citizenship, Welfare Delivery) • Source: The Hindu

Context

India is experiencing rising internal migration for work, education and mobility, while simultaneously managing a large diaspora overseas. Governance systems—designed around fixed residency—are struggling to ensure voting rights, welfare access, and urban service delivery for a mobile population.

How Migration Disrupts Rights, Representation and Governance

1. Weakening of Electoral and Civic Rights

Migration alters the traditional link between citizenship, territory, and political rights.

• Frequent movement leads to inaccurate electoral rolls, duplicate entries, and missing voters.
• The Election Commission’s Special Intensive Revision (SIR) aims to fix this but faces scale and verification challenges.
• Circular migrants often remain registered in their “home” constituency, leaving them politically invisible in the cities where they live and work.
• High-migration States (Kerala, Bihar, U.P.) and destinations (Delhi, Maharashtra) face representation distortions, likely to be highlighted in Census 2027 and future delimitation.

2. Public Service Delivery Gaps for Mobile Populations

Most welfare schemes still assume residency-based access, causing systematic exclusion:

• Lack of address proof restricts access to schools, health care, rental housing and social security.
• Despite One Nation One Ration Card, portability remains uneven due to authentication failures and inter-State coordination gaps.
• Migrant women face heightened barriers to reproductive health, safety and nutrition services.
• Migrant workers in informal jobs (≈ 90% of the workforce) lack consistent protection, insurance and grievance mechanisms.

Migration thereby produces new inequalities created not by poverty alone but by mobility itself.

3. Stress on Urban Governance and Rural Economies

Migration reshapes State capacity at both ends:

• Cities struggle with overcrowded informal settlements, sanitation pressure, limited water supply, and poorly funded local bodies.
• Rural sending areas face labour shortages, declining agricultural productivity, and disruptions in schooling and community networks.
• Urban local bodies lack resources and mandates to manage “floating populations,” leading to governance blind spots.

Way Forward: Towards a Mobility-Responsive State

• Portability of Welfare Rights: Integrate PDS, health, pensions, ICDS and scholarships through digital identity and inter-State agreements.
• Electoral Reforms: Implement remote voting systems, improve SIR quality, and ensure fair representation in migrant-dense regions.
• Strengthen Urban Local Bodies: Enhance fiscal transfers, create Migrant Support Centres, develop affordable rental housing and upgrade basic services.
• Universal and Portable Social Protection: Create unique worker IDs and portable benefits across States, aligned with labour codes.
• Evidence-Based Planning: Use Census 2027, migration surveys and geospatial mapping to redesign public services around population flows.

Q. “Examine how large-scale migration challenges governance, political representation and public service delivery in India. Suggest key reforms for a mobility-responsive State.”