Revision summary
Interstate migrants in informal work are hired through contractors, not stable contracts. Wage theft, unsafe housing, and missing social security are the core problems. Women and children carry extra risks of harassment and lost schooling. COVID reverse migration exposed their civic invisibility. Portability laws and e-SHRAM are incomplete answers to a structural informality.
Model answer
Introduction
Most Indian migrants who cross state lines to work do not enter a factory with a standing order. They enter informal sectors: construction, brick kilns, garments, domestic work, street vending, and now platforms. Their problems are legal invisibility plus social distance in the host state.
Body
The usual injuries
Contractors mediate hiring; the principal employer denies the relation. Wage theft, delayed payment, and piece-rates below minimum wage are routine. Housing is a jhuggi, a night shelter, or a site shed—no tenancy right. Health is out-of-pocket; accidents in construction are frequent; ESI rarely follows the worker. Documents—ration card, voter ID, e-SHRAM, One Nation One Ration—do not travel smoothly, so PDS and school admission break. Women face sexual harassment and unpaid care; children miss school or work. Language and caste isolation block unions. During COVID-19, reverse migration showed that the city would use their labour and not keep their bodies.
The Interstate Migrant Workmen Act, 1979 was weakly enforced. BOCW cess boards are state-bound. Labour codes promise portability; practice is still the munshi’s notebook. Jan Breman’s footloose labour remains the right phrase: circular, indebted, and replaceable.
Host states want labour, not citizens. Sending states want remittances, not political anger. Migrants fall between. Occupational safety is a sociological fact: heat, dust, falling from slabs, and pesticide exposure in destination farms. Unionisation is hard because the worksite dissolves when the building is finished. During elections they are a vote in the village and a non-person in the city. Platform workers add a new informal layer without solving housing or PDS.
A just response would be portable social security, landlord-employer liability, and the right to stay. Until then, “problems of labour migrants” are the normal operating system of Indian informal capitalism.
Flow diagram
flowchart TD S[Sending household] --> C[Contractor] C --> I[Informal worksite] I --> W[Wage and housing risk] I --> D[Documents do not port]
Conclusion
Informal migrant labour faces wage theft, bad housing, broken social security, gendered risk, and civic non-recognition. Law exists on paper; the contractor and the disaster reveal the social fact.
Quick related
Students also ask
-
Do you think that law has been able to abolish child labour in India? Comment.
Next question in the 2025 paper (Q5). View answer →
-
Are all migrants informal?
No. IT and formal transfers exist. The majority of manual interstate movers are informal.
-
Does e-SHRAM solve this?
It is a registry. Without enforceable wages, housing and portable rations, a number is not a right.
PYQ trend
When UPSC asked this
Related PYQs from other years, newest first. Open a question to read it.
-
2025 · Q8(c) · Sociology GS 2 · 10 marks
What are the Indian government's schemes launched for poverty alleviation after the United Nation's Declaration of 'Sustainable Development Goals - 2015' ? Briefly describe -
2024 · Q5(b) · Sociology GS 2 · 10 marks
Is there a connection between labour migration and informal sector? Justify your answer with reference to Indian context. -
2024 · Q5(d) · Sociology GS 2 · 10 marks
Discuss the changing nature of political elites in India. -
2023 · Q4(c) · Sociology GS 2 · 10 marks
Critique the victory narratives of Green Revolution in the context of Indian society -
2023 · Q7(b) · Sociology GS 2 · 20 marks
What is 'reverse migration' ? Discuss its features, causes and consequences in India -
2022 · Q5(e) · Sociology GS 2 · 10 marks
What role do co-operatives plays in poverty alleviation in rural India ? -
2022 · Q6(a) · Sociology GS 2 · 20 marks
Examine whether rural bondage still continues to be a social reality. Give your argument . -
2021 · Q3(b) · Sociology GS 2 · 20 marks
Examine the factors responsible for the rural unrest in contemporary India
More from this paper
Q1(a) · UPSC Mains 2025 · Sociology GS 2 · 10 marks
'Textual perspective is important in understanding of Indian Social System.' Discuss.
Rural and Agrarian Social Structure
The textual perspective explains Indian society through Dharmashastra, epics and related canons. Ghurye and Dumont used that archive to theorise caste as a hierarchical whole. The approach is strong on civilisational categories and weak on labour, gender and local power. Srinivas’s field view and Desai’s Marxism correct the book without discarding it. Texts remain part of the social system because groups still quote them in law and ritual.
Q1(b) · UPSC Mains 2025 · Sociology GS 2 · 10 marks
Justify that the Indian traditions are modernizing. Also discuss its contributing factors.
Perspectives on the study of Indian society
Yogendra Singh treats modernization of Indian tradition as internal and external change together. Sanskritization, westernization and the Rudolphs’ modernity of tradition describe recasting, not simple death. Law, education, media, the developmental state and the post-1991 market are the main levers. Caste, household and religion persist in new organisational forms. Unevenness remains: mobility in class can coexist with control in marriage.
Q1(c) · UPSC Mains 2025 · Sociology GS 2 · 10 marks
According to you, which social reform movement has played the most effective role in uplifting the status of women? Explain.
Social Movements in Modern India
The most effective women’s social reform is the Phule–Ambedkar anti-caste line, not only bhadralok campaigns. It tied girls’ education, a critique of endogamy, and constitutional legal personhood. Sati abolition and widow remarriage opened the public question but had a narrower class-caste base. Hindu Code, later feminist litigation and Shah Bano debates inherit that citizenship frame. Patriarchy continues; effectiveness means a changed legal and educational grammar, not a finished utopia.
Toppers' copies
Toppers' copies for this question will be uploaded soon.