Intra-country remittances data

The biggest disruption the lockdown inflicted was on incomes of migrant workers, millions of whom were forced to return to their homes in the countryside. A disruption to the migrant-worker economy entails a double whammy for the economy, because their incomes are crucial drivers of consumption in both their place of work as well as their villages and home towns. The latter is on account of remittances. It is an important determinant of consumption in states that send a lot of migrant workers out. For example, a 2018 World Bank paper by Gaurav Nayyar and Kyoung Yang Kim found that migrant remittances had a share of 35% in Bihar’s gross state domestic product (GSDP) and positively affected consumption at the household level. Thanks to what can be termed a digital revolution in the financial sector, many blue-collar workers use formal channels to send money back home. Suitable filters can be applied to build some sort of a database to capture this movement. This can help a lot in connecting the dots between the economic fortunes of urban clusters and migrant exporting regions.

STATE-WISE SHARE IN MIGRANT WORKERS IN INDIA

Figures in %

Uttar Pradesh

Bihar Rajasthan West Bengal Madhya Pradesh

Tamil Nadu Maharashtra

Karnataka Andhra Pradesh

Odisha Jharkhand

Kerala Haryana Punjab Gujarat NCT of Delhi Uttarakhand

Assam Chhattisgarh Himachal Pradesh

5.3 4.7 4.3 3.8 3.7 3.4 3.4

3.1

2.7

2.5

2.5

2.3

2.0

2.0

1.8

1.3

1.2

0.9