Purulia, West Bengal: “There has been a long history of migration from Purulia, where people would migrate four times a year,” explains Anuradha Talwar from the West Bengal-based Paschim Banga Khet Majoor Samity (PBKMS), an apolitical trade union of agricultural labourers, marginal farmers and share croppers. “I remember one incident from a public hearing in early 2000 where a domestic worker was paid bags of puffed rice as wages.”Purulia is drought-prone, has undulating topography, and erratic rainfall. The southwest monsoon is the primary source of rainfall. While the average annual rainfall varies between 1,100 and 1,500 mm, about 60% of the district’s rainfall occurs in a fortnight. Temperatures cross 48oC in summers.Agriculture is rainfed, and poor fertility and lack of irrigation facilities means nearly half the area under cultivation is under a single crop. The high degree of erosion and excessive run-off mean that Purulia has lost nearly 20% of topsoil.Monsoons consist of active and break periods, and there is normal rainfall in the interim, explains Subimal Ghosh, professor at the Department of Civil Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (IIT Bombay). Now, “the rainfall has increased during the active period with very long break periods,” Ghosh says. “So in essence, monsoon has become very irregular here. So rainfed agriculture has been massively affected. Irrigation is a major challenge in an area like Purulia, and over-irrigation can lead to groundwater table depletion. Also, there is no proper mechanism to monitor soil moisture which further adds to the problem.”Research suggests that without interventions, the district’s average ground water level is likely to drop by 2.5 meters by 2030.A 2025 paper in the International Journal of Environmental and Ecology Research shows that recurrent droughts have pushed people to opt for seasonal migration to cope with livelihood distress.Changing climate has only made things worse. Every four to five years, the monsoon rainfall is “not sufficient to support the growth and yield of kharif paddy, the main crop of the district”, a 2020-21 disaster management plan noted. Projections show that the district is set to see at least two additional ‘very high intensity’ rainfall events annually in the next 25 years. The district is also likely to be hotter by 1.5oC as compared to the period between 1990-2019 in a high emission scenario.This was also one of the first districts where the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) was implemented. Work under the rural jobs programme kept residents home, but Talwar says, things started changing by 2014-15 when people were migrating out in large numbers. A spurt during the Covid-19 pandemic was followed by MGNREGA work coming to a halt in 2021.As West Bengal votes for a new state government, IndiaSpend met over a dozen families in Hura, Manbajar and Puncha blocks in Purulia district to understand the impact of the agricultural crisis and the outmigration on families and communities.Some spoke about the lack of agricultural lands, difficulties with mono-cropping, the extreme rainfall devastating the crops last year, and how some of their MGNREGA wages were still pending from 2021. The Union government told Rajya Sabha in December 2025, before it brought in a new nationwide programme replacing MGNREGA, that it owed the state government over Rs 3,000 crore in pending liabilities, and was “reworking and refining the necessary modalities and procedures” to restart work under the programme in the state.The West Bengal government rolled out Karmashree to provide 50 days of work to rural households. While reports suggest over 9 million job card holders had received work via this scheme, grassroots activists that IndiaSpend spoke to in Purulia said there was no work available for people under the scheme.“When we approached the BDO (block development office), there was no information on Karmashree,” said Prem Chand Maity, a grassroots activist working with PBKMS. “We have tried in several blocks, but have been unable to help people get work under Karmashree. The idea was that Karmashree would help with distress migration. Now with no work under either MGNREGA or Karmashree, people have no option but to rely on poor wages here or migrate out.” Maity added that contractors received work under the programme through gram panchayat, but not job card holders.IndiaSpend reached out to the panchayats and rural development department for comment. We will update this story when we receive a response.A government official, on condition of anonymity, said that while the idea is to see that contractors employ as many job card holders as possible, some works demand other forms of skilled labour, necessitating the engagement of those without job cards.Put together, this means failing agriculture and limited work are pushing entire families from Purulia to migrate for work.Umi Daniel, director, migration and education at the non-profit Aide et Action International observes that when it comes to distress migration, migrant workers remain largely unskilled which leaves them with no fallback option. “Migration becomes a survival strategy where people go to urban areas and come back during the next agricultural season or when there are any festivals at home. Migration does not really give them better opportunities—they do manual labour and are paid less wages,” says Daniel.“One must also remember that migration, especially for the first time, is expensive, and that not all rural migrant workers can make a living in urban areas. It is true that the climate crisis is pushing people towards distress migration, especially in a rainfed area like Purulia,” adds Daniel.Those who leavePasupati Majhi, 35, has been working in Goa doing centering work in construction for the past three years. For 14 years, he has lived and worked in Mumbai, Pune, Nagpur and Vijayawada.“Who will give you a job if you have not studied? I feel emotional thinking what will happen if I cannot provide for my family,” says Majhi, breaking down. “In the years I have been away, I have never been able to tell my wife or mother about the difficulties I face there. I always suppress my emotions. Nobody really knows how precarious our lives are.” His train of thought is interrupted by his five-year-old son; he wants to play with Majhi’s smartphone.There are days he is fed up with the long hours of work. He makes Rs 750 per shift, and often works overtime to earn more. On other days, he is exasperated with the food the contractor provides. Majhi has studied till grade III. “My father abandoned us and I could not study. I wish someone would give me some job even though I have not attended school,” says Majhi. Purulia has a literacy rate at 65% as compared to the state average of 76%.“Nobody really knows how precarious our lives are,” says Pasupati Majhi of West Bengal’s Purulia. He’s worked 14 years in Mumbai, Pune, Nagpur, Vijayawada and Goa. Photo : Ritwika MitraHe tries to visit home when there are celebrations or if there are any family emergencies. A 2024 paper in the International Journal of Humanities Social Science and Management found that around 34% of migrant workers visit their families every six months, and around 28.4% every three months.Majhi dreads the long hours he has to spend in the train—the journey takes almost 40 hours to reach from Goa to Kharagpur from where it takes another four or five hours to reach his village, Ramaidi in Puncha block. “It is so difficult to travel the way we do in sleeper class for such long hours. My whole body aches—the seats are so uncomfortable. Plus, I have to keep buying food and water. It is expensive to travel back home,” says Majhi.“But I must say we all stay like a family there,” he adds.Pijush Bauri also planned to return from his work waterproofing in Surat, for the state election, but had to advance his visit. The lack of access to cooking gas cylinders and higher priced refills in the illegal market meant he could no longer afford it. He returned in early April with 21 others. “The cylinder price became Rs 3,500 (for a 15kg cylinder), and the contractor also failed to provide firewood for us,” he says at his home in Gundlubari village.Back in Surat, he earned about Rs 14,000 a month. His wife Shipra speaks of the time they eloped to get married eight years ago. Soon, they headed to Bengaluru to work in a factory which produced disposable areca leaf plates and bowls. Together, they made Rs 35,000 a month. In four months, they returned with enough to hold a feast in their villages to celebrate their wedding.These days, Shipra struggles to take care of her son by herself. Pijush and his parents migrate seasonally for work, the latter in a brick kiln in Asansol. Her mother-in-law Kamala was at home to tend to her sick grandson the day IndiaSpend visited their house, but returned soon to Asansol.The family has a small patch of land where they cultivate paddy, but the yield is low and untimely rains lead to crop damage. So, members of the family have been migrating for work for two decades now.For 35-year-old Sunil Sahish who lives in Jabbra village in Hura block with his wife, and two young daughters, the livelihood crisis is steep after he underwent hydrocele surgery. Earlier, he had worked in Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, and other parts of West Bengal. When he started feeling unwell around December, he returned home.“The surgery around two months back at a private hospital cost me around Rs 50,000,” Sahish says. “We now have a debt of Rs 30,000, and I cannot go back to lifting heavy objects for at least another three months.”The family has no land for agriculture. When Sahish would work away in the city of Kolkata or other metropolitan cities, he would manage to earn at least Rs 12,000. Now his wife works as a daily wage labourer for a day rate of Rs 250 in the village for around eight hours. The number of days they would eat non vegetarian food has reduced, and so has the pocket money they could give their daughters when they would ask to buy biscuits.For 35-year-old Sunil Sahish and his family, the livelihood crisis is steep after he underwent hydrocele surgery. His house was destroyed in the rains. Photo : Ritwika MitraSahish says the trend of migration has changed over the years. “Earlier, we would go in big groups to one place. These days, the contractors have our phone numbers. They call us and mostly, we reach the place independently.”Research shows that in the process of out-migration in Purulia district, agents help in 53% cases, and friends in 19%, suggesting that personal networks still continue to be important to secure employment.When asked how difficult it was for the young children to be without their father, the couple says they have no alternative “Are there any options in households like ours?” asks Sahish.The lives of those left behind in villagesIn Bhutam village in Pulcha block, Kanika Mahato, 33, waits for the couple of days her husband Badal Chandra heads back home every month. On average, he makes Rs 12,000-Rs 14,000 in Jharkhand’s Bokaro where he sorts metals, cuts large metals into smaller pieces, and then loads the material for transportation. Badal returns during the paddy season to work on the three bigha land that he owns. “But with no means of irrigation, we have to rely on the rains which are untimely these days. So it is difficult to rely on agriculture,” Badal tells IndiaSpend over the phone.For Kanika, however, most of the time is spent worrying about her husband who is away and anticipating emergencies at home. “I keep thinking of emergency situations like my children falling sick in the middle of the night—who would I call?” asks Kanika, who has a son in grade V and a daughter in grade IX.For 33-year-old Kanika Mahato, most days are lonely without her husband in her village Bhutam in Purulia district. She dreads the possibility of a health emergency for her children.Divya Balan, assistant professor of International Studies at the Pune-based FLAME University, says migration is changing the family dynamics with caregiving goals and financial responsibilities getting reorganised within the family unit.“In cases where men are migrating out, women are dealing with a lot of emotional stressors—there are persisting feelings of loneliness. In prolonged separation where the spouses can visit once a year, the social cost of migration is even more with trust deficit also stemming in the separation. Children also tend to get detached from their fathers in some cases when they are outside home for prolonged periods. Despite the social cost of migration, there are no targeted policies for the welfare of families of migrant workers,” says Balan.Adouri Baski, an Adivasi woman in her late 50s, lives in Shamukgarya village. She constructed a small dwelling with a tarpaulin roof outside the village. There is no electricity—she manages with a battery-operated lamp and a solar lamp. Two months ago, forest officials demolished the dwelling citing encroachment. She now lives in a makeshift shelter.Baski works on others’ lands for a daily wage rate of Rs 250. She manages to get work sometimes for 10 days in a month, and sometimes for 20. “But work days are fewer now,” she says. “Machines are being used for harvesting paddy. Both my sons are now quite tense, they know we have to construct a house somewhere. They worry I am living like this.”Baski says her sons work in ‘Bombay and Chennai’. A neighbour corrects her gently: Her elder son works somewhere in Maharashtra, and the younger one in Bardhaman (in West Bengal). She says she does not know much but is in touch with them over calls.Calls are also how the Mahato children see their father. “We video-call him from time to time. My children miss him but they are busy with school and tuition. But I feel lonely. I feel the pain of having to shoulder everything by myself. I also keep worrying about my husband’s difficult work conditions,” says Kanika.This article first appeared in IndiaSpend. Read the original article.