Kandhamal was once one of India’s most underdeveloped districts. It still ranks 29th out of Odisha’s 30 districts on the state’s Human Development Index. However, the symptoms of abysmal poverty that previously characterized its villages—children dying of starvation, tribal moms exchanging kidneys for food, houses that are one rain away from destruction—are gradually vanishing.

The house we are interested in has about 20 rooms distributed evenly along a long corridor. The walls, however, aren’t symmetrical. They appear slanted from certain angles. There’s a reason why. No professional developer or architect was engaged. It is being assembled by Nimindra Pradhan, a farmer turned migrant worker, whose life far away from home made him rather prosperous.

Pradhan has already finished doing the walls, the rooms and the roof himself to cut labour costs, relying on the skills he picked up as a migrant construction worker in Kerala. He has spent over ₹27 lakh already. Switchboards, plywood, windows, glass, and other materials needed to complete the construction have been purchased.

“I always wanted a big house. I want my children, as well as my nieces and nephews, to experience living in a large house. Even if we stop migrating, we will have this until the end of time,” Pradhan says. “There’s no point in having money if it’s useless to you. What’s the point of keeping money in the bank?” Pradhan asks.

Well, the house will also give him bragging rights—he can tell villagers his story, his transformation from a humble dhoti-clad farmer living in a hut to the owner of a spacious property.

This transformation underlines the impact of domestic remittances—every rupee used in the purchase of materials and construction in Pradhan’s case has come from remittances.

India’s labour market has ‘supplier’ states, or states with abundant supply of labour. For instance, Odisha, Bihar, West Bengal and Uttar Pradesh. Labour from these states often migrate to states where there is demand for jobs, like in south India. The supplier states can’t absorb their labour because there aren’t enough businesses. Industrial activity in Kandhamal, for instance, is modest and generates very few jobs. Farm employment is increasingly considered as unsustainable because it is seasonal and pays very little. Non-farm labour is scarce, unless it is obtained through public job-generating programmes. Many skilled and unskilled people make their way to Kerala.

The state’s plantation workers are now primarily tribal couples from Jharkhand and Chattisgarh. Fishermen from the Sundarbans in West Bengal come to Beypore, a fishing hub in Kozhikode district. In the suburbs of Kochi, Kerala’s economic capital, carpenters are from Uttar Pradesh, while labour for the wood industry and restaurants come from Odisha.

In 2017-18, the Kerala State Planning Board, an advisory board under the state government, estimated that Kerala had 3.1 million migrant labourers from northern and eastern states such as Odisha. By 2030, migrant workers will number 5 million. According to the Kerala-based Centre for Migration and Inclusive Development, an organization that studies migration, migrants send home at least ₹20,000 crore every year.

This remittance money is constructing a new world, rewriting narratives, and weaving dreams into reality—back in the ‘supplier’ states. Just like Pradhan’s, money sent home by migrants has shored up the finances of many other families. Several neighbourhoods in the state are seeing a wave of change. Houses with asbestos roofs and mud walls are being rebuilt with concrete. People are spending on white goods and bikes, reflective of rising aspirations. This, by extension, is good news for all companies trying to sell in rural India, from auto makers to fast-moving consumer goods firms.

Style and the city

Daringbadi, a hill town in Kandhamal district, is known as Odisha’s Kashmir—it can get very chilly during the winters. The place is home to over 100,000 people, 85% of whom live below the poverty line. For years, they largely relied on subsistence cultivation. That seems to be changing.

Mahesh Kumar Sahu, one of the town’s top cement suppliers, says there are more buildings being constructed than ever before. His annual earnings have grown to ₹5 crore in the last five years, from ₹50 lakh earlier. He has benefited from remittances.

The state government is chipping in with affordable housing programmes, but that would only cover a portion of the funds needed to complete development, Sahu says. Remittances fund the rest.

“Migration has changed this place. If you had visited us five years ago, you would not have seen anything of what you see today in this town,” Sahu tells this writer. “Every day, new buildings and houses are constructed. Daringbadi is a different town now.”

Not just bricks and mortar, the lifestyle of people has changed as well. Ask Chandrakanth Pradhan, a resident of Daringbadi and a migrant carpenter in Kerala’s Pala town, home to many Syrian Christian families.

Syrian Christians were among the first communities in Kerala to embrace a more western lifestyle and this reflects in the architecture of their houses. They entertain guests in living rooms. The dining rooms and kitchens are well separated from the bedrooms. There are attached toilets to each room. The floor-plan isn’t linear—the entrance and exit doors will almost never be aligned.

On the other hand, Daringbadi’s houses are often built in a straight line, with the front door aligned to the back door. The rooms are divided along a tunnel-like passageway. Many houses have toilets outside the main building.

The Palas enchanted Pradhan. So, he utilized remittance money to renovate his home into a Pala-style residence. The villagers were amused and his relatives chastised him on a daily basis. They were perplexed by the zigzag floor plan. They asked him, “How come it’s crooked?; How will the air get through?”

Travelling closer to the forested areas of Daringbadi block allows one to better understand the transformation. Many people share large domed huts in remote forest settlements, cultivating crops or grazing animals. They are less travelled. Unlike their counterparts in towns or the bigger villages, they lack the network and means to obtain jobs in other states. Roads, phone towers, and schools are few.

Holiday in Kashmir

An astounding number is at the heart of the story in Odisha’s Ganjam district: ₹140 crore. According to Gram Vikas, a non-governmental organization, this is the amount remitted to Ganjam every month.

As per its study, the money mostly comes from migrants who work in the textile hubs of Gujarat’s Surat and the industrial labour in central Kerala. The money has had a tremendous influence on even relatively modest places like Kalamba village in the district. As you move past the green fields and lanes, away from roaming cows, you notice a series of banks.

Sabhyasachi, an official at a State Bank of India (SBI) customer service point in Kalamba, informs that daily transactions at his office often cross ₹3 lakh, with withdrawals accounting for 70% of them, an unusually high number.

Like in Kandhamal, this influx of money is erecting sturdy roofs that protect against monsoon and storms; fund education for children in the family; help them eat better meals. Pamphlets advertising holiday travel packages are pasted in many places in the village. These packages include tours to Jammu and Kashmir, Uttarakhand, Haryana, Punjab, and Rajasthan. The cost of the packages range between ₹10,000 and ₹25,000, and many locals appear to be going, says Akshay Kumar Pradhan, a resident. His sons are migrant labourers. “I’ve gone twice, once to Vrindavan and the second time to Varanasi,” he adds with a smile. Both Vrindavan and Varanasi are holy towns located in Uttar Pradesh.

The village, he believes, is witnessing a certain competitiveness. “If someone is wearing a nice shirt, we wonder, why can’t I? Why can’t I have the nice bike you are riding? If you can go on tours, why can’t I?”

Taste of Parotta

One migration-driven transformation, and a heartening one, is that of local entrepreneurship. There is not enough of it today, but we did notice a few examples.

Two brothers, Anantha and Sumanta Baliarsingh, worked as restaurant cooks in Kerala. This inspired them to open their own restaurant at Daringbadi, three years ago. Called ‘Jihowa Taza Tawa Hotel’, it has a special item on the menu—the Kerala parotta, a flaky, layered bread made of refined wheat flour.

Their no-frills roadside restaurant initially drew a few curious onlookers, mostly, from women and children who had heard about the parotta from the migrant men in the households. Gradually, it gained in popularity. Some upper caste men in the village then created roadblocks. “We are Dalits. So, they were upset about us offering food and upper caste people in the village eating it,” Anantha explains.

But this was a temporary disruption, lasting only a few days. The eatery’s parotta had become so popular that villagers forced them to resume operations. The opposition was silenced.

Yet another tale of entrepreneurship, in the backdrop of large-scale migration, comes from Kerala. It is about operating a bus, covering a distance of more than 1,800km. That’s the approximate distance between Kandhamal district and Kerala’s Ernakulam.

Titto MJ started Excel Cabs, a 35-seater bus service, during the covid-19 lockdown, when migrants from central Kerala were looking for a reliable transport service to take them back home to Darringbadi. What began as a single trip has now expanded into a weekly bus service. It has also made life much easier for migrant workers. In places like Daringbadi, workers have to travel nearly 100km to the nearest railway station. With most of them carrying heavy luggage, the journey was difficult and expensive. On the other hand, Titto’s bus picks them up from their town.

Excel Cabs charges around ₹3,500 per person. Titto tried out a more expensive service—the roads wind through difficult terrain and sleeper seats would be comfortable, he thought. However, migrant workers didn’t take to it.

Cash & empathy

Meanwhile, migration watchers say Kerala is more empathetic to the cause of workers because of its own history—Malayalis associate the incoming migrant labour with their own exodus for years, most notably to the Gulf countries.

Every third Kerala house has a male working in the Gulf, according to a study by the Centre for Developmental Studies, a Kerala-based research institution. The combined remittances—from the Gulf and other countries—total more than ₹1 trillion each year and has shaped Kerala significantly. But, the ‘missing men’ phenomenon affected the state’s labour market. Given the state’s high education levels, many menial jobs go unfilled, and migrants fill the gap.

In short, the demand for labour and the steady supply of reliable workers from Odisha have now culturally bonded these states. The parotta making its appearance in Odisha and the Pala town’s influence in Daringbadi are just two examples.

Updated: 14 Aug 2023, 10:35 PM IST