Education
Strategy
Children of Seasonal Migrants
Around November every year, millions of families all over rural India start preparing to migrate out of their villages in search of a livelihood that will help them survive for the following months, till the next monsoon. Most seasonal migrants live in rain-fed arid and semi-arid parts of the country where their livelihoods are dependent upon the monsoon, and there is no work available after the harvest of the monsoon crop.
Distress seasonal migration happens for a wide range of occupations. Rural migration is typically for agricultural work in irrigated areas, to agro - industries like sugar cane harvesting to feed sugar factories, and to other industries like salt manufacturing, brick making, charcoal making, fisheries, stone quarries, etc. Urban migration is for construction, and various kinds of unskilled labor in the informal sector.
A significant number of seasonal migrants take their children along, which leads to their dropping out of schools and absorption in hazardous labor at work sites. The children never manage to re-enroll, especially if the migration is repeated year after year. No data is available, but indications are that in each migration prone region, the numbers of such children range between tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands. According to an informal estimate, about 4 million children must be out-of-school due to seasonal / circular migration in the country today. In most cases, the names of these children will be found on the school rolls, but the children are not in the schools, nor are their names deleted after they migrate, thus creating a false impression that they are all actually going to school. Clearly, unless the education system gears up to meet their needs, it will be difficult for India to achieve universalisation.