Published Paper Details:

Odisha has been witnessing about seven lakh inter-state migratory workers working in the destination states under the process of liberalisation and industrialisation. Inter-state migration is nothing new, but it has risen as a crucial issue recently after the hasty shutdown of the country. In the current scenario when COVID-19 is declared as epidemic in India, huge exodus at inter-state level is reached at its highest in Odisha with five lakh migrants returning to their parent/original state till June 2020. Huge inter-state migration has been triggering amid lockdown due to the anticipation of job loss, destabilisation of economies and worsened food security, which is overblown in backward state like Odisha, largely dependent on a migrant workforce. Now, the life of migrants is full of insecurity and uncertainty from the perspective of economic, food, employment, psychological, and health factors. It poses key concern for Odisha in various ways such as in terms of employment, policies, economic and health matters. The present paper aimed to find out inter-state migration in Odisha amid epidemic and shutdown and how our state, political leaders, planners and policy makers are concerned and prepared to look at the issue of great bulk of the amorphous informal workforce with gravity amid lockdown and the study is an effort of searching for certain measures to sort-out this issue.