ABSTRACT
While there is a vast body of literature on the socio-economic and demographic characteristics of internal migrants in India, there is little understanding about their participation in elections and politics. According to various estimates, India has over 300 million internal migrants, who account for more than one-thirds of its population of 1.3 billion. While much of this migration is permanent, a very substantial portion of it is temporary, short-term. It is this segment of short-term migrants that faces relatively greater legal and political barriers in exercising their voting rights. However, there are few systematic studies to inform our understanding of migrant political participation, since migration is a flow concept and providing accurate empirical estimates of its impact on election outcomes has been an intellectually challenging exercise. Extending analytical insights from Myron Weiner’s classic work on the social and the political ramifications of India’s inter-ethnic migration, this chapter underscores the paradox that while migration is guaranteed as a fundamental right by the Indian Constitution, migrants are denied the right to vote and participate in the electoral process. In other words, the right to migrate within constitutional provisions remains largely unrealized for a vast section of India’s migrant population. Drawing on the 2001 Census D-series data on internal migration and various other secondary and ethnographic sources, the chapter also fills a major gap in the study of migrant politics by providing suggestive evidence of a vast democratic deficit among India’s internal migrants.
