ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the dynamic of how poverty is reproduced among labour migrants through the interplay between labour migration, development, and power in rural Telangana, Andhra Pradesh. It discusses the enlarged spaces of negotiations and claims for independence of Madiga labourers, fostered by the changing labour relations, do not transform into bargaining power, but into renewed forms of dependence on political musclemen and into an extra burden and workload in order to gain access to development resources. The chapter looks at how the articulations and complementarities between the multiple forms of migration and the modes of control and redistribution of resources reformulate poverty and micro-hierarchies within and between caste and family. It also examines how the multiple but coexistent forms of labour migration push labourers back to the village in search of multiple and temporary forms of protection/dependence. The changing Palamur debt-bondage system is a powerful means of tying labour through debt and migration.
