Struggling to find work under MGNREGS, Bihar migrants head back to cities

The countrywide lockdown imposed on March 24 to contain the spread of Covid-19 resulted in large-scale job losses in both the formal and informal sectors

Balmiki Kumar’s previous and current jobs are vastly different. For five years, Kumar, 33, taught geography at a private school in Hilsa, a town in central Bihar’s Nalanda district. He now works as a plantation labourer under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS). That, however, is not the only difference. In his earlier job, he got paid.

“The school shut after the lockdown in March and I lost my job,” Kumar told IndiaSpend on a recent October day in his village of Balrampur, 5 km from Hilsa.

The countrywide lockdown imposed on March 24 to contain the spread of