Passage to India: Migration as a coping strategy in times of crisis in Nepal
Coping through migration
Migration outward is not a new phenomenon for Nepal. The country has witnessed a steady trend of eastward migration since as far back as the 18th century, when the Shah rulers encouraged farmers to move to more fertile and less densely populated areas of eastern Nepal and parts of present-day Darjeeling, Sikkim and Bhutan. By the end of the century, tea was being cultivated on 45,000 acres of Darjeeling territory by British civil servants profiting from the sweat and labour being poured into tea gardens, road construction and road maintenance; more than 90 percent of the workers came from Nepal. The colonial presence in India also resulted in the recruitment of Nepali men into Gurkha regiments of the British Indian Army. Over the centuries, Nepal's open border relationship with India endured despite brief hiatuses. In 1950, a Nepal-India Peace and Friendship Treaty was signed, which has afforded citizens of both countries the right to unhindered passage across the over 1400 km-long border, as well as equal employment rights in the other country.
By virtue of its proximity, the open border, established networks and relatively low migratory costs, around 40 percent of Nepali migrants end up in India, especially people from poor, food-insecure areas in the rural hinterland. While India is often the first and 'cheapest' destination for work, internal migration within Nepal also accounts for 30 percent of migration flow, and labour movements to destinations further away – in West Asia and South East Asia, for instance – is on the rise for those with the resources.
For those living in the Far- and Mid-Western hill and mountain regions, migration has evolved as a seasonal coping strategy, and is also a common livelihood approach for poor communities in the southern Tarai plains. In these areas, migration is intricately linked to the cropping calendar, with in-migration and out-migration coinciding with the beginning and end of the sowing and harvesting operations. These links are so intertwined that an old saying in the Mid-Western region of Jumla has it that "If a migrant does not return by the time of rice sowing and seed-bed preparation, he may as well be dead." But despite its gradual systematisation, migration was initially a transitional coping mechanism to deal with the vagaries of weather, natural disasters, man-made calamities, and lack of alternative economic opportunities among these food-insecure communities. It was not meant to be a permanent solution.