Mobility has always been an integral and innate part of most of the life on the earth, especially for humans. We’ve often witnessed progressive and distress migration across the globe until now. But Covid-19 has brought a remarkable shift in human migration, in turn impacting almost every aspect of our lives at micro and macro levels.
While observing the trends, I personally still feel that it’s too early to draw conclusions and determine the shape of current migration. Yet, emerging trends which are in turn helping set the tone can not be ignored. Let’s have a look at how this current churning is fashioning our lives.
Decentralized urbanization and development – ‘Back to origin’ – Whether helplessly, vulnerably or willingly, we are noticing a reverse migration trend due to loss of livelihood, feeling of insecurity, inability to survive and cope-up etc. This is a known fact for sure. Nature of this reverse migration, temporary or permanent, is yet to be defined. Nature will take its own course.
But this will have impact in following ways -
- Shortage of skilled and semi-skilled labourers in high to moderately urbanized areas.
- Which in turn sees, availability of skilled workforce in rural/semi-urbanized areas, which until very recent times has faced the shortage of labourers impacting the economy. This might be seen contributing to -
- a. Rise of multiple decentralized zones/units of development spread and distributed across, compared to earlier highly centralized development concentrated in few pockets of the nation and the world.
- b. Which further decreases the immense pressure the metros have faced until now and were on the verge of being dead.
- Hence in any case, urban or rural, spaces-places might have a chance to breathe! What’s more interesting would be to watch how this balances decentralization and globalization and keep setting the equilibrium.
- - Self-sustainability – Mobile or immobile we’ll always strive to survive in changing contexts. Self-sufficiency, self-sustainability, self-reliability would dictate the norms everywhere, from economy to culture, from highly urbanized to rural, all walks of life. Comparative shortage of labourers in highly urbanized areas, would facilitate acquiring ‘now new’ but ‘then traditional’ skills to urban populations to become self-reliable. Use of technology and social media might help this become a ‘new emerging’ trend. Socially and culturally this would also help decrease the inequality in all spheres, be it a man cooking and serving or a woman plumbing or in the absence of house-help, we completing our daily chores. Who knows, the human race might become more aware and more sensitive!
- Semi-urban, rural areas might witness many shifts too. Ample availability of skilled labourers might help generate more businesses there, depending upon the availability of all sorts of other resources like financial, natural etc. Reverse migrant would also shape
the consumption patterns in these areas leading to emergence of new potential untapped markets for the budding businesses to tap. Huge chunks of populations or human resources which have been behind closed doors until now would aspire to acquiring new emerging skills, go out, work and mingle, in turn shaping the new socio-economic order. In short, depending upon the availability of resources and needs, produce-manufacture the goods & services and consume them locally or globally. Decentralization in its crudest form!
However, the picture is not as rosy and bright as it might appear. This might be an after-Covid scenario. But right now we’ve, we’re and we’ll be paying huge costs in any scenario, in terms of loss of lives due to various reasons, seriously deep and huge psycho-socio-economic and political implications such as unsafe, irregular and disorderly migration, seizing of borders and so on, owing to simple to complex mobility of labourers, the engine of economy.
In all these, how we take stock of all sorts of resources, how efficiently we utilize them is up to us to plan, implement and watch. Further due course of time would unleash and reveal the picture more. Otherwise, nature has already shown its own unique way of maintaining the equilibrium which the upcoming ages would never forget!
- Tejashree Mokashi April 10, 2020
