Building back better? Resilience as wellbeing for rural migrant households in Bihar, India

The crisis in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic has led to calls for ‘building back better’ and ‘resilient recovery’. In this article, we examine this agenda by asking what this might mean for one of the most marginalized social groups in India, namely, migrant workers from Scheduled Tribe or Adivasi communities in the eastern state of Bihar. It draws on intensive mixed-methods research undertaken over a nearly-two-year period between March 2019 and January 2021 in four villages in south Bihar. The article argues that the attention to social structures of power and subjectivities makes ‘equitable resilience’ a more robust idea of resilience. At the same time, in the context of Adivasi migrants in India who constantly suffer multiple oppressions, even equitable resilience must be seen in conversation with the idea of relational wellbeing since they need a radical improvement of life chances and not just mechanisms to deal with isolated shocks. The article develops a basic framework to put these ideas in conversation with each other and offers an empirical analysis of the material, relational and subjective dimensions of wellbeing, or their absence, of the migrants and their households. In addition, it outlines the cross-scalar socio-economic, ecological and political dynamics and temporal considerations that frame their life and livelihood outcomes. The article concludes by asserting the need to attend to the political content of ideas of resilience and wellbeing and to grapple with structural conditions of inequality. Only when policies and programmes are guided by these considerations can they be expected to lead to lasting change.