Internal Reverse Migration in India Amid COVID-19 Pandemic: Linking up Human Capital with Natural Capital

In India, the nationwide lockdown imposed in retort to the COVID-19 pandemic has been recognized as a successful preventive tactic. However, a troubling by-product has been migrant workers reverse migrating in large numbers from destination centers on account of job losses and a lack of an operative social security structure. The pandemic has brought to the fore not just the immediate concerns of this mainly susceptible population of migrants but also the bigger challenges of their livelihood and working conditions in the informal sector. In this backdrop, the study has estimated the probability of occurrence of reverse migration by making use of a probit model based on factors, primarily, GDP growth, unemployment figures (%), share of urban population (%) and percentage of COVID-19 affected which have triggered such reverse migration movements in the six-month period (March 2020–August 2020) across states in India. The study goes on to analyze the concerns of feasibility of public policies in this regard based on these trigger factors. It puts some general comments on the Neo-Malthusian aspect of this reverse migration process and the sustainability issues thereof taking into consideration the pressure on the rural ecosystem in terms of ecosystem’s potential capacity of resource supply to support human consumption. In case the ecological footprint exceeds bio-capacity, which is expected to widen after such reverse internal migration movements, this COVID-19 fallout will lead to a heavy loss of biotic resources.