Migration and Gender Relations in Rural Bastar

This chapter presents the dynamics of migration and gender relations in an Adivasi village, Iruhnar, in central Bastar. The focus is on two sets of narratives: first, young male migrant narratives, and second, the narratives of young women who are engaged in household and casual labour in and around Bastar. Although these narratives reveal the multiple compulsions that have led the youth in the village to migrate or take up casual labour, they also illustrate their resolve to earn money for the future. The migration narratives also attest to the structural changes in the relationship of the locals with their forests, the shift to paddy cultivation, the decline of the Ghotul (youth dormitories) as an institution that socialised the young to the work culture within the community, and the emergence of external sources of work and labour. While these changes, especially the decline of the Ghotul, removed restrictions on the mobility of men, they created an internal crisis within the village, restricting women’s movement outside of Bastar. Migration restricts women’s roles within the household economy, while the capitalist economy exploits temporary migrants as a source of cheap labour.