As modern jobs evade the state, rural millennials continue a pattern of out-migration that leaves hundreds of villages abandoned, or populated only by the elderly.
For Prime Minister Narendra Modi, a third ‘M’, beyond Muslims and minorities, exists that can no longer wait to receive his attention. This is the epic-scale migration out of India’s mountain states, and I don’t mean Jammu and Kashmir.
Uttarakhand became the 27th state of the union of India on November 9, 2000, after a long-drawn people’s struggle. As much as 86% of the state is mountainous, and those villages, which once used to cackle with children’s laughter, now present a sorry picture of mass-abandonment and desertion.
In the decade between 2001 to 2011, over 950 villages were completely de-populated. Over 3,500 villages were left with a population of less than 50.
Anger pours from every heart as locals wonder why the state turns a blind eye to its chronic under-development. Extreme water distress across much of Uttarakhand cannot be separated from the crisis of livelihood that plagues young people. Arvind Singh, a pradhan in Bhainsora village, some ten miles outside Pauri, told me that for youth and senior citizens, staying on in the village is an act of extreme majboori.
Water shortages for months, farm work that is unviable and often dangerous due to wild animals, and the absence of decent off-farm jobs have mixed into a cocktail of distress.
It is causing both young men and women to migrate out of the state in large numbers.
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