Migration

The Extraordinary Journey of the Fakir Who Got Trapped in an Ikea Wardrobe by Romain Puertolas, translated by Sam Taylor, New York: Alfred A Knopf, 2015; pp 320, ₹1,387, hardcover.

Focusing on female migrant domestic workers from Jharkhand, this article looks at their lives before and after migration. Jharkhand witnesses heavy migration and mobility to cities like Delhi, Mumbai and Kolkata, especially female migration. Girls and young women coming from marginalised communities migrate through different means and organisations like placement agencies, religious institutions or with the help of friends or relatives. Most of them get into the unorganised sector such as domestic work. Lack of social security measures continues to be a major challenge and a source of distress for these workers.

There has been little academic attention on the rise and spread of the Bhojpuri music industry in Bihar and eastern Uttar Pradesh. This article tries to size up the industry both in terms of its growing economy as well as significance as a platform for the development of a new form of cultural identity. Based on intensive field-based research covering over 80 artists and other participants of this industry all across the region and cities like Mumbai and Delhi, it argues that a new form of vernacular identity is being formed in the interstices of migration, remittances, secularisation and globalisation.

The existing literature treats the migration-remittances phenomenon as something which has tended to moderate the influence of the crisis in the Kerala economy since mid-1970s. In sharp contrast, the present paper is an attempt to bringing in the question of migration and remittances to its rightful place within the structure of the regional economy. The study attributes the stagnation in the commodity producing sectors since the mid-1970s to the 'resource movement effect' and 'spending effect' associated with the migration-remittances boom.

Rewriting the Language of Politics: Kisans in Colonial Bihar by Arun Kumar; Manohar, 2001; pp 234, Rs 475.