“Dalits are not afraid of climate change or any other natural disasters, because socially and economically, they have been leading a disastrous life forever. For them, disaster caused by the upper-caste Hindus is the real problem.” 

– Jeya Rani, quoted in Mukul Sharma’s Dalit Ecologies: Caste and Environment Justice

Bihar ka Dukh

Mangal Sada belongs to the Sada community, a Dalit caste found in northern Bihar and other parts of the Indo-Gangetic plains, also referred to as ‘Musahar’ or ‘Manjhi’. Dalits make up more than half of the village of Kusamahot in Begusarai district where Mangal lives. “People say Bihar is like gold, but it is only gold for those who have land. For us, it is nothing. You can see for yourself who benefits and who doesn’t.” 

Looking out at the horizon, you can see what Mangal is talking about – as far as the eye can see, wheat is extensively cultivated by just two Bhumihar landlord families. Like others from Dalit and Mahadalit (extremely marginalized) castes, Mangal is an agricultural labourer who works seasonally on the fields of large landowners belonging to Kurmi, Yadav, or Bhumihar castes. At times of the year, he also migrates to cities like Delhi and Bengaluru for construction work. Making Mangal’s circulatory life more precarious, this area of northern Bihar, known as Mithila and Seemanchal, is prone to floods. Termed “Bihar ka dukh” (Bihar’s sadness), the river Kosi and its tributaries bring devastating floods to the region. For agricultural labourers like Mangal and small tenant farmers, flooding doesn’t simply wash away land. It washes away economic opportunities. Left without adequate compensation, infrastructure, or insurance from the government, flooding exacerbates the marginalization that many Dalits already face.

Kosi river, "Bihar ka Dukh". Photo by Sachinkumar

Two thousand kilometers away in Bengaluru, monsoonal rains were unusually intense in 2024. In October that year, eight construction workers and one sub-contractor were crushed to death while sleeping when a seven-story building, still under construction, collapsed in the northeast region of the city. At the site of the tragedy that night, Sachin managed to speak to some of the rescued workers. Of the eight workers who perished, five were Dalits, two were Muslims, and one was from an Other Backward Class (OBC). 

“We have come here to work, because there is no work in Bihar,” said Arman, a poor Muslim migrant who hails from Bihar’s Khagaria district, also in the Mithila region. Another, Arshad, echoed, “We came here because of higher wages. We are from Khagaria district of Bihar. We were doing tile work on the first floor. We stay in the same building – cooking, toilet, sleeping, everything is done inside the building. Iss kaam ke alawa hamare paas kuch nahi hai Bengaluru me (We don’t have anything other than this in Bengaluru)”. Laxman added, “Kheti me kabhi kabhi baadh ajathi hai. Yaha pe building hi giraagaya saala! (In the village, sometimes the farm gets flooded; here they let the building collapse by itself!).”

Circular Climate Vulnerability

In this article, we want to bring attention to circular climate vulnerability, namely the climate risk that—like a long shadow—follows migrant workers from their villages in northern Bihar to construction sites in Bengaluru, where they work under exploitative contractors (thekedars) and sub-contractors, without safety gear and decent accommodations. 

Northern Bihar is perhaps well known for flooding, and over the last few decades, the state government has been constructing bunds or embankments to protect villages. Despite this, vast parts of the region still get flooded every year. The area is irrigated by multiple rivers that originate in the Himalayas of Nepal, including the Kosi, Gandhak and Bhagmati. While these rivers have always had shifting patterns that locals are used to, global warming is worsening glacial melt and intense rainfall, leading to a more unpredictable flooding pattern in the Kosi basin. Similarly, the Mahananda River, also flowing from Nepal, is a fast-flowing tributary of the Ganga known for eroding soil and farmland. Its course changes annually, directly leading to forced migration. For families like Saurabh’s, who practice sharecropping (bataidari) on leased land between river bunds, agriculture is only possible during the dry season; during floods, they cannot cultivate. This necessitates diversification of livelihoods, such as driving a ‘toto’ (electric rickshaw), highlighting the struggle for survival in the face of climate precarity. 

Meanwhile, we do not always think of in-land Bengaluru as a climate-risky region. Yet, Bengaluru’s monsoonal rainfall pattern is also leading to climate risk for some – bringing more intense spells of rain over a 24-hour period due to climate change, as was seen during the October 2024 rains. This is particularly true for those living in informal slums (which itself is an internally differentiated category with ‘undeclared’ slums being more kaccha and climate-vulnerable than the older ‘declared’ slums). Those living on building construction sites and labour colonies are even more at risk from rainfall and extreme heat. In general, outdoor migrant workers, including construction workers, sweepers, waste pickers, app delivery workers, and security guards – the vast majority of whom are from marginalized caste and ethnic backgrounds – are vulnerable to extreme heat and flooding. 

Unequal Land, Caste, and Gender Relations

Far from being mere ‘climate refugees’, which tends to be a reductionist and alarmist term, migrants are entangled in a web of historical injustices that compel them to seek livelihoods in distant, often equally hazardous, urban centers. This is why, as in the quote above, Jeya Rani talks about the ‘real problem being the disaster of caste oppression itself – especially manifesting in unequal land and gender relations’. 

Historically, Dalit and communist-led land movements in southern Bihar did, to some extent, loosen the grip of large Bhumihar and Thakur landlords in Bodhgaya and other southern districts. However, in northern Bihar, the landed castes continue to own hundreds of bighas (approx. 0.62 acres), perpetuating a feudalistic caste culture. OBCs such as Yadavs and Kurmis, who were relatively land-poor compared to Thakurs and Brahmins, rose to power and consolidated land holdings through political and electoral routes. One hears persistent stories of dabangg (dominant, often aggressive) caste culture and brutal inter-caste conflicts, including memories of Dalit bastis being burned, Dalits being served last at village feasts, and outright casteist violence. Dalits in Mithila and Seemanchal are thus caught in a cycle of indignity, debt, landlessness, unpredictable rains, and widespread unemployment, all of which have driven outmigration. 

As noted above, landholdings continue to be heavily skewed towards Bhumihar, Yadav, and Kurmi ownership. Landlords, both big and small, from these castes will sometimes lease out their land to poorer farmers in bataidar (sharecropping) or sudabarna systems. But these tend to entrap small farmers into cycles of debt which they find difficult to escape.

A lesser-known aspect of migration is the women who are left behind in their villages, who have become the labouring backbone in Bihar’s agriculture. The majority are employed in corn, paddy and wheat cultivation. Mechanization and neoliberalization of agriculture, however, has decreased labour opportunities for women. Women noted in Khagariya, “Our husbands (who migrate as construction labourers) earn ₹10,000 - ₹12,000 per month. After drinking alcohol, sometimes they send ₹5,000 or ₹3,000 home. What else can we do? That is all they earn.”

Landless women who are left behind in their villages work as agricultural laborers in Bihar

Women also become victims of rampant fraud committed under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme. As Muktiar, a local political activist, put it, loot ka kaam hota hai yahan (This scheme is all about looting). Payment is credited on the so-called ‘job cards’, which the members of the Gram Panchayat siphon away from women by paying the women workers only a small proportion. While heralded as a transformative rights-based approach to rural welfare, the scheme has failed to provide an adequate safety net due to entrenched structures of caste and gender inequality.

A Shifting North-South Migration Corridor

The geography of economic migration has shifted markedly in recent years – a fact that matters for cities like Bengaluru that have become newer destinations for cross-country corridors. Railway journeys and railway tragedies serve as one lens into this changing geography, such as the 2023 Odisha train collision which killed 300 people, the majority being poor workers traveling between eastern India and southern India. Railway data also confirms there has been a growing trend towards circular or semi-permanent migration from poorer northern and eastern states, with Bihar and Uttar Pradesh accounting for half of all interstate migrants. Meanwhile southern states are now attracting more migrants, in addition to the more typical destinations of Delhi, Maharashtra and Gujarat. 

This new geography of migration has caste, class, and gender dimensions. Throughout India, upper-caste rich and middle-caste peasants, and those who have benefited from skilled non-farm rural work such as hotels and other services, were likely to be long-term whole-family migrants to urban areas. On the other hand, landless or land-poor categories from SC/ST or severely backward class backgrounds were unlikely to benefit from high-quality non-farm employment. They were, thus, most likely to be single-male, short-term, circular migrants. 

Agrarian decline means that migration by lower caste groups is actually becoming ‘permanent circular’ – male migrants now spend a large part of the year away from origin villages for non-farm, low-skilled, informal work. In Bihar, there are still vestiges of rural-to-rural migrations to Punjab for seasonal harvesting (as influenced by the Green Revolution), especially during seasons of wheat and makhana (foxnut). But this kind of migration is being replaced by rural-to-urban migration across longer distances – to states as far away as Karnataka – for casual daily-wage labour.

Labor Exploitation and Exclusion at Destination

Compelled by the lack of work and climate-induced agricultural distress in their villages, people are driven to rapidly urbanizing cities like Bengaluru. However, the urban context offers a different, yet equally perilous set of challenges. Migrants, including those from northern and eastern India, as well as neighbouring states of Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh, are largely employed in grueling, unorganized sector jobs, predominantly in construction and waste picking. These jobs are characterized by inhumane living conditions, with workers often lacking proper accommodations, toilets, or other basic facilities, which makes them highly vulnerable to extreme weather events, as tragically demonstrated by the building collapse in Bengaluru. As Raviul, a door-to-door waste collector in Bengaluru, explained, “While earnings might be better than in cities like Delhi, they face significant problems during the monsoon season, affecting their work and their children's schooling. Barish ke time bahut mushkil ho jata hai. Dekho, bhai… chalana mushkil hojata hai. Baccho ko school janekeliye bahot muskil hojata hai (During the monsoon it becomes very difficult… it becomes difficult to drive. It becomes very difficult for children to go to school.).”

The contractor system is central to this exploitation. This system has deep historical roots, dating back to the colonial period when contractors (sirdar/kangany) facilitated labour recruitment for plantations and mining. Historically, contractors were typically from landowning castes (Jat, Maratha, Reddy, Vanniar), recruiting landless Dalits, and maintaining labour bondage through debt or advance payments. In the contemporary context, while contractors may still be from landowning OBC castes, some Dalits also assume this role, recruiting landless and poorer Dalits. This system continues to leverage (semi)bondage via debt and/or advance payments for recruitment, perpetuating a cycle of exploitation

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In conclusion, migration patterns are not merely a result of individual choices or singular, climatic factors. They are a profound manifestation of what Jens Lerche and Alpa Shah call “conjugated oppression within contemporary capitalism”, where the historical burdens of caste and landlessness, exacerbated by unpredictable climate events, compel particular groups into exploitative labour systems in urban environments. Once there, these vulnerabilities are compounded by precarious living conditions and systemic political discrimination. A true understanding of this nexus is the first step towards advocating for justice that addresses the root causes of marginalization, ensures dignity in labor, and builds resilience against both social and environmental shocks.