test-dev storyline-The Migrant Economy During the Pandemic: An Exploratory Study in Baisi Block, Bihar

I. INTRODUCTION

Bihar, with nearly three times the national population density and about a third of its urbanisation rate, has been a source State for internal migration for centuries.  ¹  It is India’s most densely populated State (1,102 persons/per square kilometre), compared with a national average of 382.  ² Moreover, with only 11.30 per cent if its population living in urban areas, it naturally follows that Bihar’s population is predominantly rural (88.70 per cent). The Bihar Economic Survey 2019-20, provides sectoral growth rates in GDP/GSDP  ³ from 2013 to 2019.  ⁴ Figure 1 shows the growth in GDP/GSDP in the secondary (manufacturing, EGWUS,  ⁵ and construction) and tertiary sectors (transport, communications, and storage), and a sharp decline in the primary sector (agriculture and allied activities) in 2018-19.

““further reinforced by the [Union] government’s policy of ‘freight equalization’, which nullified the comparative advantage of Bihar and U.P. in natural resources by subsidizing railway freights of industrial inputs like coal, iron ore, steel, cement, and other bulk resources…which undermined the State’s “capacity to invest in health, education, and other social and physical infrastructure, and resulted in low human development.”9”

Bihar, with nearly three times the national population density and about a third of its urbanisation rate, has been a source State for internal migration for centuries.  ¹  It is India’s most densely populated State (1,102 persons/per square kilometre), compared with a national average of 382.  ² Moreover, with only 11.30 per cent if its population living in urban areas, it naturally follows that Bihar’s population is predominantly rural (88.70 per cent). The Bihar Economic Survey 2019-20, provides sectoral growth rates in GDP/GSDP  ³ from 2013 to 2019.  ⁴ Figure 1 shows the growth in GDP/GSDP in the secondary (manufacturing, EGWUS,  ⁵ and construction) and tertiary sectors (transport, communications, and storage), and a sharp decline in the primary sector (agriculture and allied activities) in 2018-19.

Bihar, with nearly three times the national population density and about a third of its urbanisation rate, has been a source State for internal migration for centuries.  ¹  It is India’s most densely populated State (1,102 persons/per square kilometre), compared with a national average of 382.  ² Moreover, with only 11.30 per cent if its population living in urban areas, it naturally follows that Bihar’s population is predominantly rural (88.70 per cent). The Bihar Economic Survey 2019-20, provides sectoral growth rates in GDP/GSDP  ³ from 2013 to 2019.  ⁴ Figure 1 shows the growth in GDP/GSDP in the secondary (manufacturing, EGWUS,  ⁵ and construction) and tertiary sectors (transport, communications, and storage), and a sharp decline in the primary sector (agriculture and allied activities) in 2018-19.

Encouraging children and the elderly to walk as much as possible also provides individual benefits in the form of better health outcomes. The social benefits of such an approach include a reduction in the number of vehicular trips, resulting in a lowering of local and global emissions. For this change to take place, a fundamental flaw in the approach to road design - to cater to smooth flow of motorised traffic - needs to be corrected. In addition, there is a need for a long-term vision of accepting zero deaths of pedestrians in cities. This should be supplemented with a road map for achieving this target in the next decade.

Moreover, current administrative structures in most Indian cities do not respond to long-term goals and conflicting demands. Implementation of a walkable city requires changing the priority at various levels of governance. Although this is a long process that requires continuous efforts and pilot projects to reconfigure the road network, it is an urgent requirement to ensure that India’s pedestrians do not continue to languish at the margins of the country’s developmental process.

1. Urban India’s invisibilised pedestrians

India’s policy planners, traffic engineers, and urban designers are mostly concerned with ensuring smooth flow of motorised traffic in cities by constructing signal-free road junctions and elevated roads. However, data show that 31 per cent of Indian workers in urban areas walk to work ². Table 1 shows the proportion of work trips by different travel modes reported in the Census of India, 2011. The proportion of women walking to work is substantially higher than men - 55 per cent vs 28 per cent. Walking trips are higher in rural areas than in urban areas, where walking trips constitute 31 per cent for all workers and 46 per cent for women workers. All public transport trips include walking segments to access and egress from such trips, which mean that at least 50 per cent of urban commutes include a walking component. In addition, school and shopping trips are generally more dependent on walking. If these were to be taken into account, one can safely say that walking constitutes a major mode of mobility in urban India. A 2019-survey in selected cities reflected this, showing that 63 per cent of all trips were walking trips ³, making pedestrians the single largest category of road users (Table 1).

India is a land of walkers. An estimated 45 million walk to work daily, compared with a mere 54 lakhs who used motorised personal transport ¹. However, the infrastructure that is in place for road users is skewed against Non-motorised Transport (NMT), either pushing pedestrians to the margins of the road networks, or even worse, compelling them to jostle for space with motor vehicles, thereby exposing them to injury or death.

More as a norm than as an exception, pedestrians have no option but to walk on the carriageways designed for fast-moving motorised traffic exposing them to a high risk of Road Traffic Crashes (RTCs). Yet, road and traffic regulatory agencies continue to invest in grade-separated, signal-free junctions, and elevated roads that are aimed at solving problems posed by vehicular congestion.  These have the combined effect of only further excluding and invisibilising the millions of pedestrians who are in plain sight.

On March 15, 2022, a three-Judge Bench of the High Court of Karnataka, headed by the Chief Justice, Ritu Raj Awasthi, pronounced its verdict on the petitions challenging the restrictions on wearing the hijab in government educational institutions in the State. A three-member bench of the Karnataka High Court on March 15, 2022, ruled that wearing the h ijab is not an essential practice of Islam. The three members were Chief Justice Ritu Raj Awasthi, Justice Krishna S. Kant, and Justice, K.M. Khazi.