MIGRATION-UNEMPLOYMENT CHALLENGE IN COVID-19: TEA MAKES A SILVER LINE

Abstract

COVID-19 pandemic put death tolls not only by infection but also by unemployment. The curse of unemployment severely affected informal migrant workers. In the March 2020 to stop further spread of COVID-19 a Nationwide lockdown announced by the Government of India. Suddenly, a reverse inter-migration broke out all over India. West Bengal is one of the major states in India which bear the pain of the reverse inter-migration due to coincidence of pandemic and lockdown. Reverse migration via its push factor aggravates unemployment situation in the source. In this paper, taking West Bengal as a site of our study, we focus on the alternative employment strategy to cope with unemployment problem in the post lockdown downturn. Government of West Bengal absorb significant portion of these returned unemployed migrant workers into its Tea Gardens situated in North Bengal. By this policy, Government of West Bengal solves the problem of scarcity of tea labourers on the one hand and on the other hand rescue tea garden from the supply constraint of skilled labourers. This strategic altruism makes positive impact on the production of tea in Dooars, Terai and Darjeeling tea estates. We used the data from Tea Board of India in post lockdown months for the impact analysis. By using ARMA model in time series data runed in E Views we show that the tea production significantly raised in this time. This model can be a policy prescription in front of the world.