Delhi, Mumbai and Post-Independence Mobility

Detailed chapter description

After independence, migration from Mithila, Vajji and Anga ceased to be organised mainly around a small number of older eastern corridors. Calcutta/Kolkata remained important, but Delhi and Mumbai entered household migration strategies with growing force. The two metropolitan systems were not interchangeable. Delhi was closer by rail, located within the broad Hindi linguistic zone and increasingly surrounded by a National Capital Region of construction sites, workshops, warehouses and service jobs. Mumbai was farther away, more expensive to inhabit and embedded in a different linguistic and industrial history, yet its manufacturing, construction, transport, hospitality and informal-service economy created durable opportunities for migrants willing to bear higher entry and housing costs. The central historical change was therefore a widening of the mobility map. Households that had once depended on one destination could now compare wages, recruitment chains, travel time, housing, risk and the availability of relatives or co-villagers across several cities. This chapter follows that post-independence diversification without treating every migrant as a permanent settler or every movement as an escape from agriculture. Metropolitan work often remained part of a bi-local household economy in which earnings, care, land, debt, schooling and social obligations were distributed across source and destination. The following chapters will separately examine Punjab and Haryana, Nepal–India circulation, the Gulf, remittances, urbanisation and diaspora institutions.