Nepal–India Circular Migration

The India–Nepal border is international in law but unusually permeable in everyday social life. In the Mithila–Madhesh and Anga-facing borderlands, households have long treated the line not only as a frontier of two states but also as a corridor linking labour markets, marriage fields, pilgrimages, schools, hospitals, bazaars and transport nodes. Chapter 101 therefore uses circular migration in a deliberately broad sense: repeated movement in which a person or household remains materially and socially connected to more than one locality, and in which return is built into the migration strategy even when individual spells become long. The 1950 Treaty of Peace and Friendship did not create these cross-border ties from nothing. It institutionalised an older geography shaped by the nineteenth-century boundary, shared languages, kinship and commercial routes. Article 7 is especially important because it committed the two governments, on a reciprocal basis, to grant nationals of the other country privileges concerning residence, ownership of property, participation in trade and commerce, movement and related matters. In practice the relationship has always been more complex than treaty text alone: national laws differ, documentation requirements vary by activity, and mobility becomes more regulated when it intersects with formal employment, banking, vehicles, customs or travel to third countries. 101.1 The border divided sovereignty without severing a social region The Sugauli settlement of 1816 fixed a political boundary across a landscape whose markets, pilgrimage routes, caste networks and marriage relations did not end at the new line. In the eastern and central Tarai, movement between today’s Nepal and Bihar continued through local fairs, seasonal farm work, cattle and grain trade, religious journeys and household visits. This historical background matters because later migration did not begin with an isolated economic ‘push’ from Nepal or a single ‘pull’ from India. It developed inside a borderland in which people already possessed route knowledge, linguistic competence and kin contacts on both sides. The resulting mobility could be extremely local—a few kilometres to a market or field—or extend from the border to Patna, Kolkata, Delhi and other Indian destinations. The political boundary therefore reorganised jurisdiction more decisively than it reorganised everyday social geography. 101.2 The 1950 Treaty gave reciprocal mobility a durable interstate framework The Treaty of Peace and Friendship signed in July 1950 became the central legal reference for the modern open-border relationship. Its provisions on reciprocal treatment of nationals helped sustain a system in which Nepali and Indian citizens could cross for work and residence without the visa regime that usually defines international labour migration. The treaty has also been politically contested in Nepal, where critics have questioned asymmetry and sovereignty, but its mobility effects remained deeply embedded in everyday practice. For migration history, the crucial point is institutional durability: families could plan repeated movement without the recruitment visas, exit permits and destination contracts that characterise Nepal’s later Gulf and Malaysian labour corridors. This lowered the monetary cost of migration and made short, experimental or emergency trips possible, while also making the true scale of migration difficult to count. 101.3 Open-border migration is systematically undercounted Administrative statistics capture only part of this corridor. Nepal’s foreign-employment permit system is designed primarily for labour migration to destinations that require formal approval; it does not enumerate every person who walks, cycles, buses or trains into India through the open border. Indian administrative systems likewise do not generate a complete register of Nepali citizens working in informal jobs. The Nepal 10231023 GAJENDRA THAKUR Labour Migration Report 2024 therefore treats the Nepal–India corridor separately from permit-based foreign employment. Census questions on absent household members provide another window, but they miss commuters and many migrants whose household definitions or timing differ from the census reference period. Any precise total should consequently be treated with caution. The historical importance of the corridor is clearer than any single headcount. 101.4 Circularity is produced by low travel costs and the possibility of return Open-border mobility permits migrants to leave with limited capital, test a destination, return for agricultural work or family obligations, and depart again when needed. This differs from migration to the Gulf, where recruitment fees, contracts, passports and air travel create a higher threshold and often a more rigid migration spell. India can therefore function as a ‘low-entry-cost’ labour market for Nepali households and, in the eastern borderlands, Nepal can similarly absorb Indian workers in agriculture, construction, transport, petty trade and services. Circularity is not evidence that migration is marginal. Repetition can make absence a durable feature of household life even when no single trip is permanent. 101.5 Madhesh and north Bihar form a particularly dense field of everyday mobility The cultural geography of Mithila crosses the international boundary. Maithili and related speech forms, shared ritual practices, marriage connections and religious centres such as Janakpur create a social infrastructure for movement that is qualitatively different from migration between culturally distant regions. Border towns such as Jayanagar, Raxaul and Jogbani are not simply gates through which migrants pass; they are employment and exchange centres in their own right. Bus stands, railheads, markets, clinics, schools, money changers, warehouses and transport services all convert mobility into local livelihoods. The borderland economy therefore includes migrants, commuters and the workers who make migration possible. 101.6 Marriage mobility cannot be separated from labour mobility Cross-border marriage has long linked households in the Nepal Tarai and Bihar. Such marriages create visiting circuits, inheritance and care obligations, children’s educational choices, temporary residence and information channels for work. They also complicate the notion of a single ‘source’ and ‘destination’: a woman may move after marriage while brothers, cousins or sons circulate for employment in the opposite direction. Kinship can lower job-search costs because relatives provide lodging, introductions and emergency support, but dependence on kin can also reproduce unequal gender and generational power. For social history, marriage is therefore not a separate cultural topic appended to economic migration; it is one of the institutions through which labour circulation becomes possible. HISTORY OF MITHILA, VAJJI & ANGA — VOLUME II Figure 400 — Nepal–India circular migration has combined durable openness with periodic disruption and denser border management 101.7 Agricultural labour crosses the border in both directions The image of Nepal–India migration as exclusively Nepalis going south obscures smaller but important reverse flows. Border agriculture creates seasonal demand for transplanting, harvesting, sugarcane work, livestock care and other tasks that can attract labour from nearby districts on the opposite side. Wage differences, harvest timing and local labour scarcity matter more than nationality alone. In some locations, Indian workers enter Nepal for agricultural or construction employment while Nepali workers use India as a larger and more diversified labour market. Circular migration is therefore best understood as a regional labour system whose dominant direction varies by occupation, season and locality. 101.8 Indian cities became extensions of borderland livelihood portfolios For many Nepali migrants, India offered a hierarchy of destinations rather than one labour market. Nearby Bihar and Uttar Pradesh towns could provide construction, transport, hotel or service work; larger cities offered security work, domestic service, hospitality, factories, shops and informal vending. Routes learned through military recruitment, pilgrimage and trade later supported civilian migration. The low institutional barrier to entry allowed migrants to switch jobs and destinations more easily than in tied- contract systems, but it also meant that employment could remain informal, weakly documented and outside portable social protection. The advantage of flexibility was therefore paired with exposure to wage theft, unsafe housing, occupational injury and uncertain access to welfare. 101.9 The corridor is stratified by class, caste, gender and locality Open borders do not create equal mobility. A household with land, education, relatives in a city and money for travel can use migration strategically, while a land-poor household may accept short-notice, low- paid work because it has few alternatives. Dalit and marginalised communities can be concentrated in physically demanding or insecure occupations; educated migrants may enter clerical, security, teaching, health or business roles. Men historically dominate many labour streams to India, but women’s migration appears in marriage, domestic work, caregiving, trade and family relocation. The social meaning of mobility therefore depends on who moves, who remains, who controls earnings and which forms of work are publicly recognised. 101.10 Seasonal migration redistributes labour across two agricultural calendars In agrarian households, departure is constrained by the source crop calendar. Workers can migrate when local demand is low and return for sowing, transplanting, harvesting, festivals or flood recovery. The border’s low crossing cost makes this fine-grained timing possible. Circular migration may therefore support small farming rather than replace it: migrant earnings buy seed, fertiliser, food or irrigation while household members maintain land at home. But migration can also accelerate withdrawal from agriculture when returns are chronically low. The same repeated journey can preserve a farm in one generation and finance exit from farming in the next. 10251025 GAJENDRA THAKUR 101.11 Daily and weekly commuting blur the boundary between migration and mobility In densely settled border districts, movement may not involve a change of residence at all. Traders, transport workers, students, patients, shoppers, artisans and casual labourers can cross for a day or a few days and return home. Such mobility is economically significant but is easily missed by migration statistics built around usual residence. It also explains why sudden border restrictions have effects far beyond long-distance migrant workers. A closed crossing can disrupt medicine purchases, school attendance, hospital visits, retail supply, agricultural marketing and the earnings of rickshaw drivers, porters and shopkeepers within hours. 101.12 Health and education are major cross-border mobility systems Border households often choose institutions pragmatically rather than nationally. A clinic, hospital, coaching centre, school or college across the border may be closer, cheaper, linguistically familiar or better connected than a domestic alternative. Indian cities such as Patna and border-adjacent Bihar towns have long drawn Nepali patients and students; Nepali towns likewise serve Indian border residents for particular services and commerce. Educational and medical journeys generate secondary markets in lodging, transport, pharmacies, food and remittance transfers. They also create long-term mobility: a student may become a worker, and a patient’s accompanying relative may establish contacts later used for employment. Figure 401 — Circular migration works through repeated exchanges among household, corridor and destination 101.13 Border towns convert circulation into urban growth Raxaul–Birgunj, Jayanagar–Janakpur and Jogbani–Biratnagar illustrate different combinations of trade, transport, industry, pilgrimage and passenger movement. Their economies depend not only on customs- cleared cargo but also on the continuous presence of mobile people. Hotels, eateries, warehouses, vehicle repair, money exchange, freight handling, retail and real estate all grow around circulation. This gives border urbanisation a distinctive form: settlement expands because the town is simultaneously a market, a terminal, a checkpoint and a social meeting place. Chapter 106 examines urbanisation in greater detail; here the point is that migration and border-city growth are mutually reinforcing. 101.14 Jayanagar–Janakpur is both a cultural and a transport corridor The Jayanagar–Janakpur route has unusually deep symbolic resonance because it joins the Indian and Nepali parts of Mithila and serves Janakpur’s religious importance. The historic narrow-gauge railway and its later reconstruction into the modern cross-border passenger line made a familiar social corridor more legible as infrastructure. Passenger services on the Jayanagar–Kurtha section began in 2022, reducing dependence on road travel for many users and reconnecting settlements along the alignment. Rail does not replace open- HISTORY OF MITHILA, VAJJI & ANGA — VOLUME II border foot and road mobility; it adds capacity and predictability to an existing movement system and can widen the radius within which daily or short-term circulation is practical. 101.15 Birgunj–Raxaul links migration to Nepal’s principal trade artery The Birgunj–Raxaul corridor is dominated in public discussion by freight, customs and Nepal’s access to Indian ports, but the same infrastructure also shapes human mobility. Transport workers, loaders, customs intermediaries, traders, mechanics, hotel workers and informal vendors depend on the continuous movement of goods and people. The Integrated Check Post and the dry-port railway formalise cargo circulation while ordinary citizens continue to use the open border for personal movement. This juxtaposition—highly regulated goods alongside relatively free citizen mobility—is one of the defining institutional features of the Nepal–India border. 101.16 Biratnagar–Jogbani connects the eastern Madhesh to the Anga-facing labour market Biratnagar’s industrial and commercial history gives the Jogbani crossing a different profile from pilgrimage-centred Janakpur or freight-dominant Birgunj. Factories, wholesale trade, education, transport and services have drawn labour from the surrounding Nepali districts and from nearby Indian areas, while the Indian rail and road network opens onward routes toward Purnia, Katihar, Bhagalpur and metropolitan destinations. The corridor demonstrates why ‘Nepal–India migration’ should not be imagined only as Kathmandu-to-Delhi movement. Eastern border circuits connect medium-sized towns and rural districts in dense, repeated patterns. 101.17 Remittances from India are often smaller, more frequent and less visible Because migrants can return by road or rail and may carry cash or goods personally, transfers from India do not always pass through formal remittance companies. This can make the corridor look less important in financial statistics than destinations where wages are sent through banks or licensed remittance firms. For households, however, even modest repeated transfers can finance food, school fees, medical costs, ceremonies, debt repayment and farm inputs. Remittance history must therefore distinguish between national foreign-exchange accounting and the everyday household economy of circulation. 101.18 Migration reorganises care and authority within households Repeated male absence can increase women’s responsibility for farming, budgeting, children’s schooling and elder care without necessarily giving them equal control over land or migration income. When women themselves migrate or relocate through marriage, care obligations can be redistributed across mothers, daughters-in-law, grandparents and siblings on both sides of the border. Mobile phones and digital transfers allow migrants to participate in decisions at a distance, but they do not remove the physical burden of everyday work. Circular migration therefore changes household governance even when the migrant repeatedly returns. 101.19 Identity remains layered rather than erased by movement A circular migrant may simultaneously identify with a village, caste or community, the broader Mithila/Madhesh cultural region, and a Nepali or Indian citizenship. Work in India does not automatically produce assimilation, nor does an open border eliminate national distinction. Political crises can make citizenship suddenly salient through document checks, public rhetoric or access to state benefits. At other 10271027 GAJENDRA THAKUR moments, language, kinship and familiarity may matter more in daily interactions. The borderland is therefore not ‘borderless’; it is a place where different boundaries become more or less important depending on the institution encountered. 101.20 Security management and open mobility coexist uneasily Both governments treat the open border as a valued people-to-people institution and as a space requiring security coordination. Border District Coordination Committees, security-force meetings, pillar maintenance and the India–Nepal Joint Working Group on Border Management attempt to manage crime, trafficking and infrastructure without converting the frontier into a conventional visa border. The 2025 Home Secretary-level talks and border-management meetings continued this dual approach. For migrants, the result is a frontier that can feel socially open but institutionally denser around major crossings, vehicles, cargo and sensitive periods. Figure 402 — The open border supports multiple mobility regimes rather than a single migration stream 101.21 Trafficking must be distinguished from ordinary migration The openness that lowers the cost of voluntary movement can also be exploited by traffickers. Women, children and workers recruited through deception may cross along the same roads used by families, traders and commuters. Conflating all informal mobility with trafficking would criminalise ordinary border life, but ignoring coercion because the border is culturally familiar is equally dangerous. Effective protection requires attention to recruitment, consent, age, debt and destination conditions rather than nationality alone. Civil- society interception and referral systems at major crossings grew partly in response to this problem. 101.22 The 2015 crisis demonstrated how political disputes reach household economies The disruptions at the India–Nepal border during the constitutional crisis of 2015 affected fuel, medicines, transport and commodity supply in Nepal and became a major political rupture in bilateral perceptions. Whatever the competing interpretations of responsibility, the episode demonstrated the material power of border infrastructure. When traffic slows at key crossings, the effects are transmitted rapidly to prices, transport employment, factory operations and household provisioning. For circular migrants, mobility depends not only on the formal right to cross but also on functioning roads, fuel, buses and a politically workable border regime. HISTORY OF MITHILA, VAJJI & ANGA — VOLUME II 101.23 COVID-19 temporarily transformed an open border into a hard barrier The pandemic was the most dramatic interruption of ordinary cross-border mobility in recent decades. Border closures, quarantine rules and transport shutdowns stranded workers and forced governments to organise controlled crossings and returns. Migrants who had treated the frontier as routinely passable suddenly confronted queues, testing, documentation and uncertainty. The episode exposed how much household strategy rested on the assumption of reversibility: one could leave for work because one could normally come home. It also showed the public-health difficulty of governing a socially integrated border through emergency territorial controls. 101.24 The post-pandemic reopening restored circulation but not the old policy environment After restrictions eased, mobility revived, yet border governance retained greater attention to health preparedness, identification, trafficking and security coordination. Infrastructure projects also accelerated the formalisation of major gateways through Integrated Check Posts, improved roads and railway links. This does not mean the border is closing. Rather, everyday citizen mobility is increasingly embedded within a thicker infrastructure of state presence. The coexistence of openness and institutionalisation is likely to define the next phase of the corridor. 101.25 Digital communication has reduced the social cost of circular absence Cheap mobile calls, messaging applications and digital payments make it easier for migrants to maintain daily contact with households, compare wages, organise travel and send money. Information that once moved through returning migrants can now circulate instantly through village networks. This can weaken the monopoly of labour intermediaries, although digital exclusion and misinformation create new vulnerabilities. The effect is not to make place irrelevant: migrants still depend on physical lodging, transport and social trust. Digital connectivity instead makes a multi-local household easier to coordinate. 101.26 Circular migration can be a stepping stone to longer-distance migration India can serve as a first destination where young workers learn to live away from home, acquire Hindi or occupational skills, save money and build confidence before considering the Gulf, Malaysia or other destinations. Conversely, workers returning from overseas may choose India for shorter or lower-cost employment spells when family needs require more frequent return. Migration systems therefore interact over the life course. Chapter 102 examines Gulf migration separately, but the two corridors should not be treated as mutually exclusive alternatives. 101.27 Regional inequality keeps the corridor economically relevant As long as wages, job density, public services and market access differ sharply across nearby regions, open- border mobility will remain attractive. Development on one side does not automatically reduce migration; improved roads and education can initially increase it by lowering travel costs and raising aspirations. The key question is whether migrants gain enough bargaining power, skills and social protection to convert mobility into durable improvement. A corridor can simultaneously reduce short-term poverty and reproduce dependence on insecure work. 10291029 GAJENDRA THAKUR 101.28 The three principal eastern corridors express different regional histories Jayanagar–Janakpur is anchored strongly in Mithila kinship, pilgrimage and passenger mobility; Birgunj– Raxaul combines central Madhesh movement with Nepal’s major freight gateway; Biratnagar–Jogbani links an industrial-commercial city to the north-eastern Bihar and Anga-facing transport network. These differences matter for occupational structure, gender composition, daily commuting and the role of transport infrastructure. Smaller village crossings add another layer that is less visible statistically but essential to local livelihoods. The eastern borderland is therefore a network of corridors rather than one route. Figure 403 — Eastern Nepal–Bihar circulation is organised through several distinct border corridors 101.29 Better governance should preserve low-cost mobility while reducing vulnerability The policy challenge is not simply to choose between an ‘open’ and ‘closed’ border. Workers need accessible identity documentation, wage protection, emergency assistance, safe transport, anti-trafficking safeguards and portability of entitlements without converting ordinary local movement into an expensive visa process. Bilateral coordination on border infrastructure, disaster response and security already provides institutional channels that could also improve migrant welfare. Better data are equally important: open- border migration should be measured through household surveys, time-use and corridor studies rather than inferred only from permits. 101.30 The Nepal–India corridor is a durable social institution of the Mithila– Madhesh world The longue durée of cross-border movement reveals a form of migration that does not fit neatly into the categories of internal or international mobility. Sovereignty matters, but so do kinship, language, road distance and the possibility of repeated return. For households across Mithila, Madhesh and the Anga-facing eastern frontier, the open border has functioned as labour market, marriage field, service corridor and safety valve. Its historical significance lies precisely in this multiplicity. Circular migration is not a temporary residue awaiting permanent settlement; it is an adaptive institution that continually changes with infrastructure, state policy, labour demand and household strategy. Table 101.1 — Major forms of Nepal–India circular mobility in the eastern borderland Mobility form Typical Main institutions Principal vulnerability duration Daily/weekly hours to days markets, schools, clinics, sudden crossing restrictions; commuting transport weak statistical visibility Seasonal labour weeks to farm labour, wage insecurity, housing, HISTORY OF MITHILA, VAJJI & ANGA — VOLUME II Mobility form Typical Main institutions Principal vulnerability duration months construction, services, injury, recruitment abuse kin networks Longer months to security, hospitality, informality and limited employment in years with trade, industry portable protection India return Marriage/kinship life-course family, ritual, caregiving, gendered dependence and circulation repeated inheritance documentation gaps visits Study/health single visit to schools, colleges, costs, transport disruption, mobility multi-year hospitals, coaching residence documentation Trade/transport- daily to ICPs, dry ports, policy shocks, congestion, linked work continuous railheads, bazaars border closures 10311031