Migration-dependent economies are economies in which household reproduction, local consumption, labour markets and investment are materially shaped by earnings generated outside the place of origin. This is more specific than saying that a region has many migrants. In large parts of Mithila, Vajji and Anga, migration has become a recurring institution linking villages and small towns to distant labour markets while families, land claims and social obligations remain anchored at home. The result is not simple depopulation. It is a multi-local economy in which labour circulates, money and information return, and household decisions are made across two or more places. The evidence must be handled historically. Bihar’s 2019–20 Economic Survey described the state as labour-surplus and noted long-standing migration to other Indian states and foreign countries. Earlier NSS and longitudinal village surveys recorded extensive out-migration and remittance receipt, but their numerical estimates belong to their own survey years and should not be presented as current 2026 rates. More recent administrative systems such as e-Shram and One Nation One Ration Card improve visibility and portability for mobile workers, but they are not direct substitutes for a migration census. On the Nepal side, the 2021 population census and the 2022/23 Living Standards Survey provide newer benchmarks for absence abroad and remittance dependence in Madhesh Province. This chapter therefore focuses on the economic architecture of mobility: why workers leave, how corridors are organized, who remains behind, how destination wages influence origin labour markets, how skills and enterprises circulate, and how risks are distributed. Chapter 121 examines remittance use, consumption and housing in greater detail. Keeping the two questions separate prevents a common analytical error: treating every consequence of migration as a consequence of remittance spending alone. 120.1 Migration dependence as an economic system A migration-dependent economy is defined by repeated linkages between the origin and destination rather than by the migrant’s permanent relocation. A worker may spend most of the year in Delhi, Punjab, Gujarat, Maharashtra or a southern industrial centre while remaining economically embedded in a household in Madhubani, Darbhanga, Sitamarhi, Muzaffarpur, Bhagalpur or another district of the wider region. Land is still cultivated, children remain in local schools, older parents depend on the household, and major ceremonies or investments are organized at home. Earnings from outside therefore enter an already diversified livelihood portfolio. The household does not choose between ‘agriculture’ and ‘migration’; it combines them. This multi-locality also changes the meaning of residence statistics. A village may appear densely inhabited even when a large share of working-age men is absent for long stretches, because migration is circular and family residence is retained. Figure 476 represents this circulation of labour, income, information and risk. HISTORY OF MITHILA, VAJJI & ANGA — VOLUME II Figure 476 — Circular migration as a repeated origin–destination system of labour, earnings, experience and return. 120.2 Historical depth: from colonial labour circuits to contemporary mobility Long-distance labour movement from Bihar and the eastern Gangetic plain predates contemporary liberalisation. Colonial transport networks, plantations, mines, ports, military recruitment and urban construction created older routes of mobility, while indenture connected the wider Bhojpuri–Maithili belt to overseas labour systems. After Independence, industrial centres, the Green Revolution in north-west India, mining and construction expanded the destination geography. By the late twentieth century, rural Bihar studies were already describing migration as a central livelihood strategy rather than an exceptional response to famine or crisis. The contemporary system is therefore historically layered: old routes to Kolkata and Punjab coexist with newer corridors to Delhi NCR, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Kerala, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and foreign labour markets. Historical continuity matters because networks are inherited. A village’s present destination pattern often reflects contacts built by earlier generations, even when the sector of employment has changed. 120.3 Why migration persists despite economic growth Migration persists not because the origin economy is static, but because economic growth has not eliminated the wage and employment gap between Bihar and major destination regions. Improved roads, electrification, schooling and communication can actually increase migration by lowering travel and information costs. Agricultural holdings remain small; rural non-farm work has expanded but often cannot absorb the full working-age population at sufficiently high or stable wages. Young workers compare a portfolio of options: local farm work, construction nearby, a small shop, public works, or distant employment. The rational choice may still involve mobility even when living conditions at the destination are difficult. Migration also becomes self-reinforcing when earlier migrants provide job leads, lodging, travel advice and emergency credit. Thus ‘development’ and migration need not move in opposite directions. At intermediate stages of structural transformation, better connectivity and aspirations can increase mobility before local labour demand catches up. 12151215 GAJENDRA THAKUR 120.4 Seasonal, circular and long-duration migration Seasonal, circular and long-duration migration create different economic relationships. Seasonal workers leave for a harvest, brick-making season, construction cycle or other predictable period and return to participate in local agriculture. Circular migrants repeatedly move between origin and destination, sometimes with the same employer, contractor or city. Long-duration migrants may remain away for years but retain strong household and property ties. Permanent family migration is another category and often has different effects on village labour supply and remittances. Surveys that ask only whether a person changed usual residence can therefore miss much of Bihar’s mobility. The Institute for Human Development’s longitudinal work in rural Bihar emphasises high and increasing mobility that is not fully captured by conventional sources. For economic history, duration and recurrence matter because they determine who performs farm work, how often earnings are transferred, whether skills return, and whether the migrant eventually invests or settles elsewhere. 120.5 Mithila as a major source zone Mithila has long been one of Bihar’s most migration-intensive subregions. Detailed rural studies have reported very high male out-migration in districts such as Madhubani, where outside earnings became woven into the local non-farm economy. The pattern is linked to dense population, small holdings, recurrent floods and waterlogging, limited large-scale industry and strong transport connections to major labour markets. But Mithila is not a single migration regime. Border districts, railway-connected towns, flood-prone belts and better-connected market centres generate different destinations and durations. Skilled migrants, students and professionals also coexist with casual construction workers and factory labour. A historical account should therefore avoid reducing ‘Mithila migration’ to distress labour. The same village may send masons, security guards, drivers, factory workers, teachers and Gulf workers, each with different entry costs, earnings and protection. What unifies them is the household’s reliance on spatial diversification of work. 120.6 Vajji and the Muzaffarpur–Vaishali labour economy The Vajji–Muzaffarpur belt combines intense rural mobility with a comparatively dense network of market towns, educational institutions, horticulture and transport activity. This creates both outward migration and short-distance commuting. Workers can move from villages into Muzaffarpur, Hajipur or Patna for construction, transport and services while others enter interstate corridors. Litchi, vegetable, dairy and trading economies provide seasonal local employment but cannot fully absorb the labour force. The region’s proximity to major highways and rail lines lowers the transaction cost of departure and return. This matters analytically: migration dependence may remain high even where local commercial activity is substantial, because local and external labour markets complement one another. A household can maintain a small farm or business while one member works elsewhere. The economic question is therefore not whether migration substitutes for local development, but how the two are combined and whether external earnings deepen local productive capacity. 120.7 Anga and eastern Bihar migration corridors Anga and the eastern Bihar districts participate in a somewhat different set of labour corridors shaped by railways, the Ganga, Bhagalpur’s commercial history, nearby Jharkhand industries and links toward West Bengal and the national urban system. Silk, weaving, agriculture, trade and small manufacturing provide locally rooted work but coexist with substantial outward mobility. Eastern districts also contain areas of chronic poverty where migration is used to smooth seasonal employment gaps. The corridor structure can HISTORY OF MITHILA, VAJJI & ANGA — VOLUME II include nearby movement to Jharkhand and West Bengal as well as long-distance migration to Delhi, western India and southern states. The diversity of Anga again warns against a single push-factor explanation. Workers leave because of wage differentials, employment regularity, sectoral skills, network availability and household strategy. Returnees can carry back industrial work habits, contacts and technical skills that influence local workshops, transport enterprises and construction practices. 120.8 Networks, kinship and cumulative migration Migration networks reduce uncertainty. A first migrant from a village faces high search costs: finding an employer, room, transport route and trustworthy contact. Once a corridor is established, relatives and neighbours can follow with lower risk. Employers also benefit because trusted workers recruit others from the same origin. This produces cumulative migration: past migration changes the probability of future migration. Networks can be protective, providing accommodation, job information and emergency assistance, but they can also channel workers into low-wage occupational niches. Caste, kinship, village and regional ties frequently structure these networks. The result is a segmented labour market in which certain villages become associated with particular destinations or trades. Such network effects explain why two neighbouring settlements with similar landholding and poverty can show very different migration intensity. They also explain the persistence of corridors after the original economic condition that created them has changed. 120.9 Recruitment intermediaries and labour contractors Intermediaries range from relatives and experienced migrants to labour sardars, contractors, placement agents and formal recruiters. Their role increases when the job is distant, short-term or difficult to verify. An intermediary can solve real coordination problems by assembling a crew, arranging transport and linking workers to employers. At the same time, information asymmetry creates opportunities for deductions, debt, deception and wage withholding. The economics of recruitment is therefore part of migration dependence. A worker’s gross destination wage is not the same as the net gain to the household after travel, food, lodging, commissions, unpaid waiting time and debt service. International migration raises the entry cost further through passports, medical checks, visas and recruitment fees. Policy must distinguish useful intermediation from coercive or opaque contracting. Better job information, written terms and grievance channels can reduce the rent captured between origin workers and destination employers. 120.10 Construction as a core destination sector Construction is one of the most important destination sectors because it can absorb large numbers of workers with varied skill levels and because projects are geographically dispersed. Migrants from Bihar work as helpers, masons, bar-benders, carpenters, painters, electricians and machine operators. Skill ladders can raise earnings, but employment remains project-based and often mediated by contractors. Construction also produces circularity: workers return when projects finish, during agricultural seasons or for family obligations, then join another site. Origin villages therefore acquire specialised construction skills that can later be used locally. The sector’s risks are equally important—falls, injuries, heat, unsafe accommodation and irregular payment. Bihar’s migrant-worker welfare mechanisms, including accident assistance, acknowledge that the costs of labour mobility do not end at the state boundary. A migration-dependent economy exports labour but retains responsibility for households affected by injury or death. 12171217 GAJENDRA THAKUR 120.11 Manufacturing, workshops and industrial labour Manufacturing migration differs from construction because factory employment can offer longer spells, regular shifts and opportunities for task-specific learning. Workers from Bihar are found in textiles, garments, food processing, engineering, ceramics, plastics and numerous small industrial units across western and southern India. Entry may occur through contractor labour rather than direct employment, limiting job security even when work is continuous. Factory experience can nevertheless build skills in machine operation, quality control, maintenance and production discipline. The development question is whether these skills circulate back. Some return migrants establish repair shops, fabrication units or trading businesses; others find that local demand and credit are too weak to use what they learned. Skill certification and recognition could improve portability between employers and make migration less dependent on personal networks. The origin economy gains more when the migrant’s acquired capability is transferable rather than locked to one contractor or workplace. 120.12 Agricultural labour migration and changing destinations Agricultural migration from Bihar has historically been associated with north-west India, especially during the Green Revolution period, when Punjab and Haryana demanded seasonal labour for transplanting, harvesting and other operations. Mechanisation and changing labour markets have altered but not eliminated these routes. Agricultural migrants may now combine farm seasons with construction or urban service work, illustrating the fluid boundary between rural and urban labour. The significance for the origin region is twofold. First, departure during local peak seasons can raise local wages or accelerate mechanisation. Second, workers bring back knowledge of crops, machinery and labour practices observed elsewhere. Destination agriculture also changes its own technology in response to migrant labour supply. Thus migration is not a one-direction transfer of labour; it links two production systems whose wage levels, crop calendars and mechanisation decisions respond to each other. 120.13 Logistics, security and the urban service economy Urban service economies have broadened the occupational profile of migration. Security work, driving, delivery, warehousing, restaurants, domestic services, retail, sanitation and informal logistics employ workers with different levels of education and mobility. These jobs are often invisible in older narratives that equate Bihari migration with farm or construction labour. Digital platforms have added new forms of dispatch- based work, although formal platform registration does not necessarily guarantee social security. Service work can also make destination residence more individualised: a driver or guard may remain in a city for longer periods than a seasonal harvest worker. The household effect depends on wage regularity, accommodation cost and the worker’s ability to transfer earnings home. As the service sector expands nationally, migration corridors become more occupationally diverse even if the origin district’s basic push factors remain similar. 120.14 International labour and the Gulf connection International labour is a distinct but connected tier of the migration economy. Gulf employment has become important for parts of Bihar and the Nepal Terai because wage differentials can be much larger than in domestic migration, but so are recruitment costs and contractual risks. Chapter 102 examined Gulf migration in detail; here the emphasis is economic integration. A household may sequence migration: a worker first gains construction experience in an Indian city, then uses networks and savings to seek overseas employment. International migration can therefore sit at the upper end of a mobility ladder rather than exist as a separate system. The destination choice affects household risk because foreign jobs are more document- HISTORY OF MITHILA, VAJJI & ANGA — VOLUME II intensive and abrupt return can be expensive. The origin economy’s dependence is consequently not only on wage flows but on visa regimes, foreign labour demand, exchange rates and recruitment governance beyond Bihar’s direct control. 120.15 India–Nepal border mobility and Madhesh The India–Nepal border creates a special form of mobility in the Mithila–Madhesh zone. The open border allows labour, trade and family movement that is less bureaucratically visible than migration through airports or formal recruitment channels. At the same time, Nepal’s 2021 census shows that 21.8 percent of Madhesh Province households had at least one member living abroad; Dhanusha alone recorded more than seventy-three thousand absent persons abroad, overwhelmingly male. Nepal’s 2022/23 Living Standards Survey further shows that remittances constitute a substantial share of recipient-household income in Madhesh. These figures should not be mapped directly onto Indian districts because definitions differ, but they reveal a shared cross-border political economy of absent labour and household anchoring. Border mobility also includes shorter trips for markets, services and employment within India or Nepal, much of which standard international-migration statistics cannot capture well. 120.16 Transport infrastructure and the compression of distance Transport infrastructure changes migration by changing its frequency. Railways historically made long- distance labour migration possible at mass scale; highways, buses and affordable telecommunications have further compressed distance. A worker can now coordinate travel, send digital payments, compare job information and return home more often than earlier generations could. This encourages circulation rather than permanent relocation. Better roads inside Bihar also connect villages to railway stations, district towns and recruitment points. Transport therefore has an ambiguous relationship with local development: it improves market access at home while simultaneously making departure easier. The correct historical interpretation is not that infrastructure ‘causes’ migration, but that it expands the feasible choice set. Figure 478 distinguishes nearby commuting, seasonal corridors, interstate urban work, international migration and return as overlapping tiers rather than a single linear path. 12191219 GAJENDRA THAKUR Figure 478 — Migration corridors segmented by distance, duration, skill and entry cost rather than one undifferentiated flow. 120.17 The household division of labour after migration When one or more working-age adults migrate, the household reallocates labour. Older parents may supervise land; spouses manage cultivation, livestock, schooling and financial transactions; hired labour or machinery replaces absent workers at peak seasons. This reallocation determines whether migration complements or weakens farming. A household with sufficient remittance income may continue cultivating for food security despite low profitability, while another may rent land out because labour supervision is difficult. Migration can also change decision authority. The absent earner may control large expenditures by phone, yet the resident spouse gains daily responsibility for production and consumption. The economic unit is therefore stretched across space. Surveys that interview only the resident ‘head’ or only the migrant can miss this distributed decision-making. Figure 477 represents the household budget as a portfolio combining local and external income sources. Figure 477 — A migration-dependent household budget combines migrant earnings with farm, non-farm, public-support, credit and asset income. 120.18 Women’s work, care and the hidden subsidy to migration Women’s unpaid and underpaid work is one of the hidden foundations of male migration. When men leave, women often assume additional responsibility for farming, livestock, elder care, children’s education, banking and public-service interactions. This can expand managerial autonomy but also intensify work burdens without changing formal land titles or access to machinery. The term ‘feminisation of agriculture’ is therefore incomplete unless it distinguishes labour, decision-making and ownership. Migration is economically viable partly because care and household reproduction remain at the origin. If that work were fully priced, the apparent return to migration would look different. Women also migrate in their own right for domestic, factory, service, professional and international employment, although male-dominated migration remains especially visible in many parts of Bihar and Madhesh. Gender analysis must therefore include both women as migrants and women whose labour sustains migrant households. HISTORY OF MITHILA, VAJJI & ANGA — VOLUME II 120.19 Migration and village wage formation High out-migration can affect village wages by reducing the number of workers available for local casual labour, especially during peak agricultural seasons. The effect is not automatic because local labour demand can also be weak, and return migrants may increase labour supply temporarily. Nevertheless, destination wages become part of the reservation-wage calculation at the origin: a worker who can earn more elsewhere may refuse very low local rates. Employers respond through higher wages, labour-saving machinery, altered crop choices or recruitment from poorer nearby areas. Migration therefore transmits labour-market information across space. It can raise bargaining power without formal unionisation, but it can also weaken collective organisation when the workforce is dispersed across destinations. The local wage effect is strongest when migration is accessible to poorer households rather than limited to those who can finance high entry costs. 120.20 Labour scarcity, mechanisation and farm adjustment Migration and mechanisation interact. In a region of tiny holdings, machinery adoption is often constrained by scale, yet labour scarcity during transplanting, harvesting or threshing can make custom- hiring services attractive. Chapter 119 showed how fragmented holdings can use shared services to create operational scale. Out-migration adds a labour-market reason for the same institutional change. Households invest in pumps, threshers, small tractors or hired machine services partly because family labour is absent or local wages have risen. Mechanisation may then reduce future seasonal labour demand, altering migration schedules again. This feedback means migration should not be analysed as an external ‘loss’ of labour from agriculture. It is one of the forces reshaping the technology and organisation of farming at the origin. 120.21 Return migration, skill circulation and enterprise Return migration can transfer more than savings. Workers bring skills, language competence, contacts, knowledge of markets and expectations about work organisation. Research on rural Bihar has found former migrants among local non-farm entrepreneurs, suggesting that migration can seed enterprise. Yet return is not automatically entrepreneurial. A mason may lack capital to become a contractor; a factory worker may find no local industrial cluster in which to use machine skills. Productive return therefore depends on credit, electricity, transport, demand, business registration and local institutions. Policies that treat returnees merely as beneficiaries of short training courses miss the accumulated experience they already possess. A better approach is skills recognition plus enterprise support and market linkage. Return also has a life-cycle dimension: some circular migrants come back permanently when destination work becomes physically unsustainable, creating a need for less strenuous local livelihoods. 120.22 Migration and the rise of the rural non-farm economy Migration stimulates the rural non-farm economy through several channels. Households with outside earners demand groceries, transport, mobile services, private tutoring, health care, building materials and financial services. Returnees may open shops, repair units or transport businesses. Construction at the origin creates work for masons and suppliers. The World Bank’s research on Bihar’s non-farm economy highlighted both remittances and return-migrant skills as drivers of local enterprise in high-migration districts. But demand-led non-farm growth can remain dependent on continued external earnings if enterprises merely distribute imported goods rather than build local production. The developmental question is therefore whether migration-generated demand becomes a platform for local value creation. Chapter 121 examines 12211221 GAJENDRA THAKUR consumption and housing more closely; here the key point is that migration changes the sectoral composition of village economies even when migrants themselves work hundreds of kilometres away. 120.23 Financing migration: savings, advances and debt Migration has an entry cost. Domestic workers may need train fare, food, tools, deposits and enough cash to survive until the first wage payment. Contractors sometimes advance money, binding the worker to a crew. International migration can require much larger payments for documents, medical tests and recruitment. Households finance these costs from savings, relatives, SHGs, banks, employers or informal lenders. Debt can convert a voluntary search for better wages into constrained mobility if the worker cannot leave a bad job before repaying the advance. The rate of return on migration must therefore be calculated net of financing cost and risk. Access to low-cost formal credit, transparent recruitment and rapid digital payments can improve the worker’s bargaining position. Conversely, easy credit without reliable job information can finance migration into exploitative arrangements. Migration finance is thus a labour-market institution, not merely a household cash-flow problem. 120.24 Risk: wage theft, accidents, illness and abrupt return The risks of migration are concentrated on workers while benefits are shared more widely. Wage theft, delayed payment, injury, heat stress, unsafe lodging, illness, harassment and sudden project closure can erase months of expected gain. A family at the origin may have little information about the employer or even the exact worksite. Death or disability can create both an emotional catastrophe and a severe income shock. Bihar’s Labour Resources and Migrant Workers Welfare Department explicitly operates social-security measures for migrant and unorganised workers, including accident assistance. The existence of such schemes is itself evidence that migration is institutionally recognised as a durable economic condition. Effective protection, however, depends on awareness, documentation, accessible claims and coordination between origin and destination authorities. Risk reduction raises the net economic return to migration without requiring mobility to stop. 120.25 Portability of social protection A worker who crosses a state boundary should not lose food security or disappear from welfare systems. India’s e-Shram portal is designed as a national database of unorganised workers including migrants, while One Nation One Ration Card enables NFSA beneficiaries to obtain foodgrains through portability across the country. The Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions framework also contains specific provisions for inter-state migrant workers and portability of certain benefits. These systems move social policy from residence-bound welfare toward worker portability. The remaining problem is interoperability and actual use: registration does not guarantee that a worker can enforce a wage claim, obtain treatment or access every state benefit at the destination. Figure 479 therefore presents portability as a chain—identify, port benefits, protect work, assist mobility and support return—rather than as a single database solution. HISTORY OF MITHILA, VAJJI & ANGA — VOLUME II Figure 479 — Portable protection for mobile workers requires linked identification, benefits, workplace protection, mobility assistance and return support. 120.26 COVID-19 as a stress test of the migration system The COVID-19 lockdown exposed the dependence of both destination cities and origin villages on migrant circulation. The sudden closure of workplaces and transport stranded workers, interrupted earnings and triggered large-scale return to Bihar. Origin households lost cash income just as returnees needed food and work; destination economies simultaneously discovered how essential migrant labour was to construction, manufacturing and services. Government responses, including emergency rural employment and food measures, demonstrated the need for portable social protection and worker databases. Research in rural Bihar after the pandemic found severe livelihood disruption, with migrant and casual labour among the most affected sources. The lesson is not that migration itself was the problem. The crisis revealed how a system built on mobility lacked adequate protection when mobility was abruptly suspended. Future resilience requires support that works in normal circulation and during shocks. 120.27 Why migration is difficult to measure Migration is notoriously difficult to measure because administrative categories are tied to residence while workers move repeatedly. Census migration tables capture changes in usual residence but may miss short- duration circular migrants. Labour-force surveys are better at current work status but may not record the full household migration cycle. e-Shram records registered unorganised workers, not a complete flow of departures and returns. Railway passenger data show movement but not purpose. Remittance statistics mix transfers from different origins and channels. Village surveys can capture circularity in detail but cover limited places. Nepal’s census provides strong data on absent members abroad, yet open-border movement to India can still be difficult to classify. Table 120.1 therefore treats migration history as a triangulation problem. Claims about ‘how many migrants’ should always specify source, reference period, residence definition and whether the measure concerns persons, households, trips or absences. 120.28 Floods, climate variability and mobility Floods and climate variability interact with migration but should not be used as a single-cause explanation. North Bihar’s recurrent floods and waterlogging can destroy crops, delay agricultural work and reduce local employment, making migration an important risk-diversification strategy. Yet many migrants 12231223 GAJENDRA THAKUR leave from areas that are not the most flood-prone, and established migration networks can persist in good agricultural years. Climate stress operates through livelihoods: crop loss, erosion, indebtedness, heat and changing work calendars alter the relative return to staying or leaving. Migration can increase resilience when outside income diversifies household risk, but it can also expose workers to heat and unsafe conditions at destinations. The policy goal is therefore not to label migrants as ‘climate refugees’ without evidence, but to understand how environmental shocks interact with land structure, labour demand, infrastructure and networks. 120.29 Dependency or development? Interpreting migration without caricature Migration is sometimes described as evidence of regional failure and sometimes celebrated as development through remittances. Both views are incomplete. Distress is real when workers accept dangerous jobs because local options are poor; agency is also real when households use mobility to pursue higher wages, education or enterprise. An economy becomes problematically dependent when migration is effectively compulsory for basic household reproduction and when origin institutions fail to convert external earnings and skills into wider local opportunity. Conversely, eliminating migration is neither feasible nor desirable in an integrated national economy. The more useful benchmark is choice: can a worker migrate safely for a good job, return without losing rights, or remain locally without facing destitution? Dependency should therefore be assessed through the quality of alternatives and the distribution of migration’s costs and gains, not through mobility rates alone. 120.30 Policy agenda: make mobility safer while expanding local choice Policy for Mithila, Vajji and Anga should pursue a dual strategy. First, make mobility safer and more productive through reliable job information, skills recognition, transparent recruitment, portable food and welfare benefits, accident and health protection, grievance systems, affordable transport and better migration data. Second, expand the option to stay through agricultural productivity, local manufacturing, agro- processing, education, health, construction, urban services and small-enterprise finance. These are complements, not substitutes. Migration networks can connect local firms to wider markets; returnees can become entrepreneurs; portable protection can reduce the cost of taking better jobs. The objective is to shift from survival migration toward mobility with bargaining power. The next chapter examines the most visible financial consequence of this system—how remittances reshape consumption, housing, savings and social differentiation at the origin. HISTORY OF MITHILA, VAJJI & ANGA — VOLUME II Table 120.1 — Evidence architecture for studying migration-dependent economies Evidence source What it captures Best use Key limitation Population Census / usual-residence change and long-run origin/destination misses much short-term migration tables migration characteristics structure circular mobility NSS / household out-migrants, remittances, comparable dated household older rounds cannot be migration surveys reasons and duration evidence presented as current rates Longitudinal village repeat mobility, household mechanisms and change over limited geographic surveys strategy and destination work time coverage e-Shram registered unorganised portability and registration is not a flow workers including migrants administrative visibility census ONORC / PDS food-grain use away from evidence of welfare covers NFSA portability home state portability in practice transactions, not all migrants Labour-department accidents, welfare risk and protection failures only events entering the claims applications and grievances scheme are visible Rail / bus / transport volume and seasonality of corridor and shock analysis purpose of journey is evidence movement often unknown Nepal NPHC 2021 / absent members abroad, cross-border Madhesh definitions differ from NLSS IV migration and remittance comparison Indian sources dependence 12251225