Breaking down the question

The question asks for the major problems faced by labour migrants working in the informal sectors of Indian states. Three terms anchor it. Labour migrants are workers who move — often seasonally or circularly — from poorer regions to sites of construction, agriculture, brick-kilns and petty manufacture. The informal sector is the unregistered, unregulated economy outside the protection of labour law and social security. The intersection of the two produces a workforce that is doubly disadvantaged: mobile and unprotected.

The command word discuss invites a structured account of these problems — economic, legal, social and psychological — rather than a mere list. The examiner wants sociological framing: precarity, the social security deficit, the collapse of the migrant's citizenship rights at the destination.

At ten marks the answer must be tightly organised around the principal problems and grounded in the Indian context.

How to approach it

  • Define labour migration into the informal sector and note its scale in India.
  • Group the problems into clear heads: insecure and low-paid work; absence of social security; legal invisibility; housing and living conditions; social exclusion at the destination; and vulnerability of women and children.
  • Draw on Jan Breman's concept of footloose labour and Ravi Srivastava's work on internal migration.
  • Reference the exposure laid bare during crises such as the 2020 lockdown.
  • Close with a note on why the state has struggled to protect this workforce.

Ground the discussion in the informal sector and child labour note.

Model answer

Internal labour migration into India's informal sector involves tens of millions of workers who circulate between poorer source regions and sites of construction, brick-kilns, agriculture, and petty manufacture. Jan Breman memorably termed them footloose labour — casualised, mobile and endlessly substitutable. Working informally and far from home, they face a distinctive and compounded set of problems.

First, their work is precarious and poorly paid. Employment is casual, seasonal and without written contracts, mediated by contractors and jobbers who take a cut. Wages are low, often withheld, and hours long, with no protection against arbitrary dismissal.

Second, they suffer an acute social security deficit. Denied provident fund, pension, paid leave, or insurance, they bear the full risk of accident and illness themselves. Hazardous work in construction and kilns produces injury without compensation.

Third, they are legally invisible. Documentation, ration entitlements and welfare schemes are tied to place of residence, so migrants lose their citizenship entitlements the moment they cross state lines — the portability failure that stranded millions in 2020. Ravi Srivastava has shown how this domicile-bound welfare architecture systematically excludes the circular migrant.

Fourth, their living conditions are wretched — makeshift shelters, worksite camps and slums lacking water, sanitation and healthcare, exposing them to disease.

Fifth, they face social exclusion and discrimination at the destination — treated as outsiders, sometimes on linguistic or regional lines, without community support, and vulnerable to harassment. Isolation and insecurity take a psychological toll.

Finally, women and children among migrants are especially exposed — women to unequal wages and sexual vulnerability, children to interrupted schooling and to labour itself.

These problems are not incidental but structural: they flow from the informality of the work and the immobility of the welfare state. Until entitlements are made portable and informal labour brought under enforceable protection, the migrant will remain, in Breman's phrase, footloose and unprotected.

Examiner's perspective

The examiner looks for a structured answer that names the problems under distinct heads rather than blurring them into a single paragraph of complaint. Economy of expression matters at ten marks, so each problem should be stated crisply and sociologically.

Deploying concepts such as footloose labour, precarity and the social security deficit, and crediting Breman and Srivastava, lifts the script above a descriptive account. A well-chosen illustration — the plight of migrants during the 2020 lockdown — demonstrates awareness of contemporary reality. The strongest answers close by linking the problems to the twin structural roots of informality and domicile-bound welfare, showing why the state has found this workforce so hard to protect.