Description
While following up on child malnutrition in the remote tribal sub-division of Dharni (Amravati district in Maharashtra, India), we noticed children dropping out from our systems because of being ‘out-of-station’. Simultaneously, a close look at the temporal pattern of child malnutrition showed an annual peak at the time migrants returned back to their homes. To investigate our assumptions about the portability of health and nutrition services being received by migrants at the work sites, we created field teams to speak with the migrants at these places, which were mostly brick kilns. Our teams also collected primary data so as to map migration corridors for the local population. A vulnerable section we especially wanted to follow up on was of children, as well as pregnant and lactating mothers. This was partly due to the fact that Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) in India are portable in policy and theory. We wanted to understand implementation uptake, access and barriers to it. In our visits, the owners mentioned they “do not count pregnant women and children because they do not work here”. The people hardly went to Anganwadis or schools to access these (free) services, and the field functionaries at the destination mentioned they “would of course go and provide services to women and children if only we knew where they are.” Many children were therefore missing out on vaccinations, dealing with health challenges (especially skin issues because of dust) and were not promptly looked after if nutritionally wasted. The challenges identified to addressing distress migration and providing actual portability were the following : there was a lot of information asymmetry between source and destination, the service delivery was only demand based and did not factor bargain-of-power limitations a vulnerable population may have, and the lack of overall mapping did not allow policymakers to introduce service accountability within the system. Our team set out to design a digital Melghat Migration Tracking System (MMTS) to work on these challenges. We integrated source and destination in our system and used registration at source, automigration of information from source to destination, active supply side interventions to find beneficiaries and proper grievance redressal as basic design features. MMTS uses village-level data to help in micro-planning of rural livelihood interventions to prevent distress out-migration. This system was built bottom-up after many consultations with field functionaries, and kept changing based on their dynamic suggestions. MMTS was taken as an input in building the Maharashtra Migration Tracking System that is functional pan-state, and has registered over 70,000 migrants in the current year. Through this presentation, we wish to discuss how policy interventions for migration require much more than just schemes. Where must migration be prevented and what must governments do to ensure mobile safety nets? We use our field experiences to bring out how power and technology can help build effective systems, but only when built on trust, compassion and a firm belief in equity.
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