In post-constitutional India the imperatives of the modern developmental-state as well as the history of rights-based activism has pushed for the recognition of the rights of inter-state migrant labouers - coming from rural-hinterlands to urban-centres, and their inclusion in the city and nation as their builders. Yet, their physical mobility is seen as productive and worthy only when the lower-class migrant subjects cultivate an aspiration for socio-economic mobility and are able to assimilate themselves within the disciplinary ethos of brahmanical-capitalism by committing to a long-duree, regimented engagement with the circuits of urbanized industrial processes. Within this logic of inclusion the migrant Adivasi subjects then come to embody a unique contradiction. Recent data indicates that a significant fraction of the inter-state migrant laborers belong to the Adivasi communities. Despite possessing special tenancy-rights the recent transitions of the political economy compounded by climate change has forced the Adivasi population from Jharkhand to migrate to the cities, often, as unskilled labourers. The historical trajectories of Adivasi politics rooted in their interactions with the colonial-state and brahmanical-society, however, have made it essential for the Adivasis to resist assimilation with the brahmanical-capitalism and espouse an Adivasi articulation of autonomy. They have thus, associated with such migration only on an instrumental basis. Instead, they have sought to associate with community forms of life supported by their land-holding systems. Consequently, the Adivasi subjects in the discourse of migration have often come across as indisciplined and averse to value accrual and using such historically determined tropes the bureaucracy has sought to legitimize its reluctance to provide welfare to the Adivasi migrant subjects. Drawing upon the ethnographic insights of Jharkhand Migration Survey we seek to develop counter-hegemonic representations of the mobilities of the Adivasi-migrant-laboring subject and argue in favor of decolonizing and de-brahmanising the epistemological frameworks that inform state-policy.
