A study on reverse migration in Manipur during the Covid-19 pandemic

Ever since the pandemic surfaced in March 2020, there have been inevitable difficulties the migrants have had to confront. Migrant workers faced challenges regarding food, shelter, wage loss, infection fear, and mental illness. As a result, hundreds of individuals began fleeing from other towns to their home cities.. Using some of the secondary research and primary records of the census, the paper attempts to identify some key factors that influenced the migration of the youth from Manipur and specifically observe the pattern of return migration to the state in the wake of the pandemic. The paper further identifies some of the critical aspects that need to be addressed to accommodate the young workforce productively in the economy both in the short term and long term. The urban-centric migration, especially regarding the state of Manipur, deserves special attention as it offers to be challenging and the opportunity for the economy to reverse the de-capitalization.