Diary of a Rural Manager!

In the previous blog post: Migration & India’s Languages , we have explored how India's linguistic diversity faces erosion from migration, yet initiatives like Project Vaani and Bhashini offer innovative preservation through tech and policy. India is entering a voice‑first digital era—from government helplines to hiring systems to multilingual chatbots. But voice AI can only be as good as the data behind it, and India’s linguistic diversity poses unique challenges and opportunities for building robust, inclusive models. This post explores data collection hurdles, metadata requirements, regional speech variations, and the rapidly evolving work of Indian and global AI labs in speech technology. 1. India’s Linguistic Terrain: A Voice AI Challenge Map High-Density Language Clusters:  Areas like Dimapur (Nagaland) host 40+ languages; others like Shajapur (MP) have only Hindi. Such regions exhibit:  Heavy code-mixing,  Rapid dialect shifts and  Low-script literacy Migr...

India is one of the world’s most linguistically rich countries—122 major languages and 1,600+ dialects weave together our cultural fabric. But as rural–urban migration, interstate mobility, and seasonal labour flows accelerate, the linguistic landscape is being reshaped in profound ways. 1. The Paradox : Migration can enrich languages through mixing (think Hinglish or Marathi–Konkani blends) while also eroding mother tongues when communities disperse or when children don’t get early literacy in their heritage languages. The outcome depends on who migrates, where, and how services respond. This blog post brings together the risks, the data gaps, the technology landscape, and a practical policy + product playbook to keep India’s linguistic diversity alive - not just in homes and schools, but inside our apps, helplines, and digital public infrastructure. 2. What’s Changing on the Ground: Heritage language loss among migrant children: Many children from tribal and migrant families are not ...

Today is World Refugee Day: There are now more displaced people on the planet than at any other time in human history. UN Security Council has failed to prevent war through negotiation, diplomacy, and sanctions. By the end of 2015, 65.3 million individuals had been driven from their homes as a result of persecution, conflict, generalized violence or human rights violations. Of these, 21.3 million were refugees, 40.8 million internally displaced persons (IDPs) and 3.2 million asylum-seekers (UNHCR, 2015a). The civil wars always have unfolded refugee crisis in every part of the world. The refugee choose to transit to safe locations and may become “stuck” in a country that was intended to be a pit stop on a longer journey. But why don’t refugees just stay in these countries such as India, Turkey or Greece? Human Rights as well as Living conditions of destination where migrants had most wanted to reach significantly affect their migration intention. The reasons for this are clear: poor...

Let me move ahead in the last part of Migrant Series. ( 1  and  2 ) .Whenever someone comes with an idea on research on the issue of migration and informal sector, there is complete lack of valid data on the nature and terms of employment, particularly in the informal sector. This is directly linked with the state’s unwillingness or inability to use resources for counting the large number of informal sector workers including child workers, bonded labour, migrant workers, home-based workers, domestic workers, and manual scavengers. A person migrate to a prosperous region due to low employment opportunities at home, low agricultural productivity, deeply entrenched feudalism, and negative industrial growth of the region. Due to irregular cash flow nature of agriculture, a household has no other option but to seek credit at exorbitant interest rates from the local money lender during an emergency situation. The household requires huge money for repayment that isn't much a...

Let us start from Migration Series - 1 . Once there was a popular myth: in the Government and Development Sector: Migration of 'poor' rural population is bad idea. Even when higher caste population was migrating towards cities for education, the government was launching various schemes on poverty reduction in the villages to prevent people from moving to the urban areas. So, why is the Migration Issue ? Migration – when it is safe, legal, and voluntary – is the oldest poverty-reduction and human-development strategy [ Migration, Development and Poverty Reduction in Asia ] . As per Wiggins & Keats [ Stepping out of agriculture ] - "Migration takes various forms, distinguished by:   Destination – international versus domestic, rural to urban, rural to rural and urban to urban; and,  Length of absence – permanent moves of a year or more, and seasonal moves – to which might even be added daily commuting." Many moves are not permanent, but vary from seasonal ...

One can't escape the plight of migrant labour while living in the KBK region. Most of the semi-skilled workers migrate to Gujarat. A large chunk of the migrants from Western Odisha are landless labourers and marginal farmers, not having access to any kind of irrigation facilities. They are employed in the brick-kilns of Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, and Uttar Pradesh. Nuakhai is the festival of eating newly-harvested paddy, celebrated in September or October. That is the season of mass migration of the seasonal workers. The recruiter and transporter are paid a commission by the brick kiln owner. The recruitment of labour in the brick kilns is done with the help of contractors/local sardars. They offer a token amount of a thousand as first-time advance to these people and confirmation of going for migrants. A family of three or four usually migrates after receiving the full payment, ranging from Rs. 30,000-40,000. It is quite normal for the labourers to use the cash advances...

Migration is the least developed aspect of globalization today as compared to foreign investment or fair trade. Here is a funny take on migrant and natural citizens in middle east society by comic Maz Jobrani, an Iranian-American and a founding member of the Axis of Evil Comedy Tour. Have a great weekend and more posts will be coming on migration issue!