The migrants have always been an important and inherent part of our country’s economy  due to their huge contribution to the nation’s GDP. Disha Foundation has been a pioneer in working with migrants, to safeguard the overall welfare of this crucial segment of India’s population.

Dr Anjali Borhade, while working in the development and health sector, got acquainted with the migrant groups from the nearby tribal villages of Nashik district. After a few interactions with them, she concluded that their contribution to the economy and their plight in terms of earning their livelihood, health and protection measures, were not given any significance, although they were indispensable for the growth of the economy. The government and society seemed oblivious of their poor living and health conditions.

So, to give them some direction, Disha Foundation, a NGO headquartered in Nasik, Maharashtra was formed in 2002 with the vision of facilitating safer and productive labour migration. Though this organisation focussed on the health issues of migrants initially, later it laid emphasis on holistic development of migrants such as their means to livelihood, acceptance in the society, living conditions, job support, social and economic exploitation, financial inclusion and legal support. 

Disha’s advocacy, research and policy interventions have been based on extensive research and learning under the passionate leadership of Dr Anjali, as she has extensive national and international experience of working in migration sector. Her PhD from Oxford University was focussed on migration policies in low- and middle-income countries; she travelled to more than 12 countries while pursuing her PhD. She has provided technical support to World Health Organisation for drafting global and regional strategy and action plan for migrants’ and refugees’ health.

Disha’s operational model addresses the issues of migrant workers through Migration Support Centres which is one stop solution for migrants to access different services, such as skilling, job support, legal support, awareness and inclusion in various health and social security programs. Disha has scaled up the migrant worker support programme in Goa, and Delhi-NCR.

Disha has facilitated tie-ups with several government offices like Tribal development and other ministries such as Education, Labour, Skill Development and Health in this regard. 

During the pandemic specifically, a lot of discussions with the health and labour department created a pragmatic approach to address the needs of the migrant workers. Livelihood migration by tribal workers is high followed by Scheduled Castes and Other Backward Castes. Eventually, Ministry of Tribal Affairs commissioned a national study to Disha Foundation, to understand situation of tribal livelihood migration in India, issues faced by tribal migrants and existing policies to address those issues, their successes and challenges.  In the light of the study findings, and pertaining situation of COVID, MoTA developed comprehensive action plan to support tribal migrants at source and destination ends. 

To address the problem of unavailability of migrants data, their sociodemographic profile, status of social security, and social inclusion, an evidence-based digital data repository, ‘Shram Shakti’ has been set up by the Ministry of Tribal Affairs to help the Government track and plan better remedial policies that will be available to 27 states. Ministry has also developed information manual ‘ShramSaathi’ for tribal and other migrants both in video and in manual form for easier access to them. This information manual aims to empower and create awareness amongst the workers to avail their rights and entitlements. Disha Foundation has provided technical support to ministry for development of Shramshakti and Shramsaathi.  

Despite many initiatives, over the years, Disha Foundation was entangled in challenges at every step as the operations scaled rapidly from few states to nationally. There was very limited support of the government in the NGO’s endeavour to focus on the migrants along with bottlenecks in the domain of funding. However, existence of few short-term donors and their contribution was a big respite during the COVID times.

In addition to migration related issues, Disha Foundation works actively in diverse areas of public health. This includes communicable diseases such as Tuberculosis in Maharashtra for prevention and treatment among migrant and other vulnerable populations. Disha works with Government for universal access to TB care, where TB screening and treatment is made available for patients free of cost within private health facilities in addition to government ones. Every year, Disha reachesup to 5 lakh people for screening. So far, we have identified and linked 35000 TB suspects, and treated 12,000 TB patients successfully.  In Non-communicable disease, Disha work on awareness and screening for breast and cervical cancers – the two biggest cancers among women in India 

Disha’s strong association with more than 6,00,000 migrants has fostered some visibility on the plight of the migrants and their interventions at the local, state and national levels to ensure an inclusive development.  A strong referral network and spread of word of mouth reputation of Disha among migrants has inculcated trust and confidence in due course of time.

Striding innumerable challenges, Disha has been successful in establishing long-term connects, amidst across the table discussions and negotiations with the Government. The organization has been instrumental in facilitating state specific migrant worker aid initiatives, and facilitating technical support for active inclusion of migrants into existing programs of food security, health, livelihood, legal support with adequate support from the government. Union Ministry of Tribal Affairs has recognised Disha as a ‘Centre of Excellence in Migration’, to provide technical support to 27 states for execution of migration data repository, execution of information manual for migrants, and technical support to various departments for integrating migrants welfare into existing programs such as health, education, skilling, social security.

One needs to be well researched about the target population about things such as the livelihood situation, and existing programs and policies governing the current situation and future improvement measures for migrants. While working with any organization, the basic assessment or a pre- and post-intervention study should be done, to analyse one’s own impact of the work done along with the improvements at community level.

Disha Foundation has further upgraded its migration support programme and made it digital for greater and more sustainable reach, by developing an android mobile app "Shram Gaurav" along with a helpline for migrant workers.  This digital eco-system will provide support to migrants through basic services during migration, in order to reduce their distress and facilitate safer and productive migration.

Disha in a capacity of Center of Excellence in Migration will provide technical support to the Ministry of Tribal Affairs and  27 state government in three ways for - 

1. Execution of  Shram Shakti–the National Migration Repository
2. Execution of ShramSathi- Information Manual for Migrants workers at grassroot level through front line workers, civil society organization and employers’ associations of migrants. 
3. Co-ordination for Specific Migration support programmes in convergent action with national and state governments such as Ministry of Panchayati Raj Institutes, Ministry of Labour and Employment, Ministry of Rural Development and Ministry of Skill Development & Entrepreneurship & Ministry of Health & Family Welfare.

Disha has initiated several direct interventions with migrant communities with key focus on empowering them to access the available resources for their holistic development.  During COVID, migrants were worst affected due to job loss. Our focus shifted to providing immediate direct support to them, mainly food ration, hygiene kits in initial 3-4 months of lockdown, and later for job linkages and active inclusion in social security  meant for them during COVID such as Garib Kalyan Yojana.

During COVID times, Disha launched helpline and mobile app ‘Shram Gaurav’ for migrants, to provide them digital seamless access to our migrant support centres. They plan to scale up their app throughout India in tier 2 and tier 3 cities to support maximum workers through digital eco-system.

Disha Foundation has been doing a commendable work in the domain of migrants’ upliftment and empowerment, which is definitely worthy of accolades in the growth story of India.

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