Luxmi Nautiyal

As an only child, Luxmi Nautiyal grew up in a protective environment, never venturing out to explore her environment alone. But once she joined IndiaUnheard, Luxmi surprised herself as well as her community by integrating so fully that she is now, as a Community Correspondent, a pioneering spirit bent on addressing environmental, educational, and children’s rights issues.

The state has very high rate of migration: 25%. It also has 58% unemployment rate The economy of the region is often mentioned as “Post Office/Money Order economy” indicating the money being sent home by people working outside the state.

92% migrants were literate and 87% of them were formally educated. Most of migration were in these prime of working age. The places where people of Uttarakhand migrate to are usually Delhi and Punjab. While some manage to find employment with the government, most find work in unorganized industrial sectors.

Luxmi Nautiyal, the correspondent of this video has been witnessing large scale migration in her own community which lives in Gairsain locality of Chamoli district. Because of this, cultivable land is now lying barren as the land owners have left the village.
Luxmi, who is pursuing post graduation studies and is forced to stay out of Gairsain, considers herself a partial migrant. According to Luxmi a lot of students like her would stop migrating to other states if Uttarakhand had more colleges and vocational training institutes.

Introducing new job, work opportunity and self-employment schemes would also help check migration a lot, feels Luxmi.