Northern Arc Market Share Analysis for November 2025

BACKGROUND India’s national lock-down announced on March 22, 2020 following the COVID-19 outbreak highlighted the desolate plight of internal migrant workers, who constitute around 30% of the total workforce of around 500 million. Due to the suddenness of the lockdown announcement, the workers were stuck at various parts of the country waiting to return home, thronging bus and railway stations, and often eventually undertaking the journey on foot due to there being no alternative options being available. Taking cognizance of this situation, the Government of India took several measures for the return of these migrant workers to their home destinations, such as State Governments arranging for bus services, which are estimated to have transferred about 5 million migrant workers during April 2020; and over 3,200 “shramik” trains arranged in May 2020, sponsored by the Central and State Governments, which are estimated to have transferred another 5 million inter-state migrant workers. While these are the official numbers for transfer facilitated by the Government, it is estimated that about 20-25 million workers – which forms 15-20% of total migrant workforce – would also have migrated to their hometowns during the lockdown by various other means. The pattern of reverse migration has been distinctly unidirectional, i.e., from the relatively economically progressive states in the Western and Southern parts of India to the relatively less developed Eastern parts of the country.   In this note, we assess the migration pattern in the country, its economic impact on the households and the overlap of the migrant households with microfinance borrowers to estimate the impact on the industry.   INTERNAL MIGRATION IN INDIA While a large part of the migration in India is contributed by women shifting homes after marriage, as per the Economic Survey of India in 2017, the total work-related internal migration was estimated to be over 100 million. This estimate is significant