India, Aug. 15 -- The run-up to India's 79th Independence Day has been mired in debates around citizenship and voting rights. The ongoing debate around Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls and controversies and claims and counterclaims about (West) Bengali migrant workers being dubbed Bangladeshis has also brought to fore questions about whether or not people being probed have enough documents. Another story in these pages earlier this week, looked at linguistic diasporas inside and outside India.

All this raises the question: What proportion of migrant workers actually transfer their documents when they move places within the country? The National Statistics Office (NSO) conducted a survey in 2020 that can help us answer ...