Published Apr 17, 2026 | 12:21 PM ⚊ Updated Apr 17, 2026 | 12:25 PM
File photo of the Hyderabad airport. (Official website)
Synopsis: According to the Telangana Socio-Economic, Educational, Employment, Political and Caste Survey 2024, most of the migrants in Telangana belonging to the SC and ST communities move to the Gulf communities, while general caste migrants move to the US, Europe or Oceania countries.
When a Lambada family from Mahabubabad district in Telangana sends a son abroad, he lands in Dubai or Riyadh. When a Brahmin family from Hyderabad does the same, he lands in California or London.
This is not a coincidence. It is what the data collected from the state says.
The Telangana Socio-Economic, Educational, Employment, Political and Caste (SEEEPC) Survey 2024, the most detailed caste survey any Indian state has conducted, tracked migration patterns across 3.55 crore people and 242 caste groups. What it found is that migration out of Telangana, whether to another country or another Indian state, splits along caste lines with a precision that leaves little room for alternative explanation.
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The Gulf countries, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), receive 42 percent of all international migrants from Telangana. They function as the primary destination for the state’s most deprived communities.
Scheduled Tribes send 61.1 percent of their international migrants to the Gulf. Scheduled Castes send 56.1 percent. Among urban BC-E Muslims, the Shaiks and Qureshis who appear near the top of the state’s backwardness rankings, 40.9 percent of international migrants head to the Gulf, more than double the urban state average.
These numbers reflect what migration means for these communities. It means manual labour. It means construction sites in Abu Dhabi and cleaning contracts in Qatar. It means leaving because there is no comparable work at home, not because a university offered a scholarship or a technology firm extended an offer.
The Independent Expert Working Group (IEWG), a nine-member panel constituted by the Telangana government in March 2025 to analyse the survey, noted that limited overseas migration from rural areas reflects barriers, including lower educational attainment and skill deficits. When marginalised communities do manage to go abroad, they enter labour markets, not knowledge economies.
General Caste communities tell a different story.
The US receives 37.6 percent of international OC migrants. The UK receives 9.5 percent. Europe accounts for a further significant share. Australia and Canada each receive 4.2 percent of OC international migrants.
For Scheduled Tribes, the USA receives 5.9 percent of international migrants. For Scheduled Castes, 5.8 percent. Australia and Canada each receive 0.7 percent of ST migrants.
The distance between these numbers is not a gap. It is a chasm.
Among OC migrants, 43.8 percent leave for higher studies. Among ST migrants, 17.4 percent do. The western corridor does not function as a labour market for forward caste communities. It functions as a finishing school, a career launchpad, a wealth escalator that compounds advantages across generations.
General Castes record an overall migration rate of 1.5 percent, the highest of any social group. Scheduled Castes record one percent.
The IEWG identifies the English medium divide as the mechanism that converts caste advantage into migration advantage.
66.3 percent of the General Caste youth study in English. Among Scheduled Tribes, that figure stands at 36.6 percent. Among Scheduled Castes, 40.7 percent.
English proficiency functions as the entry ticket to universities in the US and UK, to technology firms that recruit internationally, to the professional networks that make western migration possible. Without it, those doors do not open.
30 percent of OC children attend private schools, institutions that teach in English, build global connections and prepare students for international university applications. Among Scheduled Caste children, that figure stands at 9.6 percent. Among Scheduled Tribe children, 7.8 percent.
The IEWG report describes this as the birth lottery. The school a child attends, the language she studies in, and the networks her family holds access to, none of these flow from merit or effort. They flow from the caste a child is born into. That lottery determines not just whether she migrates, but where.
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The caste stratification of migration does not only operate internationally. It runs through domestic migration too.
39.6 percent of Telangana’s migrants move to other Indian states rather than abroad. Among those internal migrants, northern states receive 58.1 percent of the total flow. But among rural Scheduled Tribes who migrate within India, 84.3 percent move to northern states, typically for manual or seasonal agricultural labour.
General Castes and BC-E Muslims who migrate within India concentrate in southern states, which offer higher wage service sector employment. The same pattern that sends forward caste communities to California sends them to Bengaluru. The same pattern that sends Adivasi workers to Saudi Arabia sends them to Bihar.
Narayanpet records a unique pattern where 94.5 percent of those who leave move to other Indian states rather than going abroad. This is a district where the rural underage marriage rate reaches 6.7 percent for girls and where ST and SC communities record among the lowest SSC completion rates in the state. Migration here functions as displacement, not mobility.
The economic consequences of this divide compound over time.
Urban and forward caste households that receive remittances from the US and UK use that income to fund further education, accumulate assets and build professional networks for the next generation. Car ownership among OC households stands at 9.2 percent, against 1.5 percent among SC households. The wealth gap does not close with migration. For communities plugged into the western corridor, it widens in their favour.
Gulf remittances, by contrast, cover immediate household needs. They pay down debt, cover medical expenses and fund marriages. They do not typically generate the surplus that builds intergenerational wealth in the way that professional salaries from New York or London do.
The IEWG report, in its closing chapter, calls for what it describes as a social justice tap, delivering targeted resources, including English medium proficiency, vocational training and financial assistance for higher studies directly to the most deprived households.
The survey data make the case for why this matters. Only 0.8 percent of Telangana households have a member working in another state or country. Migration remains a limited phenomenon. But within that small group, the destination gap between communities tells the story of how caste operates in the 21st century.
It does not just determine where you sit in a village hierarchy. It determines which airport you fly out of and which country stamps your passport.
The Adivasi worker lands in Dubai. The Brahmin graduate lands in San Francisco. The survey shows this is not a circumstance. It is structured.
(Edited by Muhammed Fazil.)
