Why Odisha’s Youth Are Leaving Home
By | Dr. Sashi Sekhar Samanta |
Across Odisha, a quiet but powerful migration is reshaping families, villages, and even the state’s future. From coastal districts to interior tribal belts, young men and women are leaving their homes in growing numbers—heading to Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Pune, Delhi, Mumbai, and increasingly overseas. This movement is not merely about ambition; it is a reflection of deep structural gaps between aspiration and opportunity within the state.
At the heart of this exodus lies the employment question. Odisha has made visible progress in infrastructure, welfare delivery, and industrial investment, yet job creation has not kept pace with the rising number of educated youth. Engineering graduates drive taxis, postgraduates prepare endlessly for competitive exams, and diploma holders wait years for stable employment. The result is frustration. For many young Odias, leaving home feels less like a choice and more like a necessity.
Education itself has become a trigger for migration. While Odisha has universities and colleges across districts, quality higher education and professional exposure remain concentrated in a few urban pockets. Students migrate early—for coaching, for degrees, for “better exposure.” Once they leave, few return. Cities outside Odisha offer not only better institutions but also stronger industry linkages, internships, and campus-to-corporate pathways that local institutions often lack.
Economic migration is also driven by wage disparity. A skilled worker or IT professional can earn two to three times more outside the state. Even blue-collar workers find steadier incomes in other states. Families encourage this movement, seeing remittances as survival tools. But this has a hidden cost: villages hollowed of youth, ageing parents left behind, and communities losing their most productive population.
Urban centres within Odisha, particularly Bhubaneswar, have not fully absorbed this demographic pressure. Despite being projected as a “smart city,” Bhubaneswar struggles with limited private-sector depth, rising living costs, and a mismatch between degrees and jobs. Young people often describe the city as “comfortable but stagnant”—a place to live, not to grow.
Social factors also play a role. Youth today seek freedom, exposure, and dignity of work. Outside Odisha, they find ecosystems that reward merit faster, tolerate experimentation, and offer social mobility. For many women, migration is also an escape from conservative constraints, limited career options, and safety concerns in smaller towns.
Ironically, government welfare schemes—while essential—have not translated into aspiration-driven development. Subsidies can sustain households but cannot replace meaningful employment. Youth do not want dependency; they want dignity. They want to build careers, not wait endlessly for recruitment notifications.
The long-term consequences of this migration are serious. Odisha risks losing its demographic dividend. A state without youth leadership becomes dependent on external labour, external ideas, and external growth engines. Cultural continuity weakens when the next generation grows up away from home.
Reversing this trend does not mean stopping migration altogether—mobility is natural in a global economy. But Odisha must become a place where returning is possible and staying is attractive. This requires serious investment in job-linked education, district-level industrial clusters, start-up ecosystems beyond Bhubaneswar, and private-sector confidence-building. Youth must see futures here, not just memories.
Until then, the buses and trains will remain full—carrying Odisha’s hopes outward, one young life at a time.
