Development without Livelihood Security? Examining the Contradictions between Rural Employment Policies and Labour Migration in Odisha

In order to prevent distress migration, employment guarantees in rural areas are often provided. Odisha offers a thorough evaluation of this claim. Seasonal outflows from the state’s southern and western districts persist because of an advance-based contracting system that predates and has outlived later employment initiatives, despite the fact that the state has created new top-up programs for its most migration-prone blocks. The reasons why employment policy and labour migration continue to diverge are examined in this essay. A structured narrative review of peer-reviewed studies, working papers, and official documents identifies five contradictions: between a legal guarantee and rationed supply; between delayed public wages and immediate private advances; between wage work and debt-mediated recruitment; between a livelihood logic that sees migration as a coping or accumulation strategy and a policy logic that seeks to prevent migration; and between the promise of expanded entitlement and the fiscal recentralization brought about by the VB-G RAM G Act, 2025. The study claims that Odisha’s experience reflects development without livelihood security: programs create assets and workdays but fail to address the wage, credit, and bargaining relations that require migration. The conclusion discusses the policy implications for portable entitlements, timely wage payment, credit replacement, and migrant-sensitive planning.