In February, 2026, The Migration Story reported on an WhatsApp chatbot Bandhu, being used to create a digital trace of migrant workers in the eastern Indian state of Odisha. 

The seemingly simple initiative is critically important to map a scattered workforce. 

India has an estimated 140 million inter-state migrant workers, according to nonprofits and researchers who point to large gaps in data on their numbers and locations. 

This has led to inadequate and delayed responses during emergencies such as the Covid-19 pandemic, when tens of thousands of workers were forced to walk home after the central government imposed a nationwide lockdown in a disorganised attempt to stop the virus from spreading.

While states had then promised to count their migrant workforce, they remained largely on paper, with a majority of the migrants remaining undocumented.

The Migration Story’s ground report by Aishwarya Mohanty cited government data to show that more than 400 migrant workers from Odisha have died over the last nine years while working in other states.

The story built on previous reportage on the Odisha-Kerala migration corridor which showed how lack of this data was impairing delivery of basic services – be it social security for migrant workers in cities or financial aid in medical emergencies or even death.

The story added timely, ground-level insight into why existing systems often fail and how alternative, accessible tools like Bandhu chatbot could bridge that gap.

The story was done with a solutions approach, highlighting the potential and also the limitation of scalability given the modest smartphone penetration in the region.

The story travelled widely, was co-published by The Guardian, bringing global attention to a hyper-local solution and reinforcing its relevance beyond just a state. Social media posts on the story garnered attention – the Instagram and LinkedIn posts received 7000 views. https://www.instagram.com/reel/DVkzRDyCavg/?igsh=NHpjaHg0d2FkcXM=

It captured an early-stage intervention and the voices surrounding it, which is now being taken forward by nonprofit Gram Vikas, which will present it to the top labour bureaucrat in Odisha as an example of a scalable, people-centric solution. The organisation said the 

will help push conversations on migrant visibility and registration, as a tool of advocacy.

In its delivery of this series of stories focussed on one corridor, The Migration Story also showed the importance of subject-based collaborations with organisations that have their ear to the ground which enriches the narrative and supports reporters travelling to these distant locations to gather evidence. 

The two other stories in this series were about families who couldn’t get a last glimpse of their family member, a migrant worker in Kerala who died, as they had no funds to bring the body home for last rites. Another story dealt with the empowering of a local community through remittances. The third explored the chatbot solution to count migrants.