Employment, unpaid work dominate Nagaland’s overnight trips

Moa JamirDimapur | October 11While social and religious gatherings remain the most common reason for overnight travel in Nagaland, the State's travel patterns are significantly more anchored in livelihoods and household services, with employment, job-seeking, and unpaid activities accounting for unusually high shares, according to the first-ever National Household Travel Survey (NHTS) 2025–26.As per the survey factsheet released by the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI) this week, among households that reported an overnight trip during the reference period, 39.5% reported socialising, communication, or religious activities as one of the purposes of travel.This was considerably lower than the 70.2% recorded nationally, making Nagaland one of the States with the lowest shares for this category.Instead, the State recorded comparatively high shares across several employment- and responsibility-related categories, according to the survey. The survey defines a trip as travel covering a distance of more than 1 km.Seeking employment or setting up a business accounted for 6.2% of reported purposes, while employment and related activities accounted for 5.6%, bringing combined livelihood-related travel to 11.8%.Nagaland also stood out in the category of own-use production of goods, which accounted for 2.9%—the second-highest share nationally and the highest recorded among the North-East States.Furthermore, unpaid domestic services for household members accounted for 9.3%, the highest share among all States and Union Territories. By comparison, the national figure stood at just 1.2%.A further 3.3% of reported purposes related to unpaid caregiving, while 4.2% involved unpaid voluntary, trainee, or other unpaid work, making the latter the second-highest share nationally.Within the North-East, Nagaland recorded the highest share for employment and related activities at 5.6% among States with reported values.For seeking employment or setting up a business, its 6.2% ranked second in the region, just behind Meghalaya's 6.6%.The State's pattern diverges sharply from the national distribution. At the all-India level, 70.2% of households reporting overnight travel listed socialising, communication, or religious activities. Meanwhile, Nagaland's shares for unpaid domestic services, employment-related activity, and seeking employment all substantially exceeded their corresponding national figures of 1.2%, 3.5%, and 2.5%, respectively.Thus, apart social or religious purposes, data suggest that livelihood issues feature considerably overnight mobility livelihood in Nagaland. However, it must be noted here that survey travelling purposes are not mutually exclusive and households could report multiple reasons for a single trip.Meanwhile, the survey also recorded 96.6% for “return home” among Nagaland's reported overnight-trip purposes, nearly identical to the national figure of 96.7%.What is NHTS?The NHTS is the first dedicated all-India household travel survey conducted by the by the National Statistical Office (NSO) under MoSP between July 2025 and June 2026Coveing 4,92,023 households and 20,34,371 persons, spread across 14,274 villages and 10,377 urban blocks, it sought to capture how people travel within the country, including the purpose of trips, modes of transport, frequency of travel, travel duration and distance.In Nagaland, the survey covered 4,009 households 1,913 in rural areas and 1,780 in urban areas and 7,067 persons.