Movement of people in space, often involving a change from the usual place of residence; but within the national boundaries is called internal migration. Putting it simply, movement of people for different purposes within the territory of India is internal migration in India.
Internal migration leads to the optimal allocation of human resources across the regional dimension. It results in a more efficient allocation of human resources to sectors and regions where they can be better utilised. This internal migration helps people do justice to their skills and expertise by helping them utilise the same optimally. For instance, one may move from a village to a fairly developed area for education which helps in polishing their skills and building other such qualities. A landless labourer, who is a victim of starvation in his native place, if moves to an industrial area for better living, internal migration will have succeeded in proving its worth.
Overview Of The Statistics For India
The number of internal migrants in India was 450 million as per the most recent 2011 census. This is an increase of 45% over the 309 million recorded in 2001. This far exceeds the population growth rate of 18% across 2001-2011. Internal migrants as a percentage of the population increased from 30% in 2001 to 37% in 2011.
Despite the significant increase in internal migration recorded in 2011, the nature of movement remains relatively unchanged since 2001. The bulk of the movement (62%) is within the same district. Another 26% is between districts within the same state. Only 12% of the movement is inter-state.
In 2011, only 4% of the population of India represented internal migrants, which is a rate almost unchanged since 2001. For those moving in less than 5 years, this value was even smaller at around 1% for both censuses. This was significantly less than the five-year interval inter-state migration rate of almost 10% in the US and nearly 5% in China (despite the internal movement controls there known as the hukou system). This shows the lowest rate when it comes to India’s internal migration which is a cause for concern and which directly affects the optimum resource allocation for the country.
The Drivers Of Low Internal Migration
According to a World Bank paper which uses 2001 census data, the reasons for the low rate of internal migration are:
(a) Non-portability of entitlements (such as the Public Distribution System).
(b) Preferential norms in educational institutions.
(c) Domicile requirements for state government jobs.
With the introduction of Aadhar based benefits, issues with the Public Distribution System are resolved, but the government has to make policies and improve the norms in other fields to facilitate lucid internal migration.
An interesting feature of India’s migration is that the majority of the migrants are women (63 % in the 5-year period in 2011) and little more than half reported marriage as a reason for migration. It is customary in India that women move to the husband’s household after marriage from the earlier household of parents. This is essentially a change in the usual place of residence and very much qualifies as an act of migration when the movement is across the village and town boundaries.
The mean age of marriage for women in India is around 20 years, which is also close to the peak of migration, around 22 years. In contrast to the majority of women migrating due to marriage (more than 50 per cent), only 4 per cent of them migrate due to employment-related reasons, which remain identical between 2001 to 2011.
How Do Indian States Fare When It Comes To Internal Migration?
Migration flows from the place of origin to the place of destination and is defined as in-migration in relation to the place of destination and out-migration in relation to the place of origin. This flow is governed by a number of spatial forces such as the level of education, economic development, job opportunities etc in the given area. For instance industrialisation in western Europe triggered rural to urban migration leading to urbanisation and growth of cities. In India, the setting up of manufacturing zones and industrial hubs led to the emergence of regional disparities that India had never seen before accompanied by the movement of people to the new territories and locations of manufacturing, commerce and business.
The in and out-migration is quite evident from the example of states like Maharashtra, Gujarat, Tamil Nadu Karnataka, Punjab, Haryana and West Bengal which have been leading in industrial development since the days of the British and also have been taking advantage of the nuclei of growth poles of three port cities namely Kolkata, Mumbai, and Chennai which resulted in them, in-migrating people. On the other hand, a vast swathe of central, eastern and north-eastern India are comprised of out-migrating states with low levels of urbanization. This part also harbours the majority of India’s 100 million-plus tribal population. These areas are also characterized by high population growth, high level of poverty and illiteracy. The out-migrating areas remained consistent throughout the period and they also have a larger share, both in terms of area and population compared to in-migrating states.
The states of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar which comprise of one-fourth of India’s population are known as chronic migrant-sending states. With an outflow of 2.1 and 1.3 million in a 5-year period in 2001 i.e more than one-third of the total inter-state out-migration. These two states are also almost at the bottom of India’s economic development. On the other hand, among the in-migrating states, Maharashtra tops the list of states with 2 million in-migrants followed by Delhi with 1.1 million in-migrants in five-year period in 2001. While these two states comprise of just 11 per cent of India’s population, they receive about 30 per cent of the total inter-state migrant population
Internal Migration Comes With Its Share Of Challenges
Internal migration also brings challenges with it. Emigration in large numbers can alter the demographic profiles of communities, as most of the young men move out, leaving only the women and elderly to work on the land. Migrant workers are deprived of many opportunities to exercise their political rights like the right to vote. And the violation of the right to vote results in a violation of many other rights.
Population Explosion and the Influx of workers in the place of destination increases competition for the jobs, houses, school facilities etc and a large population puts too much pressure on natural resources, amenities, and services. This results in their living in shanty colonies which makes them prone to the explosion of epidemics. Illiterate and underskilled migrants are not only unfit for most jobs, because of a lack of basic knowledge and life skills but are also prone to victimization by exploitation, trafficking, psychological abuse, and gender-based violence in the case of female migrants.
Internal migration is not viewed positively in India and policies are often aimed at reducing internal migration, as a result, there is a lack of integration of migration with the process of development. We may get a clear picture from the example of Maharashtra where they wanted the jobs and resources to be reserved for Marathi people (The concept of “son of soil“). This often results in exploitation and harassment of the migrants of other states.
The Human Development Report by United Nation Development Programme (2009) highlights that migration is integral to the process of human development and it plays a very important role in achieving sustainable development goals, thereby preventing migration could even be counterproductive. Hence India needs to formulate migration-centric policies, strategies and institutional mechanisms in order to ensure inclusive growth and development and reduce distress induced migration, thereby increasing India’s prospects for poverty reduction and achieving Sustainable Development Goals.
Migration is an important process which prevents many rural families from slipping to poverty. Though it disturbs the demography of a particular area, it helps the surplus agricultural labourer or the disguised unemployed get a better living and learn skills which earns them a better livelihood.
The efficiency of labour use and poverty reduction are the most important things which migration achieves. There are a number of problems which migrants often face.
This could lead to policy options to enhance rates of inter-state migration to boost optimization of human resources in the spatial dimension and thereby reduce poverty and boost shared prosperity.