Migration in India is a dynamic process and the 2011 Census reported over

41 million interstate migrants. In India, migration from rural to urban

areas accounts for around 18.9% of total migration, while migration
from urban to rural areas is 10.2%. Although rural to urban migration
has been dominant in western countries, India's rapid urban population
growth is also influenced by urban natural increase.
Around 10.8% migrate mainly for employment as per this census which amounts
to a total 4.14 crore people who have migrated for work & employment across the
country as per census 2011, and a total of 54.75 lakh have migrated to pursue
education. The impact of brain drain on the growth prospects of the country
loosing human capital is the phenomenon of internal movement of human capital
in search of education is not that well analyzed although there is a large literature
on internal migration in search of employment.

States like Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Orissa which
have a large concentration of poor have historically have had higher levels of
fertility and low levels of literacy. These states is a problem it is not surprising that
these states also have a shortage of institutes of higher learning. This leads to an
out flow of human capital to other states/regions. The most important states from
the perspective of migration for education are Delhi, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Uttar
Pradesh, Bihar, Andhra Pradesh, Kerala, West Bengal and Rajasthan. Of these
states, Delhi, Maharashtra, Karnataka are the main destinations (i.e. attracting
migrants from other states), whereas Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Kerala, Andhra Pradesh,
West Bengal and Rajasthan are the main source states of migrants.
The employment related reasons include in search of employment/better employment, for
employment/ work (to take up employment/ to take up better employment/ business/ proximity to
place of work/ transfer) and loss of job/closure of unit/lack of employment opportunities.

State wise Number of persons who moved in for work & Employment as per Census 2011 (Migrant
Workers)

S. No. States/UTs Persons

1 ANDAMAN & NICOBAR ISLANDS 52,129

2 ANDHRA PRADESH 37,37,316

3 ARUNACHAL PRADESH 1,19,244

4 ASSAM 5,72,064

5 BIHAR 7,06,557

6 CHANDIGARH 2,06,642

7 CHHATTISGARH 10,21,077

8 DADRA & NAGAR 63,77

Geographically India is divided into 29 states and 7 union territories. There is a

tremendous difference in the combined population size across the state. India
constitutes around 30 percent of the total population, which is around 309 million
persons were migrants based on place of last residence. As a result of rapid
economic growth for past few decades, since the initiation of economic reforms in
1990, India has been experiencing the rapid urbanization flow from rural to urban
migration. Urban population growth in the developing countries is far more rapid
than the population growth generally, about half the urban growth is accounted for
by migrants from rural areas.
The states of Delhi, Gujarat, Maharashtra and Karnataka receive 64.1 percent of
the intra state migrant workers in the age group 15-32 years. The states of Bihar
and Uttar Pradesh account for 59 percent of migrant workers who leave their place
of usual residence.
Cities in developing world are growing more rapidly that developed countries.
Inequalities, insecurity, humiliation, agony, poverty and human unhappiness are
also multiplying due to urbanization. These main problems will make worse,
especially when aided by population explosion and increasing migration. The total
population of India is 1028 million consisting of 532 millions males and 496
million females, according to 2001 census.

Migration from Rural to Urban areas

expands due to the following three
factors:
a) natural growth of population,
 b) reclassification of rural areas as
urban in course of time and
c) rural to urban migration. Around
2/5th of the total urban growth
in the Developing countries is
accounted by the rural to urban
migration.
More than a half of the urban labour
force works in the informal sector of
low-skilled, low productivity, often
self-employed jobs in pretty
sales and services.
The Harris and Todaro model says
that creating job opportunities in the
urban areas can actually lead to an
increase in unemployment by
attracting more migrants than the
new jobs. As per my experience in
India, many MNC’s are trying to
attract jobs for IT industry and
creating employment opportunities.
This has lead to a disaster because
there is more number of migrants
coming into the city in Mumbai,
Bangalore, Delhi, Chennai, etc looking
out for jobs. This has lead to increase
in the percentage of unemployment.
Due to these all these factors, it leads
to over crowded cities; excessive
migration also imposes external costs
on the rural as well as urban areas.
In 1901, the urban population was
only 25.85 million constituting around
only 10.84 percent of India’s
population and which has increased
to 285.85 million comprising 27.78
percentage of total population in
2001. The growth rate was highest
observed during 1971-81(46.14
percent) and later there was
slowing down of urbanisation. The
indicators of urbanization will give us
a brief idea of the growth rate of
urbanization in India in mid 1971
to 1981. In India we have census only
till 2001, so according to my
research there was re-
growth in urbanization due to IT
enabled services such as BPO, Back
office support, software "ASM’s
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373

development and these all factors

made the rural population come to
the larger cities in
search of a job, growing the urban
population.

Even though such urbanization in the

rural and urban areas are very
much interdependent on each other.
Urban cities provide several services
such as marketing of
agricultural products and inputs,
repairs of agricultural equipments and
also education and
health services to rural areas. Urban
areas are becoming important
because they are providing
services to the rural population; an
indicator called number of urban
centres per 10 lakh rural
populations is included. All the
statistics will tell us the number of
migrations from Rural to
Urban, there is no specific job
related migration to explain an
exact reason of migrating people.
But later in this paper we will discuss
the interstate migration, labour or
employment oriented migration.
Inter – state migration flows :
Migration from rural to urban would be
enough to measure the amount of
migrating population within the
country, the direction from which the
migrants moved can be used to
determine the pattern and structure of
internal migration.

From the largest three or four cities of

out-migration proportions of each
state, it is clear
that majority of the migrants have
moved to neighbouring states only.
However there are
exceptions for this. Due to the osmic
size of India and large differences in
physical and
cultural differences across India,
migration trends in this country
shows some specific
features.
As we can observe from census data,
with respect to distance of migration,
intra-state migration is the major
accounting of migration. More than a
half of migration took place within the
district and the numbers of migrants
decreased as the distance become
longer. But an interesting research
made by Eldis Community which says
that around 41 percentage of all
migrants, migrated to Maharashtra
from Uttar Pradesh even though
Maharashtra is not a border state.
Similarly, out migrants from Orissa
preferred Gujarat and Maharashtra as
the destination which contributes
around 34 percent.
In the case of Bihar, nearly 50 % of
them have migrated to West Bengal,
Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh and
Jharkhand. Bihar and Uttar Pradesh
together constitutes up to 70% of the
total migration in India.
More than 1/3rd of the Tamil Nadu
migrated to Karnataka and rest of
them choose mainly Kerala,
Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh. This
all together pattern shows that
Maharashtra has got the most
migrants from every part of India in
search of Labour or Professional job.
The reason behind it was Mumbai
because it is called the financial
Capital of India.
Reason of Migrations :
As we can see in the census, that the
employee oriented have gone in
search of (a) In search of employment
to (e) proximity to place of work and
their reason for their migration.
Labour work force stated that they
have migrated for current
employment or in search of a job. As
we can see that 45.5 % of male
migrants have reported employment
related reason for migration, while
just 2.2 % of female migrants have
reported employment and work
related reason for migration.
We can determine the pattern of
skilled and non-skilled labour by
determining the pattern
of education. As we can see that
the labour with higher level of
education qualification
migrates for employment and work
related reasons irrespective of
duration.
We can even see the difference
between male and female migration
on educational level.
Even the employment oriented
female migrants ranging from as low
as 1.1 percentage in
‘illiterate and primary’ to the
graduate is also lower than
compared to male. Higher
percentage of males have moved
for employment and related
reasons, ranging 37 % in primary
category to about 59 % in graduate
and above category. The above all
statistics we got to know how much
skilled and non-skilled labour
migrated. Even with the male and
female ratio, we could find that male
migration is the highest, but even
female migrates for work or mainly
they migrate with a
male/husband/family.
India has been collecting information
on the reasons of migration related to
the place of
last residence. The most important
reason for a female migration is the
marriage, accounting for more than
half of the migrants. This is because of
the Indian custom of women migrating
to her husband’s place after marriage.

More than 1/10th of the migrants

move because of business and
employment, while education
constitutes 2 % of all the migrants
(Bhagat, 2004).
The government servants transferring
from one place to another is treated
under National
Sample Survey (NSS).
Droughts and Floods sometimes occur
in many parts of India, so "ASM’s
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E-ISSN-2320-0065 INCON – X 2015
many people migrate due to that
reason. This was one of the reasons
recorded in 1981 and 1991 census.
This ratio has been dropped down
tremendously according to 2001
census
(National Sample Survey, 2001).

Even the survey has given

importance to the manmade
disasters like riots and social
disturbance as a reason of migration.
Terrorism is also causing local people
to migrate, who live on boarder areas
of India. Thousands of people are
getting displaced due to
construction of highway, industrial
establishment, and immigrating to
foreign countries.
In India woman give her first birth at
her parental house rather than her
husband’s place. The baby born at
parental house is a migrant. These are
few main reasons why people migrate
from one place to another.

Labour or Employment oriented

migration :
As we can see the migration of
labour and employment are growing
in all the three sectors like
agriculture, industries and service
employ very large number of Migrant
workers.
Many migrant labours are from textile,
construction, stone quarries and
mines, brick-Kilns, small scale
industries, crop transplanting and
harvesting, rickshaw pulling, food
processing including fish and prawn
processing, salt planning, domestic
work, security service etc...
The main reason for the migrants are
work and business, it is found that
employment
oriented migrants are quite small,
mostly the female migrants
compared to male migrants
giving employment or business as the
reason for their migration.
The migrants towards urban areas are
still more likely to be associated with
employment
oriented reasons. This table also
shows the percentage of female
migration is quite low,
whether it is urban or rural
migration. Around 40 % have moved
for work related reasons
from rural to urban areas (Lusome,
2006).

The United States hosted, by far, the highest number of immigrants in the world
in 2020. That year, there were over 50 million people born outside of the States
residing in the country. Germany and Saudi Arabia followed behind at around
16 and 13 million, respectively. There are varying reasons for people to emigrate
from their country of origin, from poverty and unemployment to war and
persecution. Position of India is 14.
India's refugees and displaced persons index stood at 4.1 in 2023, up from index
points in 2022. The index points had continuously declined from 2016 until
2022. The indicator considers the pressures upon states caused by the forced
displacement of communities, measuring both displacement within and out of
the country. The world average stands at 4.73. The higher the value, the higher
the refugee flow in a country.