Objective: Based on the Census reports this work analyses the significance of Rural-Urban migration in India since 2001. It attempts to show how rural-urban movement is the most important livelihood strategy among all the migration patterns.
Methods: This study uses the migration series data from Census of India to look into the scenario of internal labour mobility in India post liberalisation. Besides data form Census 1991, 2001 and 2011, few NSSO data have also been included in the study. Migrations categorised by distance, by direction and by sex have been studied together to find interrelationships among them. The study broadly categorises migration reasons as economic and non-economic.
Finding: The examined data reveals that since liberalisation, the population of the country has increased by 43.8% and the fraction of migrants has gone up by 10%. Over 37% of the country’s population are migrants but figures could be misleading because around half of all migrants move for marital reasons. Rural to rural movements are predominant and only just over 10% of the total migration are employment/business related movements.
Application: It is noticed that people choose to move short distances within the state. Volume of intra and inter district movements is high and most of it is of rural to rural nature. Women mostly migrate short distances largely to and from rural region which primarily are for marital reasons. However whenever people move across state borders most of it are urban bound. Inter-state migrations are also more motivated by economic reasons. Larger fractions of inter-state migrations are of rural-urban nature and directly associated to work/employment/business reasons. In fact rural-urban movements are prominent when migrations for only direct economic reasons are considered.