Against popular belief, percentage of migrants have remained fairly stable

In India, broadly 29% of the population comprises migrants and surprisingly this number has remained fairly consistent since 2007-08 barring minor blips

The rumour of attacks on migrant workers in Tamil Nadu and the subsequent backlash from political parties has once again brought into focus the topic of migrants and whether they get preferential treatment vis-à-vis sons of the soil.

Migration has been an age-old phenomenon in human civilisations and there are a variety of reasons for migration but perhaps the most consistent and regular among them is economic factors.

When cities grow, people tend to move from villages to urban centers in search of better opportunities and livelihood.

India has a migrant population of about 29 per cent; surprisingly, the number has remained fairly consistent since 2007-08, data shows.
 

In the recently released 78th round of Multiple Indicator Survey by the National Sample Survey Office (NSSO) for the period of 2020-21, around 29.1 per cent of people reported their current place of residence different from the last usual place of residence.

This number in 2007-08 was around 28.5 per cent.

Some reports show that there is a minor drop in urban migration numbers in 2020-21 but experts said that could be due to the fact that not all the people who have gone back to their native place during pandemic would not have returned to the cities.

Barring this, the number of migrants has remained fairly stable over a long period of time, which shows that despite challenges economic considerations remain an overriding factor that tempts people to leave their homes in search of better lives.

Noted academicians and researchers, Amitabh Kundu who is a Senior Fellow of the US-based World Resources Institute along with P C Mohanan wrote in a recent piece that while the number of migrants would have gone up, their shares in the population remain stable, negating the claims of any spurt in migration in recent years.

“Interestingly, among the large states, the migration rates have increased significantly in southern India over that of 2007-08 while it has declined in most north Indian states. Studies based on field data, too, suggest that most of the migrants have returned back to their destinations with the withdrawal of travel restrictions over the past few months. One can notice that differences in employment opportunities and earnings overwhelm and overcome the factors behind short-term crises, reinforcing the increase in north-south mobility, backed up by demographic factors like changes in fertility rate and age composition,” Kundu and Mohanan wrote in their piece.

The duo further wrote that the demographic advantage that northern states in the country such as Bihar, UP, Jharkhand, etc enjoy over southern states like Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, and Karnataka will ensure that migration from the North of India to South will continue to happen in the future as well.

“A look at the age structure of the population also provides the possible directions for migration across the states. The southern states have an aging population. People above the age of 60 years are as high as 16 per cent in Kerala, followed by Tamil Nadu (13.6 per cent), and Andhra Pradesh (12.4 per cent) according to the 2021 projections. These are lower than in Bihar (7.7 per cent), Jharkhand (8.4 per cent), Uttar Pradesh (8.1 per cent), and Madhya Pradesh (8.5 per cent)," the academics wrote in their piece.

One can, therefore, argue that long-term trends in population mobility would be determined by these, although health and politics-related factors would bring in short-term disturbances, they concluded.

In another article, the writers said that the popular narrative, reinforced by visuals from the media, of millions of people on the move following the lockdown did create an impression that migration patterns both in rural and urban areas have changed drastically from the past patterns.

"The survey does not fully support this narrative. It suggests that there were significant movements of people after March 2020, but this is likely to have been reversed in subsequent periods. While students and certain categories of workers such as professionals from the IT sector could study or work from home, most of the workers in the informal sector could not afford this and returned back, without any improvement in their living or working conditions. Economic compulsions prevailed in bringing the migrants back to their urban destinations," they said.