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India’s internal migration story
Read more on - Polity | Economy | Schemes | S&T | Environment
- A large number: In March 2020, India saw the Covid-induced nationwide lockdowns and countless distressing images of migrant workers walking back to their homes — often hungry and utterly hassled, and often with small children in tow.
- The 2020 situation: Covid caseload has declined sharply, and the vaccine is being rolled out across the country. Economic activity is on the mend — the Index of Industrial Production has grown and the RBI says capacity utilisation, as well as consumer sentiment, has improved even as retail inflation has finally started receding. Presumably, some, if not all, of the migrant workers have started returning to work.
- Learnings about internal migration:
- As of 2020, India has an estimated 600 million migrants (60 crore). In other words, roughly half of India is living in a place where it wasn’t born. If one imagines all these migrants as one nation then not only would that nation be the third-largest country on the planet — that is, after China and India — but also, it would be roughly double the size of the fourth-largest nation on the planet — the United States.
- This doesn’t mean that 600 million Indians were crisscrossing between Indian states in 2020. That’s because the bulk of the internal migration in India is within one district itself. An estimated 400 million Indians “migrate” within the district they live in. The next 140 million migrate from one district to another but within the same state. And only about 60 million — that is, just 10% of all internal migrants — move from one state to another.
- From a Covid perspective, the 400 million that migrate within the same district were less of a worry. But 200 million were broadly affected by the Covid disruption. Even within these 200 million, only about 140 millions migrated for earning a livelihood. The balance is family members who migrate with the bread-earner.
- There are other misconceptions as well. Typically, it is thought that most migration happens when people from rural areas move to urban areas. That is incorrect. The most dominant form of migration is from rural to rural areas. Only about 20% of the total migration (600 million) is from rural to urban areas.
- That is not to suggest that urban migration is not important. In fact, 20% of the total migration is from one urban area to another urban area. As such, urban migration (rural to urban as well as urban to urban) accounts for 40% of the total migration.
- But even at these staggeringly high absolute numbers, India’s proportion of internal migrants (as a percentage of the overall population) is much lower than some of the comparable countries such as Russia, China, South Africa and Brazil — all have much higher urbanisation ratios, which is a proxy for migration level.
- Not all migrants were equally affected. The worst-hit were a class of migrants called “vulnerable circular migrants”. These are people who are “vulnerable” because of their weak position in the job market and “circular” migrants because even though they work in urban settings, they continue to have a foothold in the rural areas. Such migrants work in construction sites or small factories or as rickshaw pullers in the city but when such employment avenues dwindle, they go back to their rural setting. In other words, they are part of the informal economy outside agriculture. (75% of the informal economy outside agriculture)
- Close to 60 million moved back to their “source” rural areas in the wake of pandemic-induced lockdowns. That number is roughly six-times the official estimates. That estimate also gives a measure of the sense of labour shock that India’s economy faced as migrants moved back.
- Approach to labour class: Why could India not take better care of its migrant workers in 2020? The answer is "ignorance fuelled by indifference". The truth is that even now all estimates mentioned above are individual estimates. The official data — be it the Census or the National Sample Survey — is more than a decade old. In fact, Census 2011 migration data was made publicly available only in 2019.
- A whole new approach: It's time for the government to offer strong, credible and latest data, so that proper policymaking is enabled. Till then, large policy announcements will keep sending shockwaves through this group of citizens.
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