Economic Survey 2016-17: Chapter-12: India on the Move and Churning: New Evidence

In this chapter, the survey has done an analysis of strong patterns of internal migration in India. The survey says that labour moves to urban centres and across the states, we have always known this. The free movement of labour is one thing that makes sure that free market is working. The free movement of labour also buttresses the model of competitive federalism.

The survey says that everywhere in the world, competition results in a scenario where a low income regions {states or nations or continents} grow quicker in comparison to high income regions. This leads to income convergence as low income areas start to catch up with the high income areas.

The key features of migration in India as per Census 2011 data are as follows:

• People move from less affluent states to more affluent states
• 33 million or 8.1% of Indian workforce were migrants for economic reasons.
• Over 80% of these migrants were male.
• Labour mobility also appears to be low because urbanization rates have not picked up sharply over the years,

However, the survey points out that the new studies {based on so called Cohort based Migration Metric (CMM) / Gravity Model} have contradicted the census data and shown that there is much more migration in India. The new studies have suggested that:

• Migration trends in India tends to be circular in nature both in short term and long term and are not captured properly by Census.
• Female migration for work is concealed in ‘reason-for-migration’ statistics because the principal reason given to the enumerator is ‘marriage’ or ‘moved with household.
• Commuter migration for work across the rural-urban divide is also substantial in India, exceeding 10 million people in 2009-10.
• The slow pace of Indian urbanization is rooted in the demographic divergence between rural and urban natural growth rates and not necessarily in low or stagnant rates of migration

Thus, the alternative measures estimated share of migrants in the workforce to lie between 17%, which is much greater than 8.1% indicated by census 2001.

Further:

• Migrant flows between states are lower than flows within states. Estimates suggest that on average flows within states are around four times the flows across states.
• Within India, in both trade and labour flows, language doesn’t seem to matter for migrants which vindicate the founding fathers’ permissive approach to India’s linguistic cleavage.
• Distance has a strong negative effect on labor flows.
• The adjoining state border effect (contiguity) is positive suggesting that migration is higher in the adjacent states even after controlling for distance
• The largest recipient was the Delhi region, which accounted for more than half of migration in 2015-16, while Uttar Pradesh and Bihar taken together account for half of total out-migrants.
• Maharashtra, Goa and Tamil Nadu had major net in-migration, while Jharkhand and Madhya Pradesh had major net out-migration.

Further, the Southern states have witnessed increased in-migration trends, reflecting the opening up of new migration corridors in recent years.  Language is now NOT a significant barrier in migration of the people – this is something which allays the apprehensions of nations forefathers.