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A study of Rural To Urban Migration In India

Conference Paper · January 2015

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"ASM’s International E-Journal on
Ongoing Research in Management and IT" E-ISSN-2320-0065

Title: A study of Rural To Urban Migration In India

Mr. Rakesh Kumar Bhati,

Associate Prof.
ASM’s IBMR - Chinchwad, Pune.
Email Id : rakeshbhati @asmedu.org,

ABSTRACT :
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. 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.

Objective of paper :
In this paper we are going to discuss; what drives Migration? How many migrated? What
effects does this have? This paper will cover the migration of persons within states or
between the states based on crossing geographical boundaries.
Firstly we will cover the rural to urban migration which shows us the demographic
structure of migration within India. This will assess the different steams’ of migration at all
India level over a decade. This will give us a brief description when was the migration of
people at the highest peak. Below data consist of 1991 and 2001 censes.
Secondly, we are going to study the patter on migration between intra states, which will
show is the migration flow. This data even covers the male and female ratio of migration
between states. This flow can tell us about the development structure and their migrated
population of that particular city or area.
Thirdly, we are going to talk about the labour and the employment oriented migration,
which will help us to know why migration takes place to that particular state or city. Even
will explain the education level, with which we can differentiate the skilled and non-skilled
labour migration. We are going to discuss the affects of urbanization to both urban cities and

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rural cities, which lead to social and economic disorder. Which leads other side effects to the
city and its development? Even factors affecting the rural agricultural areas.
Lastly we are going into little more deep affects on the Indian society, which leads to
nuclear families. As Joint families is a silent feature of Indian society and how urbanization is
leading us to westernization. This topic will address the above discussion by reviewing some
of the major theoretical and pragmatic findings concerning migration from rural to urban
migration. In discussion I have given my practical experience, which helps us to know
present situation of India. Then the conclusion, urban cities should plan about their
development of infrastructure according to the migration ratio. We should have a strong plans
and their successive operation for the benefits of poor migrants is now very important. The
only we will be able to handle the effects of urbanization and bring upward transformation.
Rural to Urban Migration :
Migration from one area to another in search of improved livelihood is a key feature of
human history. While some regions and sectors fall behind in their capacity to support
populations, other move ahead and people migrate to access these emerging opportunities.
Industrialization widens the gap between rural and urban areas, including a shift of the
workforce towards industrializing areas.
Migration from Rural to Urban areas expands due to the following three factors: natural
growth of population, reclassification of rural areas as urban in course of time and 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. Any social policy that affects rural and urban incomes will persuade by
migration; this will affect the economics of the state or the income distribution and even the
population growth. 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 factors, it costs to over crowded cities; excessive migration also imposes external
costs on the rural areas emptied of better education.
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 1981In 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

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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 we such urbanization 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 cosmic 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 :
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

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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). However, this paper is considering only the long
term migration for the analysis. 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.
Factors affecting Rural to Urban Migration :

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Migration is a practice livelihood strategy adopted in India and not simply a response to
shocks (Deshingkar & Anderson, 2004). People certainly do migrate because there is not
enough work locally in rural areas, but such migration should not be understood as forced or
distress migration. Many poor and unskilled people perceive migration as an opportunity.
There are various problems affecting massive distressed migration of people from rural
areas to urban areas which causes unbalanced urbanization and extreme urban decay in India.
Due to mass migration poverty, unemployment and underdevelopment increases.
Firstly, poor, landless, illiterate and unskilled agricultural labours and poor farmers from
backward state moves to the urban cities like Kolkata, Mumbai, New Delhi, Chennai and
other big towns, which fails them to give them minimum employment. Due to such migration
patterns, leads to urban slums and footpath dwelling and very poor level of living
characterize such urban cities. Even has could lead to shortage of extreme housing, basic
essentials for living like food, water, electricity, sewage and transportation.
Secondly, due to unskilled migrants coming into urban areas, where in urban areas they
have very limited employment-generation capacity under industrialization. So the migrants
are paid very less wages and mostly they are exploited due to lack of knowledge. Although
such migration helps to avoid starvation but it does not improve their economic conditions.
Thirdly, such cities are filled with slums with poor human developed index, which constitutes
less sanitation, water and electricity.
Lastly, Due to such metropolitan cities develop very fast becoming more economic
inequality “where rich get richer and poor get poorer”. This will lead to extreme social
disorder, severe class conflict, crimes, widespread violence and urban civil war.
We have only seen the effect on the urban areas, if people started to migrate from rural
areas to urban areas it will affect the agriculture side. India is known as a country of
agriculture, if the food supply will be low then the rates will go high of the basic amenities.
This will lead to greater inflation rate and poverty too.
Nuclear family a side effect of urbanization :
The nuclear family, same as elsewhere, is now the characteristic feature of the Indian
society. All households nuclear family constitutes 70 % and single member or more than one
member households without spouse with 11 %. This is overall picture about the entire
country, whereas in the case of cities the proportion of nuclear is somewhat higher (this data
is available from National Family and health survey, 1998-99). Even the divorce rate and the
amount of single member are increasing slowly in the influence of western culture. This is
believed to be because the united States have got higher level of urbanization, which tends to
higher nuclear family members. About decades ago almost 20 percent households had only
single person in USA. The dissolution of joint families to nuclear families are relatively
higher in younger people. This is because young man and women wants to be financially
independent, more career-oriented, who can take are confident of taking their own decision,
where they cannot do in joint family. As we can see from the above discussion that Indian

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society which was collectivist is going on a path of westernization, being independent and
bending more towards individualistic approach.
Conclusion :
Migration from rural to urban in intra state is been increasing slowly with
industrialization and modernization in India. The main reason for migration is Employment
or business related migration. The ratio comparison of male and female migration; where
male migration constitutes the highest level of migration in India. This shows that female
usually migrates as accompanists of males through several other factors like after marriage or
family transfer. But with the recent survey single females are also slowly increasingly
moving out in search of a job. As we have seen in the census data that most of the male
population moves to advanced state like Gujarat and Maharashtra. Especially the poor
population shows highest mobility in search of jobs or livelihood in the urban cities. Due to
this poor population labours have been poorly paid and exploited, and thus by increasing in
inequality in the society.
Secondly we have seen reason of migration; the National Sample Survey (NSS) is trying
to gather as much information about the migration. NSS is also collecting information about
the employment and unemployment of the migrants. These all information could help India to
develop its infrastructure, to adopt these kinds of migrants. Then we have seen that how
urbanization is affecting Indian societies. The rise in nuclear families; which has break-down
the old traditional joint family system. Many Men and women want to be independent and
work into cities; this is a slow destruction of traditional family values, increasing in more
number of working mothers in cities and single parents, even increase in cases of divorce
rates. This has lead to neglecting of children and elderly people. Joint families cannot be
afforded in urban cities so they keep their elderly parents in rural areas, which is an indication
of danger for the collectivist families in India. Urbanization has caused other side effect like
rise in domestic violence, practice of dowry. To save these kind of traditional values and
institutions of family, there is a need of a set of strong, consistent policies to strengthen the
Indian family system.
Finally i would like to conclude that this concerned migration and urban involution in
India, we need to have a new research perspective, as well as new and alternative planning
prescriptions. We should have a strong plans and their successive operation for the benefits of
poor migrants is now very important. The only we will be able to handle the effects of
urbanization and bring upward transformation.

References :
1. Bell, Martin. 2003. “Comparing Internal Migration between Countries: Measures, Data
Sources and Results.” Paper Presented in Population Association of America 2003,
2. Minneapoplis, May 1-3.
3. Census of India 2001. Soft copy, India D-series, Migration Tables. Registrar General and
Census commissioner, India.

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4. Lusome, R., Bhagat, R.B. 2006. “Trends and Patterns of Internal Migration in India,1971-
2001.” Paper presented at the Annual Conference of Indian Association for the Study of
Population (IASP), Thiruvananthapuram 7-9 June, 2006.
5. Singh, D.P., 1986. “Internal Migration in India: 1961-1991” Demography
India 27(1):245-261.
6. Premi, M. K., 1990. “India”. In Charles B. Nam, William J. Serow, and David F. Sly
(eds.), International Handbook on Internal Migration. New York: Greenwood Press.
7. U.N. 1993. Readings in Population Research and Methodology, The United Nations
Population Fund, New York

Table 1: Employment Oriented Migration (in %)

Total Rural Urban

Male 31.1 39.8 36.0

Female 1.9 1.7 3.3
Total 10.4 10.3 17.2
Source: Census 2001

Table 2: Percentage of employment oriented migrants by streams of migration

Total Male Female
Rural to rural 4.9 25.3 1.3
Rural to urban 10.9 25.9 2.8
Urban to rural 28.3 55.2 4.1
Urban to urban 19.5 38.8 3.6

Interstate migration
Total Male Female
Rural to rural 17.4 51.3 4.1
Rural to urban 20.1 41.4 4.3
Urban to rural 40.8 66.6 5.0
Urban to urban 27.1 51.8 4.4
Source: Census 2001

Table 3: Labor Migration (% of migrants)

Employment oriented* Labor force participant

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Total Rural Urban Total Rural Urban

Male 45.5 33.3 51.9 70.0 70.1 70.0
Female 2.2 1.4 3.5 26.0 31.9 15.8
Total 13.6 6.6 22.3 37.5 38.1 36.9
Employment Oriented* : (a) in search of employment (b) in search of better employment (c)
to take up employment/better employment (d) transfer of service/contract (e) proximity to
place of work
Table 4: Percentage of labor migrants by streams of migration
Employment oriented Labor force participant
Total Male Female Total Male Female
Rural to rural 5.5 34.4 1.2 37.3 68.7 32.6
Rural to
urban 24.6 56.9 3.5 39.1 72.3 17.5
Urban to rural 14.5 31.3 3.7 43.2 72.5 24.5
Urban to
urban 19.4 46.1 3.4 33.6 66.8 13.8
Interstate migrants
Employment oriented Labor force participant
Total Male Female Total Male Female
Rural to rural 19.3 57.6 2.4 42.3 78.4 26.5
Rural to
urban 41.1 72.8 3.9 51.3 83.4 13.6
Urban to rural 18.6 28.1 5.8 53.2 76.0 22.8
Urban to
urban 25.9 55.9 3.4 37.2 70.1 12.5

Table 5: Employment oriented migration by educational qualification and duration

Graduate &
Illiterate Primary Secondary
Duration above
TMF TMF TMF TMF

<1 14.9 31.6 6.717.1 30.2 4.3 22.1 44.9 3.7 37.3 59.6 7.6
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1-4 10.4 36.0 3.513.8 28.9 2.9 21.9 47.8 3.6 38.5 66.2 9.6
5-9 8.0 52.1 2.011.4 29.4 1.9 18.4 46.1 2.4 33.4 60.5 6.5
10-14 7.3 53.0 1.912.6 40.2 1.7 17.5 42.9 2.0 35.2 59.0 8.9
15-19 5.8 57.8 1.512.1 53.9 0.8 18.8 46.4 2.3 27.3 50.9 4.2
20+ 4.2 47.5 1.112.5 49.7 0.9 21.8 51.5 2.1 32.9 52.0 4.5
Total 6.4 44.9 1.812.8 36.5 1.7 20.1 47.2 2.6 34.7 59.0 7.3

Table 6: Labor force participation of migrants by educational qualification and

duration
Graduate &
Illiterate Primary Secondary
Duration above
TMF TMF TMF TMF
<1 29.1 43.1 22.3 31.3 46.7 16.437.7 70.1 11.559.5 85.1 25.5
1-4 32.1 51.8 26.7 26.3 41.9 15.037.1 69.6 14.259.0 87.8 28.9
5-9 39.1 80.0 33.5 27.3 46.0 17.335.6 71.3 15.156.6 86.5 27.1
10-14 42.5 85.5 37.5 35.5 66.2 23.536.0 69.0 15.961.2 86.7 33.2
15-19 44.2 88.6 40.6 39.8 91.2 25.940.0 77.1 17.762.7 87.0 38.8
20+ 34.8 76.2 31.8 34.1 80.2 19.742.3 82.8 15.562.3 82.5 32.5
Total 36.8 69.0 33.0 31.5 57.4 19.438.0 73.4 15.256.9 30.7 85.9

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