Rural urban migration in India: causes and consequences

THE present work is a research dissertation and its title "Rurur ban Migration in India - Causes and Consequences" is a modified version of the original caption "Social and Economic Consequences of Rural Emigration in Gorakhpur district based on a Study of certain Selected Villages."

Emigration of people from the rural areas to the cities has been a major factor of socio-economic change in developing societies. If, on the one hand, emigration has acted as a feeder to urban growth, it has, on the other, played an important role in the modernization and development of the villages. From both the points of view the study of emigration assumes a special significance for the sociologists. Although this work is only an attempt to investigate the social and economic con sequences of emigration in eastern part of Uttar Pradesh (India), the findings of this work can be generalised, safely, for the rest of the countryside as well.

The rural areas of East U.P. are generally known for their high density of population and general economic backwardness. The avenues of employment had been so few in this region that an average villager had no alternative but to move out either to the cities or to industrialised areas of the country, or if possible, even abroad to earn his livelihood. In this process of emigration the poor and traditional villager comes in con tact with the city culture and picks up many cultural traits of urbanism and then brings back this urban influence to his native village. The emigration, thus, becomes a "carrier" of urbanity to rural areas and also an agency of effective social cultural change.