Rural Urban migration

Till recently rural-urban migration was considered to be a desirable process in which surplus labour moved from traditional agriculture to provide cheap manpower to the advancing industrial sector. This perception has undergone a sea change now and rural-urban migration is being increasingly regarded as a major disturbing factor in the process of economic development, creating a number of socio economic problems and resulting in lop sided growth of the economy.

This study takes an overall vision of rural-urban migration and its impact on the rural economy. The findings indicate that the migration phenomenon encompasses mainly individuals rather than families and is highly selective. Urban-rural ties have also been investigated which manifest in regular visits and remittances by migrants to family members living in the rural area. The findings further point out that remittances improve the level of income of rural households. However, these are used on consumer goods although a considerable number of agricultural households use them for productive investment as well. The data also suggest that going out of comparatively active members from cultivating households does not stand in the way of new technology being adopted, nor does it lead to reduction of farm output. In some cases put-migration from the cultivating households has been observed to have led to an increase in land productivity.

The issues raised in the study would be of interest not only to economists but also to scholars in other disciplines, particularly sociology and geography, and to planners and policy-makers.