KEY TRENDS 

• Out of about 98 million, total intra-state and inter-state migrants in the country during last decade, 61 million have moved to rural areas and 36 million to urban areas#
• Migration stream out of rural areas (73 million) to another rural areas was quite high (53 million) in comparison to from rural to urban areas (20 million). About 6 million migrants went to rural areas from urban areas#    
• On the basis of net migrants by last residence during the past decade, i.e., the difference between in – migration and out – migration, in each state, Maharastra stands at the top of the list with 2.3 million net migrants, followed by Delhi (1.7 million), Gujrat (0.68 million) and Haryana (0.67 million) as per census#
• Uttar Pradesh (-2.6 million) and Bihar (-1.7 million) were the two states with largest number of net migrants migrating out of the state#
• In India, 73 million people in rural areas have migrated from 1991 – 2001; of which 53 million have moved to other villages and 20 million to urban areas – a majority of them in search of work*
• In 2001, 309 million persons were migrants based on place of last residence, which constitute about 30% of the total population of the country*
• There has been an increase of urban to urban migration from 13.6% to 14.7% over three decades (1971-2001)*
• In 2001, rural to rural migration (during the last decade) has accounted for 54.7% of total migration*
• The total number of migrant workers in India in 1999–2000 was 10.27 crore—a staggering number. The number of seasonal or cyclical migrants in India may be 2 crore or so**

# Census of India, http://censusindia.gov.in/Census_And_You/migrations.aspx
* Managing the Exodus: Grounding Migration in India, which has been prepared by American India Foundation
** 11th Five Year Plan, Planning Commission, Government of India

OVERVIEW 

Keeping track of mass migration is an enumerator’s nightmare. Even the Census of India can’t always get this accurately. Before a government agency is able to take note of distress or seasonal migration, people often come back for the harvest season or move elsewhere. Mass seasonal migration has become an almost fixed event for some industries like brick manufacturing or sugarcane farming. Distress and seasonal migration invariably means no education for children, no voting rights for adults, and missing out on BPL facilities at either place of birth or the site of work. 

The worst sufferers of seasonal and distress migration are the poorest of poor, the tribals (STs) and the Dalits (SCs), who invariably have meager base of human or physical assets. This is particularly so in the most backward and mostly rain-fed districts of Andhra Pradesh, Rajasthan, Gujarat, MP, Karnataka and Maharashtra. It is quite common for migrant women to work as agricultural labourers and for men to seek employment in the unorganized sector. 

Distress migration also fuels a chaotic growth of unorganized/ informal industries and haphazard expansion of urban slums. Owners of small and informal factories love migrant workers. For they are more willing to work for less wages, are less likely to be absent for trivial reasons, are dependent on labour contractors and are powerless compared to local workforce. Their vulnerability and low wages may be of short-term advantage to the industry, but in the long run they fail to participate in India’s growth story by earning more and consuming more. That is why it is often argued that rural-urban migration can lead to prosperity only when a ‘pull factor’ of better paid work replaces the push-factor of rural poverty.    

Between 1991 and 2001, as many as 73 million rural people have migrated (displaced from their place of birth) to elsewhere. But the majority of these people (53 million) moved to other villages and less than a third (20 million) to urban areas and mostly in search of jobs. The number of seasonal or cyclic migration is around 2 crore but some experts believe that the actual number could be ten times the official figure.