Socio-Economic Implications Of Migration In India

Dr. (Prof) Om Prakash Shukla and Lopamudra Lenka Samantaray

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Currently, migration is a major focus area due to social, economic, and political reasons. Consistent growth of population has aggravated socio-economic issues like excessive flow of migration, unemployment, regional disparities, growth of pollution, poverty, health crisis, etc. Moreover, the unemployment problem and the issues of migration have caught the attention of various researchers and policy makers of both developed and developing countries. Trump’s immigration policy, Brexit agenda, and the Syrian refugee crisis are some of the examples of sociopolitical uproars followed by high rate of migration influx.

The Indian economy is highly impacted by various demographic components like fertility, mortality, morbidity, and mobility. Migration may be taken as a strategy of development in terms of growth in investment, employment opportunities, entrepreneurship, health benefits, education and infrastructure facilities due to remittances received by the people of source regions. The negative impacts include rising pressure over land, water and air followed by consistent growth of population and pollution. It further produces various socio-economic, socio-political and sociocultural turbulences due to the growth of inter-regional disparities. As per the latest Census of India report 2011, about 45.36 crore of Indians come under the category of migrants. This constitutes about 37% of the total population of India. Here, the trend of inter-state migration is found to be higher than international migration.