Human mobility has been acquiring momentum in a much faster pace than ever. The question as to whether human beings are ‘migratory’ or not has no relevance, since large-scale migration and displacement of settlements have become the new normal.
Due to the unprecedented migration, there are 232 million international migrants and 740 million internal migrants in the world (World Migration Report, WMR 2015). This conservative, approximate estimation points to the growing migratory trends and its changing patterns. Fourteen per cent of the people across the world have been uprooted from their own traditional premises and are forced to flock to unknown places, most often with unpleasant cultural shocks. In the last two decades, female migration has being growing due to the new opportunities in the service sector offered by the destinations. The feminisation of migration has reduced the division of families but increased the total evaporation from the source societies.
Urbanisation is the major pulling factor for modern migration, and it is the major challenge of the 21st century. Over 54 per cent of the people across the globe are living in urban settings (UN/DESA, 2014). The current urban population of 3.9 billion is expected to grow to some 6.4 billion by 2050. It is estimated that 3 million people around the world are moving to cities every week (WMR 2015). Every day, more than 1 million people are migrating to the cities of Asia Pacific, and by 2050 the portion of people living in urban areas may rise to 63 per cent. The Asia Pacific region has added nearly 1 billion people to its urban population between 1990 and 2014, about half of whom are in China alone (UN 2014).
It means that migration is to the core from the periphery, and not from one nation to another, though it seems to be. Both international and internal migrations are the same in content in economic terms.
In this context, India’s internal migration has to be taken as a major phenomenon in the human mobility scenario. For several decades, the BIMARU states were the major source of India’s internal migration with major metros being the destinations. In the first four decades after Independence, there had been a developmental osmotic pressure toward the northern states from the south, but in the recent past it has been reversed. The special characteristic of Indian internal migration of agricultural workers moving to the rich irrigated fields in places like Punjab from the poverty-stricken Odisha, UP and Bihar also has been changed due to schemes like the MGNREGS.
Among the southern states, the reversed migration story of Kerala is quite interesting. The post-Independence exodus of Keralites to the core industrial cities in India and adventurous voyages to the Persian Gulf after the oil boom brought fortunes to the state’s society, and hence the Kerala model. Now, Kerala bags about 40 per cent of the Indian household remittances, while the country remains the largest recipient of international remittances. Large-scale out-migration and the sharp decline in population growth rate has made Kerala’s socio-economic situation conducive for equally large in-migration. The dearth of reliable statistics and comprehensive studies does not permit us to gauge the net migration and its impacts. Kerala has become the source of international migration and the destination of the internal migration.
The government of India’s Interstate Migrant Workmen Act of 1979 is nothing but a dead letter. The total wages (always low in rate) taken from the destination is often projected with exaggerations, but the value of the labour is underestimated. Our constitution provides the right to go and work anywhere in this country, but it should also fix the responsibility upon the lower tiers of governments to take care of the migrants since they are the new marginalised. cpjohn.kerala@gmail.com
John is member of Kerala State Planning Board