On Migration Patterns in India during the 1970s

This paper examines movements between the rural and urban sectors in India using both the 1981 and the 1971 data to compare trends during the 1970s with those in the 1980s. The censuses collected information on duration of residence which allows the separation of short-term and long-term migrants. While only a portion of total mobility can be captured by the census sufficient data are available for India to paint a reasonably detailed picture of changing sectoral patterns over time. The Indian case can be drawn into a more general context to provide insight into how migration patterns change in response to development and to characterize the role of short-term mobility within the overall trends of migration in developing countries. This paper also highlights many of the difficulties inherent in analyzing migration patterns purely from census data. Although rural-to-rural migration was still the dominant type of movement in 1981 there was a reduction in the relative importance of the rural-to-rural stream from 1961-1971 to 1971-1981. The pattern of intersate migration which excludes many of the short-distance migrants is quite different. At this level rural-to-rural migration is not nearly so important and the 2 intersectoral flows of almost equal importance in 1981 were rural-to-urban and urban-to-urban. The net addition to the urban areas due to migration in 1971-1981 was about 9.4 million and that for 1961-1971 some 5.7 million. Although the evidence is fragmentary it seems likely that in the India of the 1960s a system of stage migration was operating similar to that originally described by Ravenstein with local movement to regional urban centers accompainied by movement out of the regional centers to the largest towns. The most marked feature of migration change from the 1960s to the 1970s was the increasing participation of women in all the flows. A 2nd clear trend suggests that the longer a migrant male or female has been at a destination the greater the probability that he or she will continue to survive there.