prasad1
Active member
In a separate thread, views were expressed that NRI did not migrate to improve the adopted lands.
In my opinion, migration is always for improving that individuals future.[FONT="]The latest Economic Survey
(ES) points to a dramatic spike in internal migration with Delhi and the NCR being the top destinations.[/FONT][FONT="]Between 2011 and 2016, close to nine million migrated between states annually, up from about 3.3 million suggested by successive censuses, says the survey.[/FONT]
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Among the states that send the highest number of migrants to these places, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar top the list. They are followed by Madhya Pradesh, Punjab, Rajasthan, Uttarakhand, Jammu and Kashmir and West Bengal.[/FONT]
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In an interview to HT, Indrajit Roy, Principal Investigator of University of Oxford’s study Lives on the Move, talks about what triggers such high migration and why it is now absolutely critical to make social and political rights of citizens portable.[/FONT]
[FONT="]KD: India is on the move. Is it a good or bad thing?[/FONT]
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IR: Well, the short answer is that ‘it depends’. What does it depend on? The circumstances and the nature of migration. Migration in general is to be welcomed and there are indications that migration in India helps people to exit from hierarchical social relationships. However, much of the migration in India, especially related to work and employment, is circular — which means people don’t find enough social and economic opportunities outside of their home localities and must fall back on these for sustenance. You have in India a perverse sort of mobility, an ‘immobile mobility’: Individuals are mobile but their households remain immobile.[/FONT]
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Migration is good because it might improve people’s economic condition. More importantly, migration and mobility enables people to escape local oppression and lead dignified lives, further their social networks, learn new skills and disseminate social and political ideas. This is the reason that statesmen such as BR Ambedkar argued that Indians should be more mobile than he found them to be. Mobility, if motivated by a desire to exit caste hierarchies and to aspire to better lives, can be emancipatory.[/FONT]
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It is often said that migration will disrupt the village way of life, thus destroying a civilisation. These fears are ahistorical. India’s so-called ‘village way of life’ was a product of colonial rule that encouraged the country’s ‘peasantisation’. Disrupting this ‘way of life’ only disrupts a colonial creation, not Indian civilisation.[/FONT]
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Concerns about mobility are also motivated by a desire to keep ‘people in their place’. Look at the way migrant workers are treated in Delhi and Mumbai: They are almost considered to be ‘not human’. Bal Thackeray once said one Bihari brought with him a 100 headaches. I believe caste hierarchies inform elite suspicion of mobility and migration, especially by Dalitbahujans, in a major way. Anti-caste struggles over the last two centuries have weakened the caste hierarchy considerably. Migration is one of the ways of diminishing the hold of caste on people’s lives further.[/FONT]
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However, if mobility is forced due to economic distress, civil unrest and political persecution, it signals a problem. One is not here talking only of physical coercion, but also extreme conditions of destitution and exclusion. In such circumstances, mobility is far from the panacea and might even exacerbate existing social and economic hierarchies.[/FONT]
[FONT="]
In India, fragmented landholdings in the countryside make it imperative for people to combine agricultural work with work outside of that sector, the 2011 census reported an absolute decline in the number of cultivators across India. This might have been good news, except that the number of agricultural labourers increased during precisely this period.
http://www.hindustantimes.com/opinion/a-combination-of-aspiration-and-desperation-is-fuelling-migration-in-india/story-SCu0jVyN7R8n5CkzNSmSvO.html[/FONT]
In my opinion, migration is always for improving that individuals future.[FONT="]The latest Economic Survey
(ES) points to a dramatic spike in internal migration with Delhi and the NCR being the top destinations.[/FONT][FONT="]Between 2011 and 2016, close to nine million migrated between states annually, up from about 3.3 million suggested by successive censuses, says the survey.[/FONT]
[FONT="]
Among the states that send the highest number of migrants to these places, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar top the list. They are followed by Madhya Pradesh, Punjab, Rajasthan, Uttarakhand, Jammu and Kashmir and West Bengal.[/FONT]
[FONT="]
In an interview to HT, Indrajit Roy, Principal Investigator of University of Oxford’s study Lives on the Move, talks about what triggers such high migration and why it is now absolutely critical to make social and political rights of citizens portable.[/FONT]
[FONT="]KD: India is on the move. Is it a good or bad thing?[/FONT]
[FONT="]
IR: Well, the short answer is that ‘it depends’. What does it depend on? The circumstances and the nature of migration. Migration in general is to be welcomed and there are indications that migration in India helps people to exit from hierarchical social relationships. However, much of the migration in India, especially related to work and employment, is circular — which means people don’t find enough social and economic opportunities outside of their home localities and must fall back on these for sustenance. You have in India a perverse sort of mobility, an ‘immobile mobility’: Individuals are mobile but their households remain immobile.[/FONT]
[FONT="]
Migration is good because it might improve people’s economic condition. More importantly, migration and mobility enables people to escape local oppression and lead dignified lives, further their social networks, learn new skills and disseminate social and political ideas. This is the reason that statesmen such as BR Ambedkar argued that Indians should be more mobile than he found them to be. Mobility, if motivated by a desire to exit caste hierarchies and to aspire to better lives, can be emancipatory.[/FONT]
[FONT="]
It is often said that migration will disrupt the village way of life, thus destroying a civilisation. These fears are ahistorical. India’s so-called ‘village way of life’ was a product of colonial rule that encouraged the country’s ‘peasantisation’. Disrupting this ‘way of life’ only disrupts a colonial creation, not Indian civilisation.[/FONT]
[FONT="]
Concerns about mobility are also motivated by a desire to keep ‘people in their place’. Look at the way migrant workers are treated in Delhi and Mumbai: They are almost considered to be ‘not human’. Bal Thackeray once said one Bihari brought with him a 100 headaches. I believe caste hierarchies inform elite suspicion of mobility and migration, especially by Dalitbahujans, in a major way. Anti-caste struggles over the last two centuries have weakened the caste hierarchy considerably. Migration is one of the ways of diminishing the hold of caste on people’s lives further.[/FONT]
[FONT="]
However, if mobility is forced due to economic distress, civil unrest and political persecution, it signals a problem. One is not here talking only of physical coercion, but also extreme conditions of destitution and exclusion. In such circumstances, mobility is far from the panacea and might even exacerbate existing social and economic hierarchies.[/FONT]
[FONT="]
In India, fragmented landholdings in the countryside make it imperative for people to combine agricultural work with work outside of that sector, the 2011 census reported an absolute decline in the number of cultivators across India. This might have been good news, except that the number of agricultural labourers increased during precisely this period.
http://www.hindustantimes.com/opinion/a-combination-of-aspiration-and-desperation-is-fuelling-migration-in-india/story-SCu0jVyN7R8n5CkzNSmSvO.html[/FONT]
