UPSC MAINS SOCIOLOGY SYLLABUS
Paper 2 – Section C – Social Changes in India – (vi) Population Dynamics:
- Population size, growth, composition and distribution.
- Components of population growth: birth, death, migration.
- Population policy and family planning.
- Emerging issues: ageing, sex ratios, child and infant mortality, reproductive health.
INTRODUCTION
Migration is the movement of people away from their usual place of residence, across either internal (within country) or international (across countries) borders. Internal migrant flows can be classified on the basis of origin and destination. One kind of classification is: i) rural-rural, ii) rural-urban, iii) urban-rural and iv) urban-urban. Another way to classify migration is: (i) intra-state, and (ii) inter-state.
WHO IS A MIGRANT?
When a person is enumerated in census at a different place than his/her place of birth, she/he is considered a migrant. This may be due to marriage, which is the most common reason for migration among females, or for work, what is the case as generally among males. Internal migration is the movement of people from one defined area to another within a country.
ISSUES FACED BY MIGRANT LABOUR
- They often get caught in exploitative labour arrangements that forces them to work in low-end, low-value, hazardous work.
- The urban labour markets treat them with opportunistic indifference extracting hard labour but denying basic entitlements such as decent shelter, fair priced food, subsidized healthcare facilities or training and education.
- Migrants registered to claim access to benefits at one location lose access upon migration to a different location. This is especially true of access to entitlements under the PDS.
- Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs identified migrants in urban areas as the largest population needing housing in cities. There is inadequate supply of low-income ownership and rental housing options.
- The vast majority are not unionised as they are migrant labourers, scattered all over the country, who speak different languages.
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MIGRATION DURING PANDEMIC LOCKDOWN
In a report titled, “Migration in India 2020-21” the survey gives an account of the state of migration and migrants during the period of July 2020 to July 2021. The report, which surveyed a total of 1,13,998 migrants, shows that 51.6% of rural migrants migrated from urban areas in the aftermath of the pandemic. Research work by Mitra and Singh estimates that about 182 million people were either looking for jobs or had a job in the quarter just before the lockdown and about 7 million withdrew from the labour force during the lockdown period.
The lockdown culminated in a never-seen-before reverse migration of labourers and employment from factories to farms, a trend that is clearly reflected in the share of employment in agriculture rising from 42.5% in FY19 to 45.6% in FY20.
GOVERNMENT INITIATIVES
After the lockdown, Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Yojana with a financial package of Rs. 1.7 lakh crore was launched to help poor, needy and unorganised sector workers of the country.
PM SVANidhi Scheme was launched to facilitate collateral free working capital loan upto Rs.10,000/- of one-year tenure, to approximately, 50 lakh street vendors, to resume their businesses.
Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Rojgar Abhiyan was initiated in 116 districts in Mission Mode.
eShram portal is a national database created to register the unorganised workers in the country, including the migrant workers.
CONCLUSION
The migrant workers are the basic builders of the national economy as they provide cheap labor, skilled and experienced workforce to the industry, agriculture and the gig economy. Migrants would be well served if the Centre played a proactive role by offering strategic policy guidance and a platform for inter-State coordination. At a time when economic recovery and inclusive growth are urgent policy goals, migration policy can hardly afford to be delayed.