A Story of Abating Labour Migration during the Last One and Half Decades in India

Present study aims to answer the question whether labour migration has increased or not during last one and half decade since the introduction of new economic policy in 1991 in the country? Utilizing the Unit Level Data of the 49th (1993), 55th (1999-2000) and ¬¬64th (2007-08) rounds of National Sample Survey of India we have focussed to study the trends and patterns of labour migration in India. The paper also endeavours to study the trends in labour migration among different social groups and monthly per capita expenditure classes and tries to assess the change in probability of labour migration bye socioeconomic factors using multivariate analysis. Preliminary results suggest a declining trend of labour migration in rural and urban areas with a small increase in male migration rate in urban areas during 1999-2000 to 2007-08. We observe a moderate decline in migration in the less educated population whereas decline is very sharp for the middle and higher educated class. Similarly labour declined steeply among socio-economically backward classes. This period also observes a comparatively higher decline in the labour migration in rural areas among the poorest of the poor than rich while in urban labour migration has increased in affluent class.