Inter-state labour migration increases to 9 million; Goa, Maharashtra among popular choice: Economic Survey

New estimates of labour migration in India revealed that inter-state labour mobility was significantly higher than previous estimates, Ministry of Finance said while presenting the Economic Survey on Tuesday.

“The new Cohort-based Migration Metric (CMM) shows that inter-state labor mobility averaged 5-6.5 million people between 2001 and 2011, yielding an inter-state migrant population of about 60 million and an inter-district migration as high as 80 million,” the Ministry said.

The surveyors used railway data for the period 2011-2016 which indicated an annual average flow of close to 9 million migrant people between the states.  

The survey revealed that relatively poorer states such as Bihar and Uttar Pradesh have high net out-migration. While on the other hand seven states take positive CMM values reflecting net in-migration: Goa, Delhi, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Karnataka. 

These estimates surpassed the annual average flow of about 4 million suggested by successive Censuses.

Migration for work and education in India has been increasing also at an ‘accelerating rate,’ while the costs of moving for migrants were about twice as much as they were for goods – another confirmation of popular conception, the government said.

“In the period 2001-2011 the rate of growth of labour migrants nearly doubled relative to the previous decade, rising to 4.5 per cent per annum. Interestingly, the acceleration of migration was particularly pronounced for females and increased at nearly twice the rate of male migration in the 2000s,” the Ministry said.

The government suggested that the only ‘plausible’ hypothesis for this acceleration in migration was that the rewards (in the form of prospective income and employment opportunities) have become greater than the costs and risks that migration entails. 

“…less affluent states see more out migration migrating out while the most affluent states are the largest recipients of migrants,” the Ministry added.