Migration of workers in India is at an all-time high with female workers migrating at twice the rate compared to their male counterparts in the 2000s, the Economic Survey 2016-17 released on Tuesday said.
“The study based on the analyses of new data sources and new methodologies also shows that the migration is accelerating and was particularly pronounced for females,” an official statement said.
Inter-state labour 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 Survey showed.
There was an average outflow of around nine million migrant workers between the states during 2011-16, the estimates based on railway passenger traffic flows of the Ministry of Railways and new methodologies including the Cohort-based Migration Metric (CMM) showed. “These estimates are significantly greater than the annual average flow of about four million suggested by successive Censuses and higher than previously estimated by any study,” the Survey noted.
“Interestingly, the acceleration of migration was particularly pronounced for females and increased at nearly twice the rate of male migration in the 2000s,” the Survey said. “The migration pattern showed that less affluent states saw more people “migrating out while the most affluent states are the largest recipients of migrants.”
