The Multiple Indicator Survey of the National Sample Survey Office’s 78th Round, conducted in 2020-21, offers a detailed look at the reasons for intra and inter-State migration across India, and the problems faced by migrants. We parsed unit-level data from the survey (more than 11.63 lakh respondents) to arrive at the tables.
Tables 1 and 2 show the States with the highest share of external and internal migrants among all migrants in India.
Table appears incomplete? Click to remove AMP mode
Maharashtra hosted the highest share of external migrants, followed by Uttar Pradesh, and West Bengal. U.P. also contributed the highest number of migrants, followed by Maharashtra, West Bengal, and Bihar. These States also hosted a significant number of internal migrants.
Click to subscribe to our Data newsletter
If we look at pairs of regions, migrants going from U.P. to Maharashtra formed the largest chunk of all external migrants (Table 3), followed by migrants from the Gulf countries (some returning to Kerala), and migrants going from U.P. to Delhi.
Suburban Mumbai remains the district that hosts the highest number of migrants (Table 4), followed by Pune and Thane in Maharashtra.
Among migrants moving States for economic reasons (who constituted roughly 22% of all reasons), which include better employment prospects, business, service transfers, etc., migrants going from U.P. to Maharashtra formed the largest chunk of all migrants, followed by those moving from U.P. to Delhi and from Bihar to West Bengal (Table 5).
Marriage was one of the main reasons (68.2% of all reasons) for migration as well, with migrants from U.P. to Maharashtra, Bihar to Jharkhand, and Madhya Pradesh to U.P. accounting for the top three highest numbers (Table 6).
Source: Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation
Also read:Do Delhi’s migrants approve the idea of remote voting? | Data
