Migration is one of the major issues in development sector. People say or showcase many causes about it. Some days before I had come across an article in Hindustan Times, this article was saying that migration is an attraction of urban cities which many times pull rural youth to leave traditional livelihood sources and make them migrate to cities. I don’t know how far it’s true but when I went to field and tried to understand the causes it was more than the attractions of cities.
On an average a marginal farmer holds land of 3 acres. The average family size is 10 members, then how would we expect him to stay in this same place round year and stop migrating. The livelihood of the community is mainly dependent on a combination of agriculture, wage labour and forest resources. However, due to increasing demographic pressure and declining agricultural productivity coupled with other factors have resulted in heavy pressure on the natural resources and leading to their degradation. The area is mainly rain fed and hence it supports single crop in Kharif season. In fact in a village where drought occurs once in every three years, the production of food grain even in a good rainfall year meets only the subsistence requirements for six to eight months of the year. In such vulnerable circumstances the expenditure of most households exceeds their income; instances of borrowing are high and so are the interest rates charged. While for a majority migration is not a matter of choice but a necessity for their survival.
Due to the low availability of fixed labour in rural areas, urban migration has become widespread. Thus, migration has increasingly come to occupy a central role in livelihood strategies, especially for poorer households with small landholdings. There is migration for agriculture and for construction works, to Idar,Rajkot, Junagadh and other districts for cotton, wheat harvesting and cultivation. They migration duration is for 3-4 months to 1 to 2 year.
Very True Sagar, it is not attraction, it is compulsion which forces population to migrate to cities, where they are least cared by government despite they sustaining the "polished" city life with their cheap labour and at the end we have the tendency to blame migrants for every ill in our city, corruption, traffic, and crime, "they are the one". Very sad state of affair, Destroying rural livelihood and life is very much Structural and an essential step towards a successful capitalist economy.
ReplyDeleteGood to read you experiences, All the best
Srijan