Name: Gerald Tan Wei Hao (7)

Class: Secondary 3D
Due date: 17 September 2010
RA Geography Essay Question: Should rural urban migration be
encouraged in India?

Rural urban migration is a response to diverse economic opportunities

across space, where individuals often migrate from rural areas to urban cities
in search of jobs in order for them and their family to lead a better life.
Historically it has played a significant role in the urbanization process of
several countries and continues to be significant in scale, even though
migration rates have slowed down in some countries. In India, though ruralurban migration has been found to be modest, accounting for around 30 per
cent of the total urban growth, in the context of urban poverty, urban slums
and informal sector employment, much has been discussed in reference to
rural-urban population mobility. In other words, much of the urban ills are
attributed to the population spills which are brought about by rural urban
migration.
Population movement on such a large scale affects both the rural areas and
the cities in a variety of ways, however such effects often tend to be
negative.
Firstly, the scale of migration may produce a labor surplus and high levels of
unemployment in the city, causing the urban economy to decompose into a
formal and an informal sector. The unprecedented rate of growth of the
urban population in developing countries is expected to continue and the
increasing failure of the rural and urban formal sectors to absorb additions to
the labour force is thus foreseen. The bulk of new entrants into the urban
labour force seem to create their own employment or to work for small-scale,
family-owned enterprises, due to the unavailability of jobs larger scale

companies. The self-employed were engaged in a remarkable array of

activities, ranging from hawking, street vending, letter writing, knife
sharpening, and junk collecting to selling fireworks, engaging in prostitution,
drug peddling, and snake charming. This is known as the informal sector,
which is characterized by a large number of small-scale production and
service activities that are individually or family owned and use labourintensive and simple technology. Such enterprises tend to be operated like
monopolistically competitive firms with ease of entry and excess capacity.
The usually self-employed workers in this sector have little formal education,
are generally unskilled, and lack access to financial capital. As a result,
worker productivity and income tend to be lower in the informal sector than
in the formal sector. Moreover, workers in the informal sector do not enjoy
the measure of protection afforded by the formal sector in terms of job
security, decent working conditions, and old-age pensions. Most workers
entering this sector are recent migrants from rural areas unable to find
employment in the formal sector. Their motivation is usually to obtain
sufficient income to survive, relying on their own indigenous resources to
create work. As many members of the household as possible, including
women and children, are involved in income- generating activities, and they
often work very long hours. The informal sector plays an important role in
providing income opportunities for the poor, thus the burden on the informal
sector to absorb more labour will continue to increase unless other solutions
to the urban unemployment problem are provided.
Secondly, many rural-urban migrants are unable to find proper housing
within the city due to the lack of housing by the government, as well as their
dire financial status which prevents them from finding even cheap housing.
As such, many inhabit shacks that they have built themselves in slums and
squatter settlements generally lacking minimal public services. Others are
less fortunate. Many millions are homeless, living on the pavements of
Calcutta or Mumbai or other urban areas. Such squatter settlements and

slums are often dangerous to live in with a high crime rate as well as hygiene
and sanitation problems coupled with inadequate water supply and bad
drainage, leading to a problematic effect on the peoples health and wellbeing, where diseases such as cholera can spread very quickly due to the
cramped space in which slums take root, but more importantly, expensing
government funds on these areas which can be put to better use elsewhere
such as research and development to keep up with the constantly
modernizing world. In addition, the appearance of such slums and squatter
settlements takes a toll on the image of India.
Thirdly, among the many problems that migrant workers face, a crucial one
is the limited scope to save their earnings, which are temporary in nature.
When workers do not have any work, they have to return to their homes for
money. In the villages, their dependents such as the elderly or children opt
for conventional methods of saving when money is available such as
purchasing land or jewelry. They cannot address emergency situations. This
creates further indebtedness and migration in order to earn higher wages to
pay off said debts, and the vicious circle continues. Since there is no support
system available, the bargaining power of the migrant workers is negligible
and they are compelled to work at low wages. Research has shown that most
migrant workers return permanently to their places of origin after ten or 15
years, without any savings, and their poverty persists generation after
generation. Though at their places of work, workers may earn reasonable
wages, they tend to squander their earnings due to the lack of avenues for
saving to families. As such, it can be observed that rural-urban migration
may not necessarily raise a migrants financial status, but instead may even
lower it, dragging him deeper into poverty and debt, such as when his family
remits whatever money to him to support him while he finds a job, only to be
let down when he is unable to find a sustainable avenue to save his wages
and ends up squandering them away.

Lastly, as it is mostly young adult males who migrate to the city to look for
jobs, the population structure of many rural villages where out migration has
taken place shows a disproportionate number of economically dependent people,
with many elderly, women and children. This means that there are fewer people left
to work and farm and to pay taxes that might help to improve rural areas. As such,
when there are fewer people to work on the farm, there are fewer farmers, so the
supply of food for both town and country may decrease, catalyzing a possible
countrywide food shortage and the need to import produce in using government
coffers which could be used to improve infrastructure of both rural and urban areas
to create a better life for the people.

On the other hand, rural urban migration may not necessarily be an

entirely negative process. If it is mainly young people who migrate, the birth
and natural growth rates within the rural areas will fall, hence decreasing the
number of migrants to the urban areas and reducing pressure and strain on
the urban services and facilities.
In conclusion, I find that rural urban migration should not be encouraged in
India as the negatives greatly outweigh the positives, and in terms of time,
the massive amount surplus labour caused by migrants is extremely hard to
get rid of as these migrants, having come a long way from home to look for a
job, would be unwilling to leave for possibly many years, and as such it will
take the government a protracted amount of time to get rid of squatter
housing and slums as they will need funds to build alternative housing for
these migrants which the government often does not have access to, thus
India will decline into a substandard country which cannot cope with the
immense pressure exerted on its urban infrastructure very swiftly, whereas
birth and natural growth rates in the rural areas would take some time to
decrease as migrants do return back to their place of origin and continue on
with their family life.