Dynamic policy is the need of the hour to address the different segment of Labour market: Prazy Walia
Published Date: Sunday, Feb 21, 2016
Speaking at the International conference on “Migration, Diaspora and Development” organised by GRFDT at India International Centre, New Delhi during 20-21 February 2016, Prazy Walia highlighted some of the new trends of inter and intra state migration that needs fresh policy. Based on Census data, her paper throws light on inter-state and intra-state variation with regards to job market, male and female migration etc. She said, many of the relatively poor and backward states actually show large population mobility, which is primarily in search of a livelihood, the mobility of male population is also seen to be prominent in the relatively advanced states like Maharashtra and Gujarat. The social networks, which play an important role in the context of migration are prevalent among the short distance migrants and tend to lose their significance with a rise in the distance between the place of origin and destination though there are some exceptions to this phenomenon. Besides the north-south divide in the Indian context, it is indeed a significant portent with a few exceptions of metropolitan cities.
Ms. Walia said that migration rates are defined in terms of the gross decadal inflow of population as a percentage of total population at the place of destination does not seem to be high in a large number of districts. The intra-state rates are substantially larger than the inter-state rates. In this context, she identified that the main policy focus needs to have three different orientations. One is for the male migrants who come to the city in search of jobs. Availability of high productivity jobs in the rural areas can reduce in-migration to the urban areas and on the other hand productivity augmenting strategies need to be adopted for those who are engaged in low productivity jobs in the urban low productivity informal sector. The other aspect of the policy has to deal with the job market prospects of women who accompany male migrants. The women earners need to be empowered to access better job market opportunities, which they can pursue along with the household or domestic work. The third aspect concerns the single women migrants. Though they are guided by the economic factors at the place of destination their vulnerability in terms of social crime and housing uncertainty is most serious and migration policy in developing countries cannot afford to ignore this aspect, which has been gaining prominence in the recent years.
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