INTERNAL MIGRATION IN SHAHJAHANPUR DISTRICT A SOCIO-ECONOMIC AND STRUCTURAL ANALYSIS ABSTRACT THESIS SUBMITTED FOR THE AWARD OF THE DEGREE OF Boctor of $I)ilo£(opt)p IN GEOGRAPHY BY JABIR HASAN KHAN UNDER THE SUPERVISION OF Prof. Salahuddin Qureshi DEPARTMENT OF GEOGRAPHY ALIGARH MUSLIM UNIVERSITY ALIGARH (INDIA) 2004 ABSTRACT Migration is an important human action and a sharp demographic device among three major factors bringing changes in growth and distribution of population; the other two are natality and mortality. Migration from one community or region to another not only affects the size of population but it also exerts a pervasive influence on the composition of population both at the place of origin and destination, if this in-migration or out-migration is selective of the people with particular socio-economic and demographic characteristics. Thus, the movement of people from one place to another is an important phenomenon bringing changes in the distributional pattern of population growth and composition by modifying existing spatial patterns of human organization and by creating new ones. This redistribution of population may create a number of socio-economic, cultural and political problems for both the sending and receiving areas, if migration brings disequilibrium in the existing man-resource relationship and population composition. It may also solve these problems by regulating and minimizing disequilibrium between population and resource distribution as well as maintaining a demographic, socio-economic, cultural and political balance among diverse communities in a country. In cognizance of the fact that migration is involved in different socio-economic and political problems of a country or nation and that the knowledge of various facets of the redistribution of population is imperative for all sorts of planning and development programmes, in the present doctoral work entitled 'Internal Migration in Shahjahanpur District-A Socio-Economic and Structural Analysis' an attempt has been made to reveal and analyse the impact of internal migration total as well as differential on the socio-economic and demographic structure of the population in the area. For this, the differentials of distance, period, community of origin and destination, age, sex, occupation, religion, educational level and marital status have been considered and their implications have been taken into account. The main objective of this analysis is to highlight the problems caused and the problems solved by migrations during the last one-and-a-half decade. Social, cultural, economic problems have been considered under this analysis. To accomplish above goals an emphasis has been given to the analysis of socio-economic composition of the migrant and non-migrant population of the district. Apart from this, the study also throws light on the socio-economic determinants of migration which play the crucial role in the selectivity of migration in various types of migration-streams. The main objectives of the present study are as follows: (i) To analyse the socio-economic and demographic attributes of the people who dominate the migration flows, and the principal motivations behind their migrations. (ii) To assess the effects of migration on the social, economic and demographic structures of populations in the areas of origin and destination. (iii) To understand the significance of distance and period of migrations as determinants of magnitude and nature of change caused in the socio-economic characteristics of both the migrant population and the populations of the place of origin and destination. (iv) To analyse the impact of migration on production and technological innovations in agriculture. (v) To assess the validity or otherwise of the general apprehension that the migration to towns especially from rural areas may lead to labour surplus, increased unemployment, and the general decline in the socio-economic standard of urban population. (vi) To suggest the ways and means to formulate policies regarding migration. The multi-sided objectives of the study as spelt above cannot be accomplished from census data due to their inherent characteristics. Therefore, the present research work is based on the primary data generated m two comprehensive surveys in the Shahjahanpur district carried out during 19')8. The rural survey consisted of 2220 households in 106 villages and the urban survey, which followed immediately, comprised 873 households in 11 towns. The study period selected for this study is seventeen years (from 1981-1997), while for the data collection one year period has been taken as migration defining period, and the blocks (Vikas Khand) boundaries have been considered as migration defining boundaries. On the basis of migration defining period and migration defining boundary, the respondents were categorized into in-migrants, out-migrants, return-migrants, and non-migrants. Having identified the type of respondents, the separate individual slips were used to ease the task of survey. The present work is divided into eight chapters. First chapter deals with the aims and objectives of the study, the tools of investigations and the methodology. The problems faced during fieldwork both in rural and urban surveys for collecting data about the socio-economic attributes of population have been also pointed out under this chapter. The chapter also embodies a brief account of the physical and human geography of the district Shahjahanpur, that has a specific role in human migration and helps in understanding the causes of out-and in-migration. The second chapter presents the conceptual framework of internal migration, its types and various socio-economic causes and consequences. The third chapter gives an estimate of volume, magnitude and types of migration streams based on distance, religion, sex-composition and educational level of migrant population in various tahsils of the district. The chapter also deals with the step-migration categorized on the basis of sex-composition, educational status and socio-economic determinants of migration. The fourth chapter provides a comparative analysis of the various socio-economic attributes like age and sex composidon, marital status, literacy level, religion and occupational structure of different types of migrants and their comparison with non-migrant population. The fifth chapter contains discussion on the socio-economic determinants of in-migration, out-migration and return-migration in Shahjahanpur district. The analysis of causes of migration has been based on duration, religion, distance and type of settlement status of the place of origin and destination of migrant population. The sixth chapter presents an assessment of problems faced by migrants in having access to housing, electricity, water and other amenities in the towns and cities of the district, and the extent to which they succeed in achieving levels of living compared to those of the natives. In the seventh chapter an attempt has been made to examine the impact of migration on technological innovations in agriculture and crop productivity. To assess these impacts an analytical comparison has been made between different types of migrants and non-migrants in respect of the use of modem agriculture instruments, per acre productivity of wheat and rice, sources of investment of money in agricultural activities and size of landholdings. The eighth chapter, being the last, contains a brief summary of the study and the conclusions drawn therefrom alongwith a brief note on some modes of regulating and containing the flow of rural-urban migration. Based on the overall assessment of the study the following important inferences may be drawn pertaining to the flows and characteristics of the migrants, determinants of migration and impact of migration on agriculture development in rural areas and availability of housing and other amenities in urban areas: (A) Characteristics of Migrants and Spatial Patterns of Migration (i) There is dominance of females among migrants and of males among non-migrants. However, return-migrant population is more masculine than the population of in-migrants and out- migrants. (ii) The proportion of rural to rural migration-stream is comparatively greater than other migration-streams and it is the least in urban 10 rural migration-stream. In all the migration-streams, the females predominate over males except in rural to urban migration-stream in which the ratio of males exceeds that of females. (iii) The percent of non-migrant population exceeds that of migrant population in 0-14 age-group. But the position is reversed in the age-group 15-29, in which the percentage of migrants is higher than that of non-migrants. (iv) The ratio of married migrants is nearly double of that of the non-migrants. However, among the non-migrants the distribution of married males and females is almost even but among the migrants the ratio of married female migrants is much higher than that of males. The highest percentage of widowed, divorced and separated persons is in the return-migrant population and the least in the out-migrant population while the non-migrant population stands in betw een. (v) In all types of community based migration-streams, females are married earlier than males, and in rural to rural migration-stream the marriages both in male and female population have been held earlier than the migrants in other types of migration-streams. (vi) The rural-urban break-up of the data shows that illiteracy rates in urban population are the lowest among out-migrants and the highest among in-migrants. In rural population the highest proportion of illiteracy is among in-migrants and lowest among the return-migrants. (vii) In the district as a whole the literacy is highest among the return-migrants and lowest among the non-migrants and in-migrants. Though the range is not very large yet it is a quite substantial being about 10 per cent points. The variation among the tahsils is relatively more marred and the distribution trend is also little different. Nevertheless, generally the non-migrants have a lower literacy than that among the migrants and the return-migrants.