An Econometric Study of Indo-Ceylon Labor Migration, 1920-1938: A Critique

Abstract

The economic history of Southeast Asia reveals an association between two parallel forces: (1) the development of the export crops, mainly the plantations, and (2) the large-scale migration of Chinese and Indian labor into the growing export economies, notably, Burma, Ceylon, Malaysia, and Indonesia. Students of regional economic development have inferred a mutual chain of causation between these two forces. On the one hand, the rapid growth of commercial crops has been attributed to the inflow of labor from India and China. On the other, the inducement offered by these export crops to population movements have also been a major thesis of migration studies. The present paper inquires into this second aspect through an econometric analysis of migration, limited to the specific case of Indo-Ceylon movements during the period 1920-38. The current literature on emigration from India during the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries suggests the following: a) That parts of India, especially South India, were so povertystricken that there existed a perennial excess supply of labor willing to migrate wherever employment opportunities were available. b) That this labor was directed by the colonial government of the period to other British colonies with varying degrees of encouragement and restriction, depending on the political pressures from time to time. Variability on the supply side, if any, is thus attributable only to the political forces influencing government policy. c) That the pull of demand from the receiving regions was the main economic force determining migration. d) That such pull depended crucially on the fortunes of the export industries in the migrant-receiving regions. Migration flows were observed to rise and fall with world booms and depressions, presumably acting through the demand for exports of the countries of labor inflow. The following study of population movements between India and Ceylon sheds some serious doubts on the above generalizations. Apart