Abstract
Commuting helps to keep balance between residence and workplace of workers. With growing accessibility and connectivity, the importance of commuting is increasing all over the world. It is becoming a major substitute to migration. In commute-studies, commute-pattern is an important chapter. It highlights commuters’ directions of movement, distance they cover, modes of transport they use, the time they take to commute, etc. Unlike the urban-based commute pattern, commute pattern in rural areas are relatively an under-researched issue. In fact, traditionally rural people are thought to carry a sedentary lifestyle. Using primary data, this study aims to explore the commute patterns of rural workers located in the village of Gandharbapur of Barddhaman district of West Bengal, India. All the commuters were found to be engaged in non-farm work. Commuters stem from two major groups. One group of commuters is accumulated farm-income induced. They possess sufficient agricultural land. Investing their surplus farm-income, they have established non-farm works. The second group of commuters is poverty-driven. They are landless poor or are marginal farmers and to escape poverty, they have slipped into these works. Located beyond the suburban area (Memari being the nearest town), most commuters commute to nearby rural areas. Due to non-availability of public transport, women commute less than men do. Regular-paid government employees commute longer than other workers commute. The article concludes with a summary of findings and recommendations for further research.
Highlights
Commuting is a significant form of spatial mobility
In contemporary literature, commuting has been explained in a number of ways
Commuting is the interplay between residence and workplace over a day
Summary
Commuting is a significant form of spatial mobility. In contemporary literature, commuting has been explained in a number of ways. For the accomplishment of this purpose, they move between the place of residence and place of work daily (Chandrasekhar, 2011) This daily journey-to-work gives rise to a spatial pattern, which is determined by the location of housing, workplace and the transport mode used (Chen et al, 2010). Besides these three major factors, a number of other factors such as geographic factors (distance, physiography, climate, etc.), demographic factors (age, gender), socio-economic factors (occupation, income, economic agglomeration and diversification of the two areas, development criteria), etc. As opposed to the peri-urban villages, inter-rural commuting is more prominent there
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