Abstract
Rural-Urban and Rural-Rural migration has become one of the most common phenomena of population demographic changes. Several factors which contribute towards the improvement of the livelihood and opportunities to the migrated labourers have been studied. More than 69 per cent of the 1.21 billion people live in rural India (2011 Census) and agriculture is their main source of income. Agriculture contributes to 18 per cent to the GDP of India. Due to lack of adequate public irrigation facilities, most of these farmers are dependent heavily on monsoon as the main source of water for agriculture. Since a large percentage of these farmers are into subsistence farming, they lack the capital required to set up their own irrigation facilities. When the monsoon fails, or when there is excess rain, there is loss of crop and hence rural-to-urban migration results. There are many factors influencing rural to rural and rural to urban migration. One such important factor is agricultural distress. Agriculture being predominantly dependent on monsoon in India, there is an immediate need in accessing the relationship among agriculture, migration and rainfall. This paper analyses the role of quantum of rainfall in determining the rate of migration with empirical evidence from India and proposes a model to estimate the migration rate based on the quantum of rainfall.
Highlights
Migration involves movement from one area to other, within or across the national administrative boundaries for a specific short term period or for the purpose of permanent change in residence
This paper focuses on Indian migration with respect to monsoon
Agriculture being predominantly dependent on the monsoon rains is vulnerable to extreme climatic conditions
Summary
Migration involves movement from one area to other, within or across the national administrative boundaries for a specific short term period or for the purpose of permanent change in residence. The empirical evidence shows that the crop yields, especially those of cereals like wheat and rice, have a significant drop with changing climatic conditions This has triggered migration of people from agricultural sector. Developing countries like India, is more sensitive to rural-urban migration during extreme climatic and weather conditions which affect the agricultural output. Their case studies and modelling results indicate that the variability of the rainfall influences the labour market and productivity They showed that the rainfall variability impacts the vulnerability of the households based on their income and family size. Based on the theoretical framework of the Monsoon Migration model proposed, the equation (6) can be simplified by stating that the migration percentage with respect to the population of the area (%Mpt) is a function of the absolute deviation in the rainfall in percentage (%ADR). Ha: There is a significant relationship between Percentage Migration (%Mpt) and Percentage Absolute Deviation (%ADR)
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