Mobility in India: Recent Trends and Issues Concerning Database

Abstract

Dismissing the postulate that the geographical, linguistic and other social divisions are constraining the movement of Indians across states, researchers have presented evidences—pattern of rail passenger traffic, changes in population distribution across different age cohorts and so on to show that the movement of people across states is much larger than what has been generally determined, using the data from the census and National Sample Survey. The basic objective of the paper is to examine if the process of migration and urbanisation in India is indeed unconstrained so that the people in backward regions and rural areas, who get dispossessed of their livelihood options or social linkages, can freely move into the developed regions or urban areas, It analyses these processes and recent trends while probing into methodological and data related issues in migration studies in India. The migration trends for socio-economically vulnerable sections of population are presented in the context of their access to urban and metropolitan space.