Labour migration and risk in India
Student name: Ms Tejal Johri
Guide: Prof Kanchan Chopra
Year of completion: 2014
Host Organisation: TERI University
Abstract: Internal migration has been a cause of concern and is rampant across India. While migration is
a complex issue affected by many different factors, temporal variation in rainfall assumes
significant importance as a risk in the rural areas of developing countries. Also important in
this context are network effects that reduce the inherent risk at a new destination. Following
the theory proposed by the New Economics of Labour Migration, this study studies the role of
risk at origin and risk at destination on a household’s propensity to temporarily and
permanently migrate. The study matches household-level migration data from the 64
th
round
of NSS and data with the daily gridded rainfall dataset of (latitude and longitude)
resolution recently released from the Indian Meteorological Department. Risk management
behavior of households as a form of coping mechanism in rural areas from where migration for
livelihood reasons is incentivized through the agriculture channel is studied by an all-India
cross-sectional analysis for 2007-08 conducted through a generalized linear model with a logit
link and binomial errors for the proportion data. Temporal variation is found to be a
statistically significant factor affecting intra-district and inter-district permanent migration
from rural to rural or urban areas. This variation in rainfall is found not to explain inter-state
permanent migration or temporary migration. It is also found however that temporary
migration is affected by the amount of monsoon rainfall of a year as a percentage of normal
rainfall of that region. These findings are consistent with the expectations of the study. It is
acknowledged that the failure to explain inter-state permanent migration due to variation of
rainfall over time can be attributed to the presence of developmental migration of households
from areas of low rainfall variability over time. Due to only partial capturing of network
effects, they are found to explain intra-district migration only. The results of the study make a
strong case for risk at origin as an important factor inducing permanent migration of
households from rural areas of India to the same district or to another district in the same state.
Keywords: Migration propensity, rainfall variability, risk management, agriculture
