Migration – both within and between countries – is increasingly one of the world's most important policy issues. The faster the Indian economy grows, the larger will be the geographical redistribution of the workforce from localities of low to those of high employment growth. Thus, territorial mobility is fundamental both to realizing the full economic potential of India's people and to allowing the population to escape from rural poverty. The book analyses the decisive factors in labour migration. Based upon a thorough and robust examination of migrants to three slum localities of Delhi stretching over four decades, the author examines why people migrate, the circumstances of their decision and their experience at their destination. He investigates the myths of urban policy – that "rural development" will reduce migration to the cities, that "growth poles" can be created to divert migrant flows, and that government has the power to influence significantly migration scales and directions while pursuing essentially unpredictable market-driven economic growth. Testing the essential theoretical basis for urban policy in India, the book is of interest to academics studying migration of labour and urbanization, and those interested in South Asian Studies.

This volume brings together critical and landmark studies in Indian migration. Covers a range of key themes — emigration policy in countries of destination and origin, development and remittances, gender issues, impact of the global financial crisis, conflict, and inclusive growth Looks at new and emerging patterns in Indian migration Includes essays by major scholars in the field The book will be useful to scholars and researchers of development studies, migration and diaspora studies, economics and sociology. It will also interest policymakers and government institutions working in the area.

The Partition of India resulted in a massive exodus of men, women and children from both East and West Pakistan to India in 1947.Even after the emergence of East Pakistan as Bangladesh, an independent democratic nation in 1971, the flow of migrants to the eastern states of India, namely West Bengal, Orissa, Assam and Tripura was not stemmed. The women among them, not only came along with their families, but also singly. Very often forced to accept the burden of a new refugee life, they began their struggle for survival and existence, fraught more often than not, with difficulty and adverse circumstances .The challenge sometimes became so acute, that there was a metamorphic change in their behaviour, thinking and attitude. The status of the women migrants under such circumstances is uncertain and precarious. This book, the outcome of the doctoral thesis at Jadavpur University, Kolkata is an attempt to present a picture of the status of women migrants from Bangladesh who have settled in the two states of West Bengal and Orissa after 1971, specifically, between 1971-2001.The position these women in the wider fabric of India society and their status at home and workplace have been studied, based on a primary survey in selected areas of West Bengal and Orissa, namely Nadia and Murshidabad in West Bengal and Kendrapara in Orissa where there are large settlements of migrants from Bangladesh. It is sincerely hoped that this book will be useful to scholars and researchers in the fields of economics, demography and women studies.

This book analyses the quality of statistics such as geographic area, census population and sample survey statistics in a developing country. Using field interviews, archival sources, and secondary data covering the last seven decades, it explores the shifting relations between various kinds of statistics over their lifecycles and charts their cradle-to-grave political career. It uncovers a mutually constitutive relationship between data, development, and democracy and offers an exciting account of how government statistics are social artefacts dynamically shaped by political and economic factors. The book also quantifies the impact of data quality on the statistics of interest to policy makers such as household consumption expenditure and federal transfers. Numbers in India's Periphery makes a major contribution to the growing literature on the political economy of statistics in developing countries through a novel analysis of the shifting determinants of the nature of data in North East India.

This book examines identities, violence and conflict in the context of internal migration within India. As India prepares to count its citizens for Census 2011 with a proposal for a National Population Register and a unique identity card for every Indian citizen, the debate on internal and cross-border migration is significant. The second volume in this annual series, India Migration Report 2011 focuses on the implications of internal migration, livelihood strategies, recruitment processes, and development and policy concerns in critically reviewing the existing institutional framework. The essays provide a district-level analysis of the various facets of migration with a focus on employment networks, gender dimensions and migration–development linkages, with concrete policy suggestions to improve living and working conditions of vulnerable migrant workers who are a lifeline to the growth of Indian economy. This will be an invaluable resource for those in the fields of demography, economics, sociology, public policy and administration.

Papers presented at a seminar, held in 1996, organized by North East India Council for Social Science Research, Shillong.

There has been, of late, a growing realisation that the pace and pattern of economic development of a country can hardly be understood and explained comprehensively in terms of the straitjacket of economics discipline alone. India is a prime example of the importance of the part played by a country's history, culture, sociology, and socio-cultural-religious norms, values, and institutions in its development process. This book, with its assorted essays of varying depths of scholarship and insightful reflections, attempts to drive home this point more forcefully than ever before. In its search for the non-economic roots of India’s overall sloth and murky progress in its broad-based economic and human development, the book illuminates major oddities deep inside a unique mental make-up full of perceptual and ideational dilemmas, many of which are arguably shaped by the long-lasting and dominant influence of what could be called the Brahminical lines of thinking and discourse. With India’s hazy and dodgy world of perceptions as a backdrop, the book also addresses – through its intelligent essays - the deep and sometimes dire ramifications of the historic advent and the dramatic advance of neoliberal market ideology today.