| In Focus |
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 The Constant Mover
Migration affects family and society in adverse ways
The World Urban Forum predicts that that in the next fifty years, two-thirds of humanity will be living in towns and cities. As more opportunities are created in sectors that have their base in urban areas, more and more people are leaving their homes and farms in villages to find work in the cities.
This growth is often visible to us in ways that affect our daily lives: increasing traffic, crowded streets, longer queues at the supermarket. But there are larger ways in which this is affecting the world around us–a growing population of the urban poor.
These are the people who come to a city and become immersed in a cycle of survival. They clean our streets, guard our houses, get rid of our waste, drive our cars and buses, run our tea-shops. Usually, they go home to slums where they do not have access to even basic needs like ventilated rooms, safe water, clean toilets. The United Nations estimates that by the year 2020, 40% of the population will be slum-dwellers. Mumbai, which is home to 19 million people, has half its population living in slums. In these cramped living arrangements, poor sanitation leads to disease easily. But there are other ills that breed here as well: crime, drugs, alcoholism and violence.
Rates of rural-urban migration have greatly exceeded rates of urban job creation and surpassed the capacity of both formal-sector industry and urban social services. Migration has become a major factor contributing to the phenomenon of urban surplus labour; a force that continues to exacerbate already serious urban unemployment problems caused by the growing economic and structural imbalances between Indian urban and rural areas.[i]
Greater urbanization has deeply affected social, environmental, political and economic aspects of society. Rural poverty is bad enough, but its problems are compounded when families leave their rural homes to seek a livelihood in overcrowded city slums, leaving behind deep-rooted traditions and ties to the extended family and the village seniors.
Large groups of landless, unskilled, uneducated, illiterate labourers and petty farmers leave their villages and go to distant large towns or cities like Bombay, Delhi and Madras. This continual inflow places huge amounts of stress on the urban system, and it is obvious that cities like Bombay and Calcutta have been unable to cope. Slums have proliferated. Squalor has increased. There is water shortage and lack of sanitation facilities. Pavement dwellers abound. Slums have become hotbeds of crime and disease.
The worst affected are the migrant labourers who fail to find permanent jobs and continue to travel from city to city. Work in harsh circumstances and living in unhygienic conditions, they suffer from serious occupational health problems and are vulnerable to disease. Because employers are aware of the desperate circumstances under which migrants have left their homes in search of work, they are often callous and exploitative, paying them lower wages or not following safety measures. Accidents are frequent on construction sites and quarries. Migrants cannot access various health and family care programmes or public health care facilities and programmes. Women workers receive no maternity leave. Children often accompany their families to the workplace and are exposed to health hazards. They are also deprived of education because the schooling system at home does not take into account their migration pattern and their temporary status in the destination areas does not make them eligible for schooling there.
In the case of male-only migration, the impact on family relations and on women, children and the elderly left behind can be quite significant.
A more comprehensive and active pro-poor development strategy in backward areas would go some way towards addressing the problem. This includes land and water management, social and physical infrastructure and governance institutions.
[i] “Impact of Rural-Urban Migration on the Sustainability of Cities” http://www.wscsd.org/
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