Articles by Amitabh Kundu

The recently enacted Citizenship (Amendment) Act has generated a political churn in the country. Tagging the updating of the National Population Register, a base document to identify “citizens,” to the forthcoming 2021 population and housing census has raised strong objections from several corners, including some state governments, necessitating the home minister to make a statement in Parliament on 14 March 2020. Linking the census and theNPR raises many questions—technical and operational. It is important to go beyond politics to address these concerns.

Recent modifications in the credit linked subsidy scheme—an important vertical under the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (Urban)—have raised the income limits for eligibility of loans, increased the amount of subsidised loans, relaxed norms with regard to built-up area, and importantly, have included the middle-income group, diluting its core agenda of being “pro-poor.” While this would boost the housing sector, there is risk that subsidies will be cornered by real estate developers, private builders, and the urban middle class. The planners must view this development with concern.

An analysis of migration and urbanisation patterns in recent decades suggests a distinctly declining trend. It can be argued that the migration process has an inbuilt screening system, which is picking up people from relatively higher economic and social strata. The decline in the share of migrants moving in search of employment and an increase in business and study-related mobility further confirms this proposition. In contrast, poverty-induced migration has become a less important component of mobility over time. At the same time, in a bid to attract private capital, urban centres have become less accommodating to the poor, restricting their entry and thereby increasing rural-urban economic inequalities. The strategy of spatially unbalanced growth through "dispersal of concentrations" advocated by the World Bank and others, therefore, needs to be examined with empirical rigour.

Contrary to popular perceptions about a rapid pace of urbanisation, the fragmentary data in the provisional results of the 2011 Census reveal a decline in demographic growth in districts within the metro cities, suggesting that these have become less welcoming to prospective migrants. Such low and even negative population growth in large cities and their core areas needs further investigation, since it raises concerns about exclusionary urbanisation.

This paper analyses the pattern of migration in urban areas and its socio-economic correlates. The analysis is based on the National Sample Survey's reports of employment and unemployment pertaining to the latest rounds, which provide information on migration. Economic deprivation is not the most critical factor for migration decisions, even for seasonal migrants. People migrate out of both poor and rich households, although the reasons for migration and the nature of jobs sought by them are different. Rural-urban migrants have a greater risk of being below the poverty line than the urban-urban migrants, but both report a lower risk than non-migrants. The probability of a person being poor is low in a large city compared to any other urban centre, irrespective of the migration status, age, number of subsidiary activities undertaken, etc. The results indicate that migration has been a definite instrument of improving economic well-being and escaping from poverty. The probability of being poor is much less among the migrants compared to the local population, in all size classes of urban centres.