Low interstate migration is hurting India's growth and states are to blame

Current Affairs

Kerala ranked first out of seven states for migrant friendly policies on the Interstate Migrant Policy Index 2019 (IMPEX 2019), an index compiled by India Migration Now, a Mumbai-based nonprofit, which analyses state-level policies for the integration of out-of-state migrants. Maharashtra ranked second with a score of 42 out of 100 compared to Kerala’s 62, and Punjab came in third with a score of 40.
Internal migration, both within a state and across states in India, improves households’ socioeconomic status, and benefits both the region that people migrate to and where they migrate from, research shows. Yet, interstate migration in India is less than in other countries at a similar stage of economic development, studies show. A 2016 World Bank study attributed this partly to the migrant unfriendly policies in many parts of the country.
The low level of migration, especially between Indian states, partly resulted in the country’s low urbanisation rate --31 per cent in 2011. This rate is lower than in countries with lower per capita gross domestic product, such as 51 per cent in Ghana and 32 per cent in Vietnam, based on data accessed from Our World in Data, an open data website.
India ranked last in a sample of about 80 countries, in a cross-country comparison of internal migration rates between 2000 and 2010 by the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs.

 The IMPEX 2019 measures whether a state has equitable policies for residents and migrants in terms of: labour policies, child welfare, housing, social welfare, education, health, sanitation, and political participation. It also measures whether a state has additional and ad-hoc policy initiatives wherever needed for migrants to have equality with state residents. The index contains 63 policy indicators across eight policy areas, framed as questions or queries...Read More