India was one of the first countries to respond to the demand for lower skilled labour in the Arab Gulf States following the economic boom resulting from the oil price hike in the mid-1970s. While the Gulf continues to be an important destination, other countries such as Malaysia have also emerged as destinations for Indian workers. In 2004, the number of workers who were given emigration clearance for contractual employment was just under 500,000, with almost 90 percent going to the Gulf States. The government aims to expand such overseas employment both in order to relieve domestic unemployment and augment remittances. In doing so it also aims to minimize problems faced by migrant workers in the recruitment and employment process.

With its well-educated and language proficient workforce, India is also a major source country for highly skilled migrant workers. The government is keen to expand this further and is looking to the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) as one of the ways to achieve this.
India is the largest recipient of workers’ remittances amounting to USD 15 billion in 2003. The government has taken a number of steps to attract remittance flows through formal channels and to develop instruments to attract investment from remittances.

The financial and non-financial (skills transfer) contribution of the Indian diaspora, spread throughout the world and estimated at 20 million strong, and its development potential, is now well recognized. The government has in 2005 created a new Ministry for Overseas Indian Affairs (MOIA), to take responsibility for diaspora and international labour migration issues. Other migration issues of importance in India are irregular migration and trafficking, and given the size of the country, internal inter-state migration.

• During the last decade (1991-2001), the number of migrants in India (excluding J&K) rose by 32.9%, the total number of migrants by place of last residence in India (excluding J&K) grew by 34.7% during 1991-2001.

• 43.8% moved due to marriage, 21.0% moved with their households, 14.7% migrated due to work, 6.7% moved after their birth, 3% for educational purposes, 1.2% for business and 9.7% specified other reasons.

• About 42.4 million migrants out of total 65.4 million female migrants cited marriage as the reason for migration. Among males the most important reason for migration was ‘Work/Employment’, 12.3 million out of 32.8 million total male migrants migrated due to this reason.

• During the decade, out of the urban growth of 30.3 per cent, 6.6 per cent is accounted for by migration to urban areas.

• If one takes away those migrants who moved due to marriage, the total number of migrants falls from 98.3 million to 55.2 million. Total number of migrants among males and females were 32.2 million and 22.9 million respectively.

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• Uttar Pradesh (-2.6 million) and Bihar (-1.7 million) were the two states with largest number of net migrants migrating out of the state.

• The total number of interstate migrants was 42.3 million and those who were born abroad account for 6.1 million. ?About 97% of these migrants by last residence were from the eight neighboring countries (including Afghanistan).

India owing to its scope and scale witnesses all kinds of migration. A few major causes and / or trends observed in the course of migration are listed below:

• Academically and technically qualified experts emigrating to industrialized countries (Nearly 1.25 million Indians emigrated to the US, Canada, UK and Australia between 1950 and 2000)

• Unskilled, semi-skilled and skilled labourers migrating to Middle East countries for undertaking blue collar jobs. (More than 3 million Indian migrants live in Gulf countries, with most of them coming from Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Punjab).

• Students migrating to USA, UK, Australia and other European countries to pursue higher education

• Internal displacement owing to political causes, including secessionist movements; identity-based autonomy movements; local violence, such as caste disputes and riots fuelled by religious fundamentalism and environment and development induced displacement. While the World Refugee Survey puts the total number of Internally Displaced Persons in India at 507,000, the Indian Social Institute in Delhi puts the figure at 21.3 million in its global survey of IDPs. Environmental changes and natural disasters such as floods and droughts have been reasons for displacement, affecting the populations of both flood-prone areas and excessively dry regions.

• Advanced technologies in the agro and fishing sector have grossly depleted natural resources thus forcing most male members in the agro and fishing communities to migrate. Such migrant male members seek unprotected sexual favours and on the other hand, the women that they have left behind in their villages fall easy prey to traffickers, thus creating the supply and demand factors that fuel both trafficking and the spread of HIV/AIDS.

• International migrants from the country face two specific kinds of problems – the first pertaining to the legal process of migration and the second related to their living and working conditions. Some major problems encountered by the migrants in their countries of employment include: premature termination of job contracts, changing the clauses of contract to the disadvantage of the workers, delay in making payments, violation of minimum wage standards, forced over-time work without returns and confiscation of passport and other legal documents.

• In the case of most intra-state and inter-state unskilled and semi-skilled migrants, migrant labourers run high risks of exploitation for they are exposed to large uncertainties and lack access to information and knowledge, thus making it very difficult for them to switch jobs in case of dissatisfaction with the current employer. Because of their option-less situation, these labourers lack bargaining power and thereby fail to negotiate reasonable pay scales and fair working conditions with the contractors.

• Most migrants live in open spaces, make shift shelters or illegal settlements, which lack the basic infrastructure and access to civic amenities. They have no local ration cards which can provide them their food at subsidized rates through the Public Distribution system. They are highly prone to occupational health hazards and vulnerable to epidemics including HIV/AIDS.

• Since the migrants are mobile, their children have no crèche facilities or access to schooling. They do not come under the purview of either the local government or the NGO PROGRAMMES for they do not belong to that particular region. So citing the problem of monitoring, most agencies leave them outside the scope of development intervention.

• In India, labour migrants are largely found in the developed states, the traditional migrant-receiving states, typically, coming from underdeveloped regions of the country and being comprised primarily of the most marginalized sectors of society, namely the Tribals and the Scheduled Castes (SCs). These migrants are entirely without legal protection or social security. They are “invisible”, and are not acknowledged and are denied access even to basic amenities in most of the cases. They have no identity in the places where they live and no voice in the places they have left behind

• Migration offers a very fertile ground for traffickers. In India, migrants who leave their homes in search for better employment opportunities and marital prospects, fall easy preys to traffickers for want of adequate information. India performs all the three roles of being a country of origin, transit and destination in the process of trafficking. At a country level, India is ranked high in the citation index as a country of origin and destination and is ranked medium in the citation index as a country of transit (Trafficking in Persons – Global Patterns, UNODC). Alongside cross-border trafficking, internal trafficking of women, children and men for purposes of sexual exploitation, domestic servitude, bonded labour, and indentured servitude too is widespread.

	Persons	Male	Female
Intra-state Migrants		(in %)
Rural to Rural	60.5	41.6	68.6
Rural to Urban	17.6	27.1	13.6
Urban to Rural	6.5	8.6	5.6
Urban to Urban	12.3	18.3	9.7
Unclassified	3.1	4.4	2.6
Inter-state Migration
Rural to Rural	26.6	20.7	32.7
Rural to Urban	37.9	44.7	30.9
Urban to Rural	6.3	6.1	6.4
Urban to Urban	26.7	25.9	27.5
Unclassified	2.6	2.6	2.5
International migrants
To rural areas	53	48.8	57.6
To urban areas	47	51.2	42.4

Migration is a positive phenomenon and if regulated and managed properly can reap in benefits for both the sending and receiving regions. In Kerala, for example, emigration has recently led to a considerable reduction in unemployment. Remittances are the main benefit of international migration, providing scarce foreign exchange and scope for higher levels of savings and investments. The remittances of India’s Diaspora have over the past 30 years financed much of India’s balance of trade deficit, have thus reduced the current account deficit and have even led to wealth and asset creation.

According to Brunson McKinley, Director General of IOM, “Migration will be one of the major policy concerns of the twenty-first century. In our shrinking world, more and more people will look to migration – temporary or permanent – as a path to employment, education, freedom or other opportunities. Governments will need to develop sound migration policies and practices. Properly managed migration can contribute to prosperity, development and mutual understanding among people”.