Migration in India

Migration

It is the movement of people across regions and territories. It can be internal (within a country) or international (between the countries). Internal migration does not change the size of population of a country but it influences the distribution of population in a nation. It plays an important role in changing the composition and distribution of population. In India, the mass migration is from rural to urban. Unemployment and under employment in the rural areas are the push factors and the employment opportunity and higher wages in the urban areas caused by the industrial development are the pull factors of migration in the country.

Population composition

Population composition refers to the characteristics such as age, sex, marital status, caste, religion, language, education, occupation etc. The study of composition of population helps us to understand the social, economic and demographic structure of population.

Age composition

The age composition of population refers to the number of people in different age groups in a country. Population of a nation is generally grouped in to three broad categories. In India, the children who has less than 15 years of age constitute 29.5% and the people above 60 years constitute 8.0%. So, the dependent population in India is 37.5%and the independent population (16-59 yrs) is 62.5%. It shows that our country has enormous manpower.

Sex Ratio

Sex ratio is defined as the number of females per 1000 male population.

The sex ratio in our country is always unfavourable to females. Give reasons.

According to 2011 census, the sex ratio of the country is 940 females per 1000 males. This suggests that the size of female population is lower than males. It is 1084 in Kerala and 1038 in Puducherry. The lowest sex ratio is recorded in the union territory of Daman and Diu(618).

Literacy Rate

The people who are able to read and write are known as literates. It is an important indicator of quality of people. The percentage of literate people to the total population is termed as literacy rate. There has been a steady improvement in the literacy levels in India. India’s literacy rate as per 2011 census is 74.04%. From this, the literacy rate of male is 82.14% and the female is 65.46%. It shows that still there is a vast gap (16.68%) between the male and female literacy rates. Kerala ranks first in the country with a literacy rate of 93.91% followed by union territory Lakshadweep with 92.28%. The lowest literacy rate is found in Bihar (63.82 %).

Occupational structure

The economically active part of a country’s population is enumerated during the census operations and stated as workers. Workers are placed under three fold categories in census record. They are main workers, marginal workers and non-workers. According to the Census of India, all those who had worked for the major part of the preceding year (at least 6 months or 183 days) are recorded as main workers. Those who worked for less than six months are recorded as marginal workers and the people who have not worked at all comes under non workers.

Population Dynamics

Human population dynamics is a field that tracks factors related to changes in the size of population and its characteristics. Predicting population changes is an important aspect of population studies.

Problems of over Population

In India, growing pressure of Population on resource base, created many socio-economic, cultural, political, ecological and environmental problems. The Population problems vary in space and time and differ from region to region. Some of the major issues created by the overpopulation in our country are overcrowding, unemployment and under employment, low standard of living, malnutrition, mismanagement of natural and agricultural resources, unhealthy environment etc.