A study on factors responsible for rural urban migration

Rural India is yet a larder of problems like malnourishment, illiteracy, unemployment, poverty, sottishness and lack of basic infrastructure like schools/colleges, hospitals, sanitation, etc. This has pushed to rural youth moving out of villages to work in cities. Present study entitled “A study on factors responsible for rural urban migration” was conducted to explore the causes behind migration. The study was conducted in two industrially backward districts of Uttar Pradesh viz. Fatehpur and Banda. From each district one block, from each block four villages and from each village 10 respondents were selected through purposive random sampling from the list of families of rural migrants. Thus the total sample size was of 80 respondents. The data were collected by personal interview through structured schedule and simply analyzed through mean score and rank order. After making an exhaustive list of factors with the consultation of local people, causes were categorized in to five categories viz. economic factors, social factors, natural factors, good facilities of cities and other factors. Results of the study revealed that the major economic factors of migration are employment opportunities, poverty, low agriculture productivity, fragmentation of holding and Indebtedness. Prominent social factors encouraging migration were large size of family, desire to overcome of poverty, better educational opportunities, attraction towards better ways of living and loss of social prestige. Among natural factors exhaustion of natural resources was reported of highest importance. Important good facilities attracting to people are more avenue for earning better livelihood, educational facilities, medical facilities, communication facilities and good electric supply etc. Some other factors reported important by the respondents were lack of basic amenities in rural areas, better working conditions in the urban areas and hope of bright future. At the end, investigators felt that there is much more scope to conduct micro studies on migration process and its consequences to the urban as well as rural areas.