Decline in Rural to Urban Migration in India

 Recent data from a study titled ‘400 Million Dreams!’ by the Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister (EAC-PM) indicates decline in rural to urban migration in India. The report reveals a reduction of 5.4 million migrants, or 11.8 per cent, compared to 2011. This decline is attributed to various factors, including improved government services and better economic opportunities in rural areas.

Migration Trends Over the Years

The migration rate in India has decreased from 37.6 per cent in 2011 to 28.9 per cent in 2023. The number of workers migrating for economic reasons has fallen to 5 million, representing only 6.7 per cent of the workforce. This is a notable drop from 8.2 per cent in 1991 and 2001, and 9.3 per cent in 2011. The workforce has grown at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 1.8 per cent, while migration decreased at -1 per cent.

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Factors Influencing Migration Decline

The study suggests that improved government services, such as education and health, along with better infrastructure and connectivity, have contributed to the decline in migration. However, the reality of this assertion is questionable, as data shows a decrease in labour movement despite these improvements.

Evidence from Transport Data

Using railway ticket data, the report marks a 6.7 per cent decline in post-pandemic migration during peak months. Additionally, bus travel has seen a 16 per cent decline since FY11. The number of non-suburban railway passengers has also decreased, indicating a contraction in economic migration.

Urban-Rural Remittance Patterns

The report analyses savings account to current account (SA/CA) ratios to assess urban-rural remittances. Higher SA/CA ratios indicate areas with outbound migration, while lower ratios reflect high economic activity. Major cities like Mumbai and Delhi have lower ratios, suggesting greater economic activity compared to rural areas like Bihar, which has a high ratio of 10.14.

Rural Infrastructure and Migration

The claim that rural electrification has reduced migration is debated. Historical data shows minimal increases in electrification since FY01. The pace of rural housing construction under the PM Awaas Yojna-Gramin has also been modest, suggesting that improved infrastructure has not impacted migration trends.

Economic Slowdown and Migration

The report indicates that the decline in migration reflects a rising ruralisation trend rather than urbanisation. The dependence on agriculture has increased, leading to disguised unemployment and flat rural wages. The slowdown in economic activities and rising automation have contributed to this trend.

1. The EAC-PM is a key advisory body for India’s economic policy.
2. Bihar’s high SA/CA ratio indicates lower economic activity.
3. The PM Awaas Yojna-Gramin aimed to improve rural housing.
4. The contraction in migration has resulted in rural labour oversupply.
5. Urbanisation previously drove migration during India’s economic liberalisation.
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Implications for Future Policies

The contraction in migration suggests a need for policies that support rural incomes through fiscal measures or employment-generating programmes. The stagnation in worker movement across various transport modes indicates a broader economic challenge that requires targeted interventions to stimulate growth and migration.

What is Rat-Hole Mining?

 On January 6, 2025, several workers became trapped for over 12 hours in a coal “rat-hole” mine in Dima Hasao district, Assam. The mine was flooded, prompting ongoing rescue operations. Two motor pumps are currently at work to remove water from the mine, which is reportedly several hundred feet deep. Assam’s Chief Minister, Himanta Biswa Sarma, has stated that both the National Disaster Relief Force and the State Disaster Relief Force are on-site to assist in the rescue. Additionally, the Army’s help has been solicited.

What is Rat-Hole Mining?

Rat-hole mining is a traditional method used to extract coal from narrow seams. This technique is particularly common in Meghalaya. The term “rat hole” describes the small pits dug into the earth, which are just large enough for a miner to enter. Miners typically descend into these pits using ropes or bamboo ladders to reach the coal seams. They employ basic tools like pickaxes, shovels, and baskets for manual extraction.

Types of Rat-Hole Mining

There are two main types of rat-hole mining – side-cutting and box-cutting. In side-cutting, miners dig narrow tunnels on hill slopes until they locate the coal seam, which is often less than 2 metres thick. Box-cutting involves creating a rectangular opening, ranging from 10 to 100 square metres, before digging a vertical pit that can extend 100 to 400 feet deep. Once the coal seam is identified, horizontal tunnels are dug to facilitate coal extraction.

Environmental and Safety Concerns

Rat-hole mining presents numerous safety and environmental risks. These mines are typically unregulated, lacking essential safety measures such as proper ventilation and structural support. Workers often do not have access to safety gear. The mining process leads to land degradation, deforestation, and water pollution. Critics have condemned the practice due to hazardous working conditions and frequent accidents, resulting in injuries and fatalities. Despite regulatory efforts, rat-hole mining continues due to economic pressures and limited alternative livelihoods for local communities.

Legal Status of Rat-Hole Mining

The National Green Tribunal (NGT) banned rat-hole mining in 2014, reaffirming the ban in 2015. The tribunal noted the numerous fatalities resulting from flooding in mining areas during the rainy season. The order specifically targeted Meghalaya, where this mining technique has been widespread. The state government subsequently appealed the NGT’s decision in the Supreme Court.

1. Rat-hole mining is primarily found in Meghalaya.
2. The NGT banned rat-hole mining due to safety concerns.
3. Side-cutting and box-cutting are two main mining techniques.
4. The coal seams are often less than 2 metres thick.
5. Unregulated mining leads to severe environmental degradation.

Current Rescue Efforts

Rescue operations are ongoing, with multiple agencies involved. The slow pace of the operation has raised concerns among families of the trapped workers. The presence of water in the mine complicates the rescue, making it imperative to pump out water efficiently. Authorities are hopeful for a successful outcome as they continue to work diligently on the site.

Economic and Political Weekly: Table of Contents

 

Vol. 60, Issue No. 1, 04 Jan, 2025

Price Distortions in Global Agriculture Markets

Invocation of Ambedkar as a Performance or a Practice?

From 25 Years Ago

From 25 Years Ago-The Global Corporation: Road to Serfdom

From 50 Years Ago

From 50 Years Ago: Films and Political Consciousness in Tamil Nadu

Alternative Standpoint

Transparency, Communalism, and Authority - Waqf (Amendment) Bill, 2024

Rutba Peerzada, Muhammad Mutahhar Amin

Commentary

On the Supreme Court Judgment on the Status of AMU

Salman Khurshid

Mining Royalty Is Not A Tax - Analysing the Supreme Court Judgment

Lekha Chakraborty

Amendment in the Right to Education Act - From Intention to Implementation

Preeti Manani, Richa Goswami

V K Natraj (1939–2024) - The Intellectual Star of Mysuru

M N Panini

Book Reviews

The Good Society and Its Enemies

Pulapre Balakrishnan

Polemics, Mass Publicity, and Muslim Belonging in South India

Navaneeth H

Perspectives

Rural Non-farm Employment in Uttar Pradesh

Shadab Hashmi

Special Articles

A World Order in Crisis and Transition - Contemplating Its Future

Deepak Nayyar

Is Forest Area a Good Proxy in the Horizontal Devolution Formula?

D Narayana, Amalu Seby, Gopika G, Anand Babu A, Surya K, Anuraj P K, Jobin George, Rhwithwik M S, Aadith B Nair, Anjalikrishna Sudhakaran, Greeshma K S

Dynamic Interplay between Rural Demand and Rural Inflation in India

Sitikantha Pattanaik, Neha Gupta, Vinay Jadhav

Current Statistics

Current Statistics

Letters

Free Electricity for Handloom Weavers

Prasanna P, Asokan T

Improving Climate Finance Access for Farmers

Bishwa Bhaskar Choudhary, Smita Sirohi

Savitribai Phule’s 194th birth anniversary: A look at the life of India’s first woman teacher

 

A Dalit woman from the Mali community, Savitribai was born on January 3, 1831, in Maharashtra's Naigaon village. Married off at the age of 10, her husband Jyotirao Phule is said to have educated her at home.

On Savitribai Phule’s 194th birth anniversary on Friday (January 3), Prime Minister Narendra Modi on X paid tribute to India’s first woman teacher.

“She is a beacon of women’s empowerment and a pioneer in the field of education and social reform. Her efforts continue to inspire us as we work to ensure a better quality of life for the people,” he said in a post.

Who was Savitribai Phule?

A Dalit woman from the Mali community, Savitribai was born on January 3, 1831, in Maharashtra’s Naigaon village. Married off at the age of 10, her husband Jyotirao Phule is said to have educated her at home. Later, Jyotirao admitted Savitribai to a teachers’ training institution in Pune. Throughout their life, the couple supported each other and in doing so, broke many social barriers.

At a time when it was considered unacceptable for women to even attain education, the couple went on to open a school for girls in Bhidewada, Pune, in 1848. This became the country’s first girls’ school.

The loThe Phules opened more such schools for girls, Shudras and Ati-Shudras (the backward castes and Dalits, respectively) in Pune, leading to discontent among Indian nationalists like Bal Gangadhar Tilak. They opposed the setting up of schools for girls and non-Brahmins, citing a “loss of nationality”, and believing not following the caste rules would mean a loss of nationality itself.

The opposition to the couple was so hostile that eventually Jyotirao’s father Govindrao was forced to kick them out of his house.

Savitribai herself faced great animosity from the upper castes, including instances of physical violence.

When serving as the headmistress of the first school in Bhide Wada, upper-caste men often pelted stones and threw mud and cow dung on her .Savitribai would have to carry two saris when she went to school. She would change out of the soiled sari once she reached the school, which would again be soiled on her way back. But this would not deter the work and the schools came to be hailed as a success. One report from 1852 in The Poona Observer states, “The number of girl students in Jotirao’s school is ten times more than the number of boys studying in the government schools. This is because the system for teaching girls is far superior to what is available for boys in government schools… If the Government Education Board does not do something about this soon, seeing these women outshine the men will make us hang our heads in shame.”

According to the memoirs written by Balwant Sakharam Kolhe, Savitribai was undeterred by these attacks and would say to her harassers, “As I do the sacred task of teaching my fellow sisters, the stones or cow dung that you throw seem like flowers to me. May God bless you!”

Phule’s role as a social reformer, beyond education

Along with Jyotirao, Savitribai started the Balhatya Pratibandhak Griha (‘Home for the Prevention of Infanticide’) for pregnant widows facing discrimination. This was inspired by a turn of events wherein a young Brahmin widow was sentenced to life imprisonment in the Andamans after she killed her newborn child. The man who had raped the illiterate widow refused to take up any responsibility for the child, driving the widow to infanticide.

Savitribai Phule also advocated inter-caste marriages, widow remarriage, and eradication of child marriage, sati and dowry systems, among other social issues. The Phules also adopted Yashwantrao, the child of a widow, whom they educated to become a doctor.

In 1873, the Phules set up the Satyashodhak Samaj (‘Truth-seekers’ society’), a platform open to all, irrespective of their caste, religion or class hierarchies, with the sole aim of bringing social equity. As an extension, they started ‘Satyashodhak Marriage’ – a rejection of Brahmanical rituals where the marrying couple takes a pledge to promote education and equality.

The couple also set up ‘Balyata Pratibandak Gruha’, a childcare centre for the protection of pregnant widows and rape victims. Urging women to break free of caste barriers, Savitribai encouraged them to sit together at her meetings.

At her husband’s funeral procession on November 28, 1890, Savitribai again defied convention and carried the titve (earthen pot). Walking ahead of the procession, Savitribai was the one who consigned his body to the flames, a ritual which is still predominantly carried out by men Setting an extraordinary example of living a life of compassion, service and courage, Savitribai became involved in relief work during the 1896 famine in Maharashtra and the 1897 Bubonic plague. She herself contracted the disease while taking a sick child to the hospital, and breathed her last on March 10, 1897.

Savitribai’s literary works

Savitribai Phule published her first collection of poems, called Kavya Phule (‘Poetry’s Blossoms’), at the age of 23 in 1854. She published Bavan Kashi Subodh Ratnakar (‘The Ocean of Pure Gems’), in 1892. Besides these works, Matushri Savitribai Phlenchi Bhashane va Gaani (S’avitribai Phule’s speeches and songs’), and her letters to her husband have also been published.

Source: Indian Express, 7/01/25

World Braille Day: What is braille? And how was the system of writing invented?

 

World Braille Day is observed annually on January 4, the birthday of Louis Braille, the man who invented a revolutionary system using which visually impaired persons could read and write.

World Braille Day is observed annually on January 4, the birthday of Louis Braille, the man who invented a revolutionary system using which visually impaired persons could read and write.

Braille is not a language. Rather it is a code comprising raised dots using which many languages can be written or read. For those with visual impairment, the system allows for reading and writing based purely on tactile cues.

Here is how braille works, and the man behind its invention.

What does Braille look like?

According to the Oxford Dictionary, the word “code” refers to “a system of words, letters, figures, or symbols used to represent others…” This is essentially what braille is. Braille symbols represent letters, numbers, punctuation marks, or even whole words. These symbols are constructed within fixed units of space known as braille cells — a full braille cell comprises the space for six raised dots arranged parallely in two columns of three. This allows for a total of 64 possible combinations of dots and empty spaces in a cell, meaning that one can denote as many as 64 unique symbols using braille. Of course, a lot more than 64 symbols are at play, if one considers all the languages in the world. This is why different languages and countries have their own braille codes. There are even some eight-dot versions of braille which allow for 255 possible symbols to be denoted.

India, for instance, developed the Bharati Braille script in the 1950s to unify as many as 11 braille scripts in use for different languages in pre-Independence India.

How is braille written?

Like any other script, braille can be written using paper and pencil/pen, printed, or written on a braille writer.

The first requires the use of a slate and a stylus. A braille slate is a writing guide with a template of evenly spaced depressions for braille dots. A stylus is used to create indentations in the template and form braille characters. This leads to there being bulges on the paper on its reverse side, which forms the dots which can then be read via touch.

A braillewriter is the typewriter-equivalent for writing braille. It has only six keys, a space bar, a line spacer, and a backspace. The six main keys are numbered to correspond with the six dots of a braille cell. The person typing pushes a combination of these six keys at the same time to produce a symbol in braille. With developments in technology, new portable devices have come up which allow users to read and write in braille using verbal or tactile cues, and produce hardcopies using braille-embossers (like a printer for braille). There are also specific keyboards which the visually impaired can use, which allow them to type using standard alphabets, and then translate this into braille for printed hard copies.

How was braille invented?

The history of braille can be traced back to early 19th century France. A certain Charles Barbier, a former artillery captain who was interested in coding and writing systems, was at the heart of braille’s early development.

As the story goes, Barbier came up with a system of “night writing” so that soldiers need not turn on lamps to write letters or read messages at night, which could give away their position and lead to costly losses. Barbier’s system was based on 12-dots whose combinations represented different phonetic sounds. Now, for human fingers, it is not easy to read all 12 dots at once, making this system rather tedious. Enter Louis Braille. Born in 1809 near Paris, Braille had gone blind at the age of only three after an unfortunate accident. Nonetheless, he excelled in multiple areas including music and academics. At the age of just 15, he figured out an adaptation of Barbier’s “night writing”, which he changed to a six-dot system and initially adapted for musical notation. This system would go through multiple refinements until 1837, when Braille published a three-volume braille edition of a popular history textbook. Considered to be the first work in the system that would later be termed “braille”, the textbook’s success propelled Braille’s invention to global fame. Initially, braille was a one-to-one transliteration of the French alphabet but over time, various contractions and further refinements took place as braille began to be adapted to languages around the globe. The latest World Braille Usage (published in 2013), a compilation of braille codes for languages around the world, contains braille codes for more than 133 languages.

Source: The Indian Express, 7/01/25