Migrants' return can help Uttarakhand boost socio-economy of ghost villages

As of April 23, as many as 59,360 people had returned to the 10 hill districts of Uttarakhand, according to government records and officials. Of them, 12,039 were from Pauri Garhal and 9,303 from Almora, the two districts most affected by migration, according to an interim report released by the state’s Rural Development and Migration Commission (RDMC). 

 

Around 350,000 residents were estimated to have migrated from the state between the 2001 and he 2011 censuses, leaving 1,048 villages totally uninhabited. Of nearly 16,800 villages in Uttarakhand, as many as 734, mostly in the hilly areas, have become uninhabited after 2011. Such ghost villages with their houses lying in ruins and fields overgrown with vegetation abound in Pauri district, where 186 villages turned uninhabited since 2011. The return of migrants, and their staying on, could help the hill state rectify its socio-economic imbalance and repopulate deserted villages that are perched along a strategic international border, experts say.