Statisticians Kundu and Mohanan question 2011 Census data on migration

Both former members of the National Statistical Commission and working on migration issues, argue that there are serious anomalies in the figures, particularly those comparing decadal migration

India’s rate of migration rose from 30.1 per cent in 2001 to 37.64 per cent in 2011, according to the recently released 2011 census data on migration. The rate of increase in migration between 2001 and 2011 also increased to 45 per cent, compared with 35 per cent during the preceding decade (1991-2001). This rise was noted among both men and women, and in both rural and urban areas.

There was also a sharp rise in inter-state migration, in keeping with the trend shown by the Economic Survey of 2018 based on railway-ticket and age cohort data. 

However, Amitabh Kundu and P C Mohanan, both former members of the National Statistical Commission (NSC) and working on migration issues, argue that there are serious anomalies in the latest data. In particular, the comparison of figures for decadal migration over time presents sharp contradictions and reveals a pattern that might be puzzling, they say.

A soon-to-be-released study by Kundu and Mohanan reveals that decadal migration growth rate — the proportion of migrants who stayed at the place of enumeration for less than 10 years — is lower than the number of residual migrants according to the 2011 Census.

A major part of the total migrant population consists of those whose duration of stay has not been or could not be ascertained. Such migrants’ share of total has gone up from 14 per cent to 15 per cent. The rate of growth in such migrants’ population between 2001 and 2011 was 60 per cent, against a 45 per cent rate for total migrants.

What, however, is the real puzzle, according to Kundu and Mohanan, is that the rate of growth in population of male migrants who stayed at a place for more than 10 years (67 per cent) is higher than that of those with who stayed for less than 10 years between 2001 and 2011 (57 per cent).

Also, if rate of migration has gone up significantly during this decade, how could decadal migrants as a proportion of total migrants go down for males (from 36 per cent to 32 per cent in 2001 and 2011), and at the same time remain the same at 31.2 per cent for total population?
 

Kundu wonders in the study, how could there be very high growth in population of migrants who stayed at a place for more than 10 years if the migration rate itself has gone up in the 2001-11 decade. “The only logical explanation could be that many among decadal migrants recorded more than 10 years as their duration of stay at a destination,” he says.

According to the study, another anomaly in the Census data tends to confirm this proposition. One must note that only those migrants who reported their duration of stay as less than 10 years in 2001 would be counted as migrants with a 10-20-year duration, provided they do not die or go back to their place of origin or any other place. One would generally expect the figures for 2011 to be significantly lower than the relevant figure for 2001.

Shockingly, the population of women migrants with 10-20-year duration in 2011 are 68.7 per cent of total, much more than the women migrants who recorded less than 10 years as their duration in 2001 (65.4 million) — that is a logical impossibility.

The experts say that this can be explained only in terms of decadal migrants claiming to have stayed at a place for more than a decade. Understandably, they hope to escape the social indignation and hostility that short-duration migrants face in the current policy environment.

Also, they could be aspiring to have access to certain civic amenities and legal benefits that tend to get linked with duration of stay. “This is also the reason why the percentage of migrants not reporting their duration of stay has gone up steadily in recent decades. The non-comparability of duration-specific migration data would question their usability in any temporal analysis or projection exercises,” says Kundu.