Write an 1518 Words Essay on Migration of Population to Urban Areas in India
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When India achieved independence in 1947, about 80 per cent of its population lived in rural areas. Today, over 60 years afterwards, this percentage has fallen by around 15 per cent, and now, about 65 per cent of the country’s population lives in villages. Evidently, there has been a migration of people from rural areas to urban and semi-urban areas. In terms of the number of people such migration has been of a very high magnitude. In 1947, India’s population was about 33 crore, of which about 8 crore occupied the cities. Today, the country’s population is nearly 107 crore, and those living in cities number about 30 crore-nearly the entire number of people at the time of independence.
Such a heavy migration has impacted India’s socio-economic structure in various ways. The most significant of these is the big burden that has been put on the cities, their infrastructure, resources and civic amenities. Although, most of the Indian cities are not designed to accommodate some specific number of people, yet each city has a limit set by its resources and systems.
The migration has thrown those limits in turmoil and created a plethora of problems for most of the cities. In all major parameters-sources, facilities, administration, level of pollution, etc. all the Indian cities are found wanting.
Each city in our country has expanded over the years but expanded haphazardly. The outer limits have seen numerous extensions by the authorities. Still that has not been able to prove adequate for the migrant’s settlers who make their makeshift huts and tenements outside the periphery. Those who enter the central or deeper parts of the city are able to build their clusters of slums at convenient places. Added to those are squatters or illegal occupants of public places some of which include influential people and local politicians.
The major class of migrants in the cities particularly in metropolitan cities of Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata and Bangalore is of workers and middle class employees who have shifted to these places either in search of work or after getting a job. When one person gets a job or regular work he calls his entire family to the city, thus leading to further exodus from the rural areas.
The metropolitan cities are major centres of manufacturing, trade, office work. Besides, thousands of shops, business centres, restaurants and small enterprises offer various types of jobs or work opportunities. Labour jobs are available in every part of the city. Those who migrate from villages get some work as per their skill, education and physical capacity. Besides the metropolitan cities mentioned above there are many other big and fast growing cities like Amritsar, Chandigarh, Ludhiana, Nagpur, Hyderabad, Pune, all the state capitals and district centres, which offer vast opportunities for regular work for the migrants. Some cities like Noida and Gurgaon have expanded so fast in industry and services that the people find it very easy to go there and get some job.