Rural urban migration in India: A threat to socio-economic sustainability

Disparity of development between rural and urban areas pushes the rural people towards urban areas. The poverty induced rural-urban migration has increased urban poverty, slums, crime inequalities and exploitation and, over all, degradation of urban life on one hand, and on the other hand supply region Rural areas have failed to upgrade their livelihood. Among all of the migration streams, intra-state migration dominates interstate, migration is male dominated and economically motivated. Statewise migration data do not show any direct relationship between economic development of the state and their rural-urban migration. Analysis of the size growth reveals that hierarchy of urban centers and their settlement distribution have become highly skewed over time and imbalance and inequalities reached their highest form within the centers according to their size. Large metropolitan cities have grown unparallel at fast rate. Large groups of landless, unskilled, illiterate people from rural economy leave their home and go to the cities or large towns like Mumbai, Delhi. The rural migrants do not prefer to go to neighbouring small towns because their absorption capacity is limited.