Determinants and Impact of Migration on Rural Poor: A Case-study of Asansol, an Industrial Zone of West Bengal

Abstract

Migration, a continuous process of economic development, is an integral part of human history, involves relatively permanent, semi-permanent shift of residence from original place to destination. Migration is mainly caused by push factors at destination ( like higher wage, higher income, better job availability, better education, health etc. ) and pull factors ( like low income, low wage,lack of employment opportunity, drought, natural calamities etc. ) with the origin. But the present scenario reveals the fact that the distress and vulnerable conditions of rural poor are forced them to move out of their origin and go far off places in search of alternative livelihood. In this context, our present study tries to make an attempt to examine the main factors responsible for migration in Asansol. We select Asansol as destination place because being next to Kolkata, it is an industrial belt, many people come to Asansol from different parts of West Bengal and neighbour states e.g. Bihar, Jhankhand, UP as well in search of new jobs. We have taken interviews of 160 migrants in our survey area on the basis of Random Sampling Method. Another motive of our present study is to analysis the present status of the migrants after coming in Asansol. We take the help of different tables, percentage and also OLS technique and Wilcoxon Signed Ranked Test as the statistical tools for analyzing our results.