Gujarat tops in pace of urbanisation

GANDHINAGAR: The latest National Sample Survey Organisation ( NSSO) report, ‘Migration in India’ , has found Gujarat to have the highest rate of urbanisation among all other states in the country.

Based on a survey carried out by NSSO across India in 2007 and 2008, the report significantly suggests that fast pace of urbanisation in Gujarat is mainly due to intra-state migration with large sections of rural people migrating to urban areas within the state instead of going out.

The report has found that 6.5% of all urban households in Gujarat are of migrants from within the state, which is the highest in the country. This is followed by Kerala (6.4%) and others. Maharashtra is on the lower side at 2.9 %.
Again, 90.6% of Gujarat’s rural migrants refuse to go outside the state, finding the state a better place to live in, which is the main reason for the rapid pace of urbanisation .

Of these, 60.7% go to another district and 29.8% shift to another place in the same district.

The report attributes the urbanisation in Gujarat to the trend of men from villages shifting their permanent place of residence to a nearby urban centre within the state. Thus, at 54.1%, Gujarat also tops in the number of men choosing to migrate from rural to urban areas in the country. The all-India average is 39%.

Prof Vidyut Joshi, a sociologist , says, “More people are moving from agriculture to non-agricultural occupations in Gujarat than elsewhere in India. In Gujarat just about 50% of working population is involved in agriculture , as against 70% in the country”.

Significantly, 48.3% of the village men who migrate are wealthy, which is unique for India. Only four per cent of them say economic compulsions forced them to migrate to other places.

Against 6.3% of Gujarati rural folks who moved out of the state, 85.2% Biharis went out of Bihar, says the survey.