ANNOUNCEMENTS
Migration of human population is a very important socio-economic phenomena. Under the global climate change scenario, India may face more acute droughts in future. One of the several ways people may respond to drought is migration, especially temporary migration, out of the drought-affected areas. There is a growing debate in academia as well as in the policy arena around the narrative of migration in the instances of drought, whether it can be described as a failure to adaptation or an adaptation in itself. To address these issues a whole range of scholarly literature has evolved in India over the past two decades which tries to understand the association between migration and drought as well as migration as adaptation in the face of climate variability. This amount of literature, although growing, is indeed very small and there are ample scopes for further exploration. With this background, the thesis had identified three objectives to contribute to the state of the art.
Objective 1 was to examine the association between temporary migration and meteorological drought with the help of logistic regression models applied on a dataset involving National Sample Survey (NSS) 64th round and India Meteorological Department (IMD) gridded binary files. It found a positive association between drought instances and the probability of a household to have at least one temporary migrant member in rural India, while controlling all other covariates, while even stronger associations were found among the socioeconomically marginalised sections compared to their better-off counterparts. Objective 2 was to assess the effects of temporary migration on household adaptive capacity to climate variability (e.g., drought) in rural India by applying propensity score matching method on India Human Development Survey (IHDS) 2nd round and IMD rainfall data. Though monthly per capita consumption expenditure and livelihood diversity were not found to be significantly affected by temporary migration, the share of non-agricultural income saw a significant positive increment. Objective 3 was to investigate the factors and impacts of migration in a drought-affected village in Shahdol district, Madhya Pradesh based on collecting primary data and using qualitative research methods. For this purpose, the study developed a conceptual framework involving three components, and these are push factors of migration, pull factors of migration and impacts of migration, and their mutual interlinkages. Drought as one of the drivers to migration was found to influence the same in a variety of ways through interactions with other drivers especially among the socioeconomically marginalised sections. The impacts of migration ranged from mere survival to accumulation depending on a host of other factors.
The findings of the thesis have certain policy reflections. Interventions aimed towards drought proofing may reduce people’s vulnerability to drought and may reduce distress migration among the socioeconomically marginalised groups in the rural areas. A well-designed social protection system specially designed for migratory labour force may contribute to their welfare and ensure migration reach its potential as an adaptation strategy.
Key words: Temporary migration, drought, vulnerability, adaptation, quantitative methods, qualitative methods, secondary data, primary data, rural India.
