Rural development for arresting migration

The ministry of agriculture appears to have adapted the most appropriate theme on the occasion of world food day this year in the present context. It focused on the need to bolster development of the rural economy to prevent migration. Indeed the way the country's total remittances from migrant workers have been sliding down despite higher migration of workers, it points at uneasy developments. Firstly, the expatriate workers are not getting enough, and secondly, opportunities for employment are shrinking as most of our people working abroad are unskilled workers whose demands have been declining in recent years and opportunities are on the rise for skilled workers.

Against the backdrop of falling remittance and declining employment opportunities, time has come for us to review migration in a different perspective. People should actually be discouraged to go abroad for work and encouraged to stay back at home. In order to make them do so, rural development is required to further social and economic development of rural communities and create greater incentives at home.

Most aspirants will prefer to stay at home if they are able to earn or achieve similar gains as they would have otherwise earned as an expatriate worker. If we recapitulate the factors responsible for migration of people we shall find that escape from rural poverty and degraded agricultural resources has historically been the most important motive for migration. One category of people migrates as they are landless farmers and they mostly migrate to urban areas as labourers. They do contract farming and are unable to repay their loans.

Small land-holders constitute another category of migration. They can barely run their families with the land they have and mostly run into debts. A third category of migrants includes those who have resources or the education to rise above poverty. The essential difference among these three is that the first two categories migrate to survive while the third one migrates to prosper. But their numbers are abysmally low.

Undoubtedly migration provides many poor rural households with a livelihood strategy and alleviates pressures on local labour markets, land, and natural resources. The benefits of migration for employment, economic growth and poverty reduction can hardly be overemphasized and attention is needed to improve migration governance.

Rural development has come under focus due to declining income from migration. Rural development is a comprehensive term and essentially focuses on action for the development of areas outside the mainstream urban economic system. It also provides an enabling environment and incentives for productive investment of social and financial remittances in rural areas. In view of recent economic depression and declining oil prices, demand for foreign labours is shrinking. In addition, with rapidly spreading globalisation quality of manpower demand has changed in character and demand for skilled workers is rising.

Rural development could be an alternative to migration in more senses than one. It will enhance rural growth and generate increased employment opportunities. More business opportunities could be developed across the country which will enable intending migrant workers to fetch an added income comparable to incomes earned abroad. Given that remittances constitute a key source of development finance especially in rural areas, it is crucially important to identify and establish policy strategies to strengthen the effectiveness and development impact of migrant remittances.

The changed situation has opened the door for two options: (a) sending trained manpower abroad, and (b) comprehensively developing villages from where majority of migrants moved out.

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