Cutting rural-urban migration

When land owners and sharecroppers across rural Bangladesh are frantically looking for day labourers to help them harvest their ripe Aman paddy, the latter in thousands are seen waiting eagerly at the 'morning labour markets' along pavements in Dhaka and other major cities to be picked up for menial jobs.
In rural areas, it is difficult to manage sufficient number of day labourers even at higher wages. The problem turns acute during harvesting time. The situation in urban areas is altogether different. Supply of unskilled labourers is always more than demand.
A good number of labourers in urban centres fail to find work every day. Yet daily wage earners who have migrated to urban centres from rural areas hardly think about going back to their roots and try their luck there. Rather many more of their kinds are flocking in Dhaka and other towns and cities every day in search of employment.
The cities and towns, Dhaka in particular, are finding it increasingly difficult to take the load created by an unending flow of migrant rural workforce. The overcrowded urban centres that have been failing to offer minimum basic amenities even to its permanent residents are now in a desperate situation with an ever-bulging floating population.
The policymakers and social scientists are aware of the reasons forcing the rural labour force to migrate to urban centres, but they are either clueless about the ways and means of stopping the flow or not serious enough about putting in place the measures necessary to encourage people to stay in their villages. In fact, the problems of rapid urbanization and the rise in urban poverty level have been going on simultaneously.
Among all the factors that are encouraging the rural poor to migrate to urban centres, the shrinking of agriculture sector is the leading one. Notwithstanding the fact that food production has tripled over the last four decades, the size of arable land has shrunk considerably. Yet the food production has gone up remarkably mainly due to the use of modern farming practices that are based on improved technology and mechanisation. Mechanisation of farming as well as food grain processing alone has eaten up millions of jobs in rural areas.  However, the inroad of modern farming practices was inevitable. The population would have starved to death had the country stuck to old farming practices.
Besides, more and more arable lands are being used for other economic activities, such as fish culture, poultry and livestock rearing that offer higher dividend. These activities need fewer number of workers than traditional farming activities.
Because of a notable improvement in road communications across the country, widespread use of cell phones and substantial inflow of remittance money from abroad, there has been a transformation in rural areas. These days, it is hard to locate many sleepy villages. Villagers find the urban centres more alluring because of the facilities of modern life, work opportunities available there.
The farming sector in Bangladesh cannot provide employment to the labourers throughout the year. Employment opportunities are available primarily during sowing and harvesting times. Despite uncertainties there is a prospect of having year-round work at urban centers. So, migration to urban areas has become more of a necessity for them.
The shrinking of agriculture sector would continue as an inevitable outcome of population growth and expansion of various physical infrastructures in meeting the demand of the economy. In that case, the prospect of employment generation in farming would further diminish.
The policymakers would have to devise ways and means to make living in rural areas more attractive so that the population there do not think of leaving there ancestral homes in search of jobs in urban centres.
Once there was a plan to develop the upazilas as 'growth' centres. In fact, the upazila system was introduced promising such an outcome notwithstanding the hidden agenda, if there was any, in the minds of the initiators. Unfortunately, that has not happened. The system was discontinued under political consideration. Though reintroduced later, it is being used to achieve one major political objective---creation of a clientele base of the ruling class in rural areas.
But what the rural areas need is widespread productive activities that would absorb both skilled and unskilled manpower. It is not possible to create large industries there. But establishment of small-scale agro-based and manufacturing units is seen as an effective means to discourage the rural labour force from migrating to urban centres.
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