Migration of Labour in India

The squatter settlements of Delhi

Himmat Ratnoo

• Editorial: Routledge
• Año: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317333401
• Edición: 1
• Categoría: Economics
• Categoría: Economic Theory

Migration – both within and between countries – is increasingly one of the world's most important policy issues. The faster the Indian economy grows, the larger will be the geographical redistribution of the workforce from localities of low to those of high employment growth. Thus, territorial mobility is fundamental both to realizing the full economic potential of India's people and to allowing the population to escape from rural poverty.

The book analyses the decisive factors in labour migration. Based upon a thorough and robust examination of migrants to three slum localities of Delhi stretching over four decades, the author examines why people migrate, the circumstances of their decision and their experience at their destination. He investigates the myths of urban policy – that "rural development" will reduce migration to the cities, that "growth poles" can be created to divert migrant flows, and that government has the power to influence significantly migration scales and directions while pursuing essentially unpredictable market-driven economic growth.

Testing the essential theoretical basis for urban policy in India, the book is of interest to academics studying migration of labour and urbanization, and those interested in South Asian Studies.

1 Introduction

Background and organisation of the case study

Introduction

The development of theories of migration, particularly the ones pertaining to developing countries of the past century, appears to be a cyclical journey of moving away from and then back to ‘the basics of the classics’ – from a delinking from classical political economy, to bewilderment at the speed of urbanisation during the middle of the twentieth century, to being lost in the wilderness amongst land–man ratios and population densities and absorption capacities evoked by geographers and demographers, to a point finally where scholars seem to be rediscovering the utility of applying modern means of research to the modern-day migration of labour within the frameworks of classical and Marxist political economy. Some of the examples of the latter trend include Ellis and Harris (2004), Stark (2006) and Breman (2010). The movement towards embracing the holistic and classical approach is also reflected in the fact that labour migration is being studied to bring out more and more common elements that apply equally to the movement of labour within the boundaries and to those across boundaries (Lall, Selod and Shalizi, 2006; Stark, 2006; Stark, Micevska and Mycielski, 2009).

The present study uses methods that are anchored to the understandings of labour migration as reflected in the writings of classical and Marxist political economists and fuses these with modern techniques within an integrated social science approach. The study aims at empirically finding the decisive factor in labour migration through a generalising case study. It critically examines the pivotal role of demand for labour through the following main themes: the role of relative deprivation in rural areas of origin and the mechanisms of information, advice and job searches in the process of rural to urban migration of labour, as well as the sequence, importance and manner in which variables determine the question of who stays and who returns. The primary dataset covers different time points in the processes of migration and return migration spanning four decades and has been collected from hundreds of representative migrants via two rounds of fieldwork nearly two decades apart. Analysis of this panel data forms the backbone of the current work.

To lay the contextual foundation for our results, this first chapter states the research problem of this study in light of the theoretical and analytical background, the empirical backdrop when this longitudinal study was being planned in 1991 and hypotheses that emerged and why Delhi was chosen for the case study. The second section contains a review of some important studies that have analysed the mechanics of rural to urban migration of labour. The review includes classical and Marxist writings and models of migration that have vastly influenced the popular and at times populist conventional wisdom on rural to urban migration in developing countries as studies that also depart from the conventional wisdom. The third section introduces the research problem emerging from the literature. The fourth section refers to a general picture of inter-State rural to urban migration in India at the time this case study was being designed. The fifth section states the hypotheses of the study. The next section considers the relevance of a case study of Delhi. The seventh section describes the nature of the present study as a generalising case study. The final section lays out the structure of the book.

Theoretical and analytical background of the case study

Debates on employment and labour transfer have roots in the great works of classical economics, and as with other economic theories, there is value in exploring the insights that are relevant to us in modern economics.¹ Accordingly, the first sub-section is concerned with the development of ideas on rural to urban migration of labour in classical economic writings. Then we turn our attention to a review of the traditional theories of migration that came to the fore in the second half of the twentieth century and continue to dominate current academic debates in the field. The next sub-section reviews the studies that depart from the traditional pessimistic view and support a move back towards a holistic and optimistic view that is closer to the classical and Marxist understanding of labour migration under capitalism.

The evolution of classical ideas on labour transfer

In a sense, the historical inevitability of the transfer of labour from rural to urban regions and from agriculture to industry is an old conclusion. Early post-mercantilist economic writers appreciated the significance of class differentiation in rural areas that comes with the transition to capitalism, and they underlined the low value of skills in the countryside compared with urban areas. A case in point is David Hume’s comment on the marginal life of the landless peasant in

rude unpolished nations, where the arts are neglected, all labour bestowed on the cultivation of the ground … [Vassals and tenants] are necessarily dependent, and fitted for slavery and subjugation; especially where they possess no riches, and are not valued for their knowledge in agriculture, as must be always the case where arts are neglected.

(Hume in Rotwein, ed., 1955: 28, emphasis mine)

Hume’s eighteenth-century counterpart Adam Smith took this further. He recognised the potential for migration from the areas of low costs of reproduction of labour to the areas where the costs are higher, saying that

it appears evidently from the experience that a man is of all sorts of luggage the most difficult to be transported. If the labouring poor, therefore, can maintain their families in those parts of the kingdom where the price of labour is the lowest, they must be in affluence where it is highest.

(Smith in Skinner, ed., 1970: 178)

With regard to the rate of accumulation (and not the stage of accumulation) determining wages and, by implication, the demand for labour, Smith was a true predecessor to Karl Marx. He argued that it is not the actual greatness of national wealth, but its continual increase, which occasions a rise in the wages of labour. It is not, accordingly, in the richest countries, but in the most thriving, or in those growing richest the fastest, that wages are highest. Smith illustrated this point in the context of England and North America, saying,

England is certainly, in the present times, a much richer country than any part of North America. The wages of labour, however, are much higher in North America than in any part of England … it is in the progressive state, while the society is advancing to the further acquisition, rather than when it has acquired its full complement of riches that the condition of the labouring poor, the great body of the people, seem to be the happiest and the most comfortable.

(Smith in Skinner, ed., 1970: 172)

David Ricardo developed the theory of capital accumulation further by adding a technological dimension to it. He demonstrated that, with technological changes, the rate and pattern of accumulation will change and consequently the demand for labour will also change. Ricardo was thus able to make a crucial inference about the cyclical nature of production under capitalism and its serious implications for labour demand. Illustrating the problem of unemployment arising out of the decline in labour demand due to the replacement of labour by capital, Ricardo stated the following:

All I wish to prove, is that the discovery and use of machinery may be attended with a diminution of gross product; and whenever it is the case, it will be injurious to the labouring class, as some of their number will be thrown out of employment, and population will become redundant, compared with the funds which are to employ it.

(Ricardo in Sraffa and Dobb, ed., 1951: 390)

Karl Marx took forward Ricardo’s idea that capital accumulation changes the very nature of demand for labour and makes it cyclical. The accumulation of capital and its relation to the growth of the relative surplus population are two key elements in Marx’s analysis of rural to urban migration. Marx found the seeds of the growth of capital accumulation and relative surplus population in the transition from pre-capitalist economic formations (Marx in Hobsbawm, ed., 1965). He argued that the development of the classes of owners and of the proletariat is a logical corollary of the transformation of all existing property into commercial and industrial capital (Marx in Hobsbawm, ed., 1965, p. 30). Thus appears a ‘doubly free’ mass of living labour power on the labour market, that is, “Free from the old relations of clientship, villeinage or service, but also free from all goods and chattels, from every real and objective form of existence, free from all property” (Marx in Hobsbawm, ed., 1965, p. 111). The role of capital in the accumulation of labour and its instruments at given points is seen as the main element of accumulation of capital (Marx in Hobsbawm, ed., 1965, pp. 111–112).

Smith and Marx both recognised that the growth of accumulation and its rapidity give rise to increases in productivity, which allows a smaller quantity of labour to produce a greater quantity of output – the composition of capital therefore changes in favour of its constant portion. Here, Marx makes a distinction between the two stages of capitalistic accumulation, that is, concentration and centralisation (Marx in Progress, Moscow edition, 1954). The first stage of capital accumulation involves concentrating the means of production and command over labour, and at this stage individual capitals fiercely guard their independence against each other. According to Marx, the second stage of capital accumulation (the stage of centralisation) is marked by the concentration of capital that is already formed, destruction of independence of individual capitals, ‘expropriation of capitalist by capitalist’ and transformation of many small capitals into a few large capitals (Marx in Progress, Moscow edition, 1954, p. 586). The stage of centralisation extends and speeds up the revolutions in the technical composition of capital, which in turn result in an absolute reduction in the demand for labour (Marx in Progress, Moscow edition, 1954, p. 588). Because this stage is marked by sudden expansions and contractions of economic activity, it needs a disposable industrial reserve army which makes possible suddenly throwing great masses of workers at the decisive points without injury to the scale of production. Its function is to ensure that demand for labour can be met independently of the increase in population. According to Marx, “The industrial reserve army, during the periods of stagnation and average propensity, weighs down the active labour-army; during the periods of over-production and paroxysm, it holds its pretensions in check” (Marx in Progress, Moscow edition, 1954, 598).

In this framework, the relative surplus population, or industrial reserve army, is a pivot point upon which the law of demand and supply of labour works, and it is a potential factor of mobility. It can take different forms, but apart from the acute form (during crisis) and chronic form (during dull times), it always has three forms – namely, floating surplus population, latent surplus population and stagnant surplus population (Marx in Progress, Moscow edition, 1954, pp. 600–603.) The form of the relative surplus population that is most relevant in understanding the process of rural to urban migration of labour in this framework is latent surplus population so the discussion here will focus on that.

Marx postulated that with the introduction of capitalistic production into agriculture, the demand for an agricultural labouring population falls absolutely. Even while accumulation continues, this repulsion is not compensated by greater attraction, as is the case with nonagricultural industries. One part of the agricultural population is therefore constantly on the point of passing over into the urban or manufacturing proletariat and on the lookout for circumstances favourable to this transformation. This constantly flowing source of a relative surplus population presupposes in the country itself that there is a constant latent surplus population, which becomes evident only when outlets open. Lenin (in FLPH, Moscow edition, 1956: 551–599) applied this framework to study the development of capitalism in Russia, and in that context, he used variables like land ownership status of cultivators, ownership of animals and implements, the availability of grain all year around and employment in nonagricultural occupations to measure the latent reserve army.

The classical and Marxist ideas on rural to urban migration are intertwined with the development of capitalism, the role of accumulation and the related aspect of the growth of labour demand, on the one hand, and the creation of a mass of ‘free labourers’, on the other. In other words, the concentration of economic activities in urban areas, as well as the reorganisations of these activities, lead to increases in urban demand for labour, which in turn necessitates a rural-urban transfer of labour. A reading of classical and Marxist writings remains an insightful theoretical tool for scholars of rural to urban migration, but we now move on to discuss traditional models of migration that are more popular in academic parlance.

W.A. Lewis (1954) was among the first to consider rural to urban migration in the context of the developing countries of the second half of the twentieth century, and the model he developed remains at the core of migration theory today.² His model visualised the economy as consisting of two sectors: the traditional rural subsistence sector which is characterised by zero or very low productivity surplus labour, and the high-productivity modern industrial sector which attracts the surplus labour. The primary focus is on the process of labour transfer, as well as on growth of employment in the modern sector, both of which are brought about by the growth of output in the modern sector. The speed at which these occur is given by the rate of capital accumulation in the modern sector, which in turn depends on the excess of modern-sector profits over wages, assuming that all capitalists reinvest all profits. The level of wages in the modern sector is taken as constant – being determined at a fixed premium over a constant subsistence level of wages in the traditional sector. At a constant urban wage, the supply of rural labour is considered perfectly elastic. According to the Lewis model, the rural-urban wage differential allows urban areas to attract unlimited supplies of labour from the countryside. The Lewis model, like most of the models of economic development of the 1950s, took accumulation as the key constraint on economic transformation. As in the case of classical and Marxist writings, its recognition of the demand-pull forces in the shape of elastic response ...

Índice

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of maps
• List of figures
• List of tables
• Foreword
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Glossary
• Abbreviations
• 1 Introduction: background and organisation of the case study
• 2 Method in the sample survey
• 3 Socio-economic status of migrants before migration
• 4 Channels of information, job expectation and the process of migration
• 5 Retrospective on the process of migration two decades later
• 6 Discovering and characterising groups of migrants
• 7 Who stays and who returns?
• 8 Conclusion
• Appendix A: Empirical backdrop of starting the present longitudinal study in the early 1990s: a detailed note on then-prevalent interpretation of inter-State rural to urban migration in India
• Appendix B: Methodological details of the sample surveys and demographic profile of the criteria migrants
• Appendix C: Ownership, leasing-in and leasing-out of land
• Appendix D: Occupational moves at the sub-sectoral level
• Appendix E: Methodological details relating to data-mining techniques applied in Chapter 6 and Chapter 7
• Appendix F: Statistical tables
• Appendix G: Details relating to the reduced dataset
• Appendix H: The four questionnaires and a letter format used during different stages of the study
• Index