Impact on Source and destination regions

There is a view that migration negatively affects the emigrating region and favours the immigrating region, and that migration would widen the development disparity between the regions, because of the drain of the resourceful persons from the relatively underdeveloped region to the more developed region. But the exodus of the more enterprising members of a community cannot be considered a loss, if there is lack of alternative opportunities in the emigrating areas. As long as migration draws upon the surplus labour, it would help the emigrating region. It will have adverse effects only if human resources are drained away at the cost of the development of the region.

Another important point is that when migration draws away the unemployed or underemployed, it would enable the remaining population of the region to improve their living conditions as this would enable the remaining population to increase the per capita consumption, since the total number of mouths to be fed into is reduced as a result of emigration.

A major benefit for the source region is the remittance sent by migrants. Remittances from the international migrants are one of the major sources of foreign exchange. Remittances in the 80s were mainly driven by the economic prosperity in the oil exporting countries. The policies of liberalization during the 90s led to a lot of Indian information technology professionals migrating to the US for better opportunities, thus leading to an increase in remittances. Since the 1990s, migration to other countries like Canada and Australia has also increased but the number is still less compared to the Gulf countries. In 2016, India received US$ 62.7 billion as remittances from international migrants and remains the top most remittance receiving country, ahead of China which stands at US$ 61 billion in 2016. Kerala Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Punjab are the major states which receive international remittance.

The amount of remittances sent by the internal migrants is very meager as compared to international migrants, but it plays an important role in the growth of economy of the source area.

Indian workforce in Middle east

♤ Over five million Indian nationals are working in Gulf countries and majority of them are blue-collared workers in labour oriented sectors including construction, industrial sector, transport, supply and service sectors.

♤ Saudi Arabia has the highest number of Indian migrants and is also India's number one crude oil supplier.

♤ Five Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries—the UAE, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Oman—contributed 50% of the total value of remittances (2015), despite their economies suffering from a decline in oil prices.

♤ The slump in crude oil prices is affecting the remittances and number of people traveling to Gulf.

Remittances are mainly used for food, repayment of debts, treatment, marriages, children’s education, agricultural inputs, construction of houses, etc. For thousands of the poor villages of Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Orissa, Andhra Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, etc. internal remittance works as life blood for their economy. Migration from rural areas of Eastern Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh and Orissa to the rural areas of Punjab, Haryana, and Western Uttar Pradesh accounted for the success of their green revolution strategy for agricultural development. Besides this, unregulated migration to the metropolitan cities of India has caused overcrowding. Development of slums in industrially developed states such as Maharashtra, Gujarat, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Delhi is a negative consequence of unregulated migration within the country.