Implications of excess outward migration:

♤ The traditional knowledge of mountain people is getting destroyed.

♤ Skewed sex ratio

♤ Negative implications for essential services like health services in hill regions.

♤ Strategic aspects like depopulation in border areas which may pose threat due to foreign incursions or growth of Maoist influence.

♤ Delimitation exercises tend to shift more political constituencies towards plain region which defies the initial objectives of hill states like Uttarakhand.

♤ Emergence of ghost villages and hamlets. Uttarakhand statistics department claims that 1,065 villages have permanently turned into ‘ghost villages’.

♤ Pressure on few plain regions of the hill state, rising inequalities and overall skewed development.

♤ Mass migration has also checked the local utilization of the Chir pine needles, leaving more fuel for forest fires.