16/07/2020 - Indian Economy | Mainstorming

IAS Parliament 4 years

KEY POINTS

· The Economic Survey 2016-17, which extensively captured the scope of internal migration in India, pegged the number of migrant workers at 100 million in India, which is one of the largest numbers of internal migrants in the world. Majority of the migrants are seasonal labourers.

· The government of India has taken several steps to resolve the challenges faced by migrants. Most notably are the recently announced One Nation, One Ration Card programme, higher outlays for Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MNREGA), and the Garib Kalyan Rojgar Abhiyan (GKRA), which will employ returnee migrant workers in rural infrastructure construction projects.

· Government policy must try to assist such agglomeration by focusing on incentives to attract skilled labour, developing infrastructure and assisting linkages between local research in universities and industry.

· The clusters may be strategically linked to existing industrial corridors to facilitate production and trade. At present, there are five approved industrial corridors in India, overseen by the National Industrial Corridor Development and Implementation Trust.

· A focused approach on linking the new manufacturing clusters to corridors planned under the programmes can provide a significant fillip to the industry and to employment generation.

· Inter-district economic contiguity between economic clusters is known to function in India, and linkages with economic corridors would further generate spillover effects, and also make the employment distribution less skewed in these regions.

· Urban areas contributed more than 50 per cent of national output in 2011-12 in India, despite a lower share in the population. Several reports have estimated that cities alone will contribute 70 per cent of India’s GDP by 2030.

· Hence, it is widely acceptable that economic growth will be centred on urban development. Development of urban growth hubs in poor states will not only benefit the migrants from these regions, who would face less uncertainty by not having to move to urban areas which are far away, but would also help generate revenue for poor states.

· It would also reduce the high resource pressure that Tier 1 and Tier 2 cities currently face in India and lead to a much needed regionally balanced economic growth in the country.