Indians are growing more mobile by the day and the reason for mobility remains economic. Of the 3,000 employees surveyed by Kelly Services in India, around 79% were found willing to move to a different city for work while 78% were prepared to relocate to a different country to find work. About 55 % of respondents have already relocated to another city for work. According to Vishal Chibber, HR head, Kelly Services Information Technology, banking, finance, engineering emerge as the sectors where people are mobile than in other sectors both within the country and across countries. However, Pravin Tatavarti, managing director, Allegis India, believes that Indians have shown a tendency to migrate since a long time, which has been amplified by Kelly study now. According to Tatavarti the BPO sector is also attracting migration from small towns.
?A process of counter migration has already begun. People from traditional metropolitan centres and outside are willing to move to satellite towns mainly because of lower cost of living. This growth of suburbs can be also attributed to expansion and employment generation happening there. People prefer to migrate to the satellite towns like Gurgaon, Noida instead of Delhi, Pune instead of Mumbai and Mysore to some extent instead of Bengaluru mainly also because the opportunities in metropolitan cities are largely saturated,? added Chhibber. But according to Tatavarti, other tier II cities have a long way before they can catch up with the traditional metropolitans.
People with upto five years experience have been found to be most migratory, observed Chhibber. He also points out that a transition from joint family to nuclear family system in India has facilitated migration. Arvind Sehgal, director, New Era India, a HR Consultancy firm observed otherwise, ?People coming under the highest payroll, in the income bracket of Rs 24 lakh to Rs 4 crore per annum who are referred to as first category people are not averse to relocate provided they get a better package in terms of better growth opportunities that include responsibilities and fame?.
In terms of region-wise migration, Sehgal observes that people from Maharashtra are most willing to relocate within the country while people from Chennai offer most resistance to move out or at best agree to migrate to Bengaluru.
Inspite of a higher migratory tendency demonstrated by Indians in the study, about 55% of those surveyed consider ?family? as a deterrent factor in migration. Other factors cited as hindrance in a decision to migrate include children?s schooling?, ?language barriers?, ?property ownership?, ?tax complications? etc.