In sheer numbers, even the displacement caused by Partition ? often described as the greatest human migration in history which saw about 15 million people shift location ? gets dwarfed in comparison to this. The migration process, globally, has today become much bigger than that, though it has been mostly silent and spontaneous and largely beneficial to people, unlike the one forced by Partition.
India alone has over 42 million internal migrants, people who have moved from one part of the country to another, living in a state other than that of their origin. That makes it 4% of the population. If people who have moved within their states ? and are living in places other than where they belong to ? are also counted, the number reaches a staggering 307 million, or about one in every three Indians.
The size of international migration is much smaller. The number of foreigners living in India is only about 59 lakh, or approximately 0.5% of population, down from about 94 lakh in 1960. The number of Indians living abroad is about 90 lakh.
This trend manifests itself throughout the world as has been brought out in the latest Human Development Report of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). This year?s report, which focuses on migration, estimates that nearly one billion of the world?s 6.7 billion people ? or one in every seven persons ? is a migrant. Of these, an overwhelming number, about 740 million, are internal migrants and only 214 million are those who have changed their country of residence.
The HDR report calls it a healthy trend. ?For many people in the developing countries, moving away from their home town or village can be the best ? sometimes the only ? option to improve their life chances. Human mobility can be hugely effective in raising a person?s income, health and education prospects. But its value is more than that: being able to decide where to live is a key element of human freedom,? it says.
The report busts a number of myths. Like the fact, that only a small proportion — fewer than 70 million of the 214 million international migrants ? move from a developing country to a developed one. Most of the international migrants move from one developing country to another or between developed countries.