1.

A Socio-Cultural Perspective on Migration and Economic Development: Middle

Eastern Migration from Kerala, India*

Introduction
More and more countries around the world are turning to short-term international migration to
solve their labour shortage problems. By hiring a rolling stock of temporary and cheap
international labour, countries save on social and educational expenditure and also solve the
problem of keeping their culture intact. Labour-importing countries impose a variety of
restrictions on international workers concerning the length of stay and the admittance of
dependants. Thus, unskilled and semi-skilled workers in particular are only given contracts of a
few years at a time and in most cases (through income and visa restrictions) family members are
not permitted to join the migrant. Consequently short-term migrants are oriented toward their
home countries, visiting frequently and living frugally so that they can remit a large portion of
their income to their families.
Since short-term international migration is generally undertaken for economic reasons and the
most obvious effect of such migration on sending countries is the outflow of a significant
proportion of the workforce and the inflow of large sums of money, most studies of such
migration have tended to focus on its economic consequences. These studies, largely conducted
by economists, have examined the use of remittances by migrants and their families. The hope
was that these remittances would be invested in productive activity and thus would stimulate
economic development. However, this hope has often not been realized since migrants seem
more likely to spend their excess income on lavish hospitality, conspicuous consumption, and the
building of large, showy houses ????.1>>
This article argues that socio-cultural factors generally neglected by economists such as the
perception of income derived through foreign employment and differences in the ethnic
structures of different migrant communities, profoundly shape the use of such income and should
be taken into account by policy makers interested in enhancing the development potential of
migrant remittances. As a case study, I examine the use of remittances in three villages in Kerala,
India which had a large scale migration to countries around the Persian Gulf. The patterns of
consumption, investment and exchange were distinctly different in the three areas Veni, Cherur,
and Kembu since the socio-cultural structures of the communities were very different.2
Although community differences in migration patterns were widely recognized by the migrants
themselves (see for instance Osella and Osella, 2000:7-8), I will show that these differences were
missed even by the local economists who studied the phenomenon, resulting in misleading
conclusions and unviable policy directives.
2.

Return Migration and its impact on Regional Innovation Systems; Evidence from
India
Migration is a complex phenomenon influenced by economic, social, political,
geographical and environmental factors. Migration has been an important element of

human history, where people have been moving from one place to another in search of
livelihood. From centuries India has been a destination and source of migrants and the
trend even continues today. India has the second largest Diaspora in the world accounting
25 million Indians abroad. India has experienced increased out flow highly skilled
professionals to the western world mainly to Australia, US, UK, newzeland etc and the
less skilled migrants to Gulf and other south Asian countries. The proportion of migrant
workers working abroad to total labour force is very less (around one percent) however
emigration which is mainly skilled migration has created skill shortages in the high end
of the labour market. During the 1970s and 1980s, there was concern that India was
losing its educated workforce to the Western countries, through a phenomenon known as
brain drain. More recently, there is evidence that reverse brain drain is occurring, to
take advantage of the growth and employment opportunities in the home country. It is
often pointed out that returnees can make a substantial contribution to economic
development in the sending countries not only by investing the money they accumulated
in their country of migration but also by stimulating the transfer of technological and
managerial know-how. They take part of the knowledge from (high-tech regions) abroad
when they return, and open a new knowledge and help to reduce existing technological
lock-ins in their home country. In this context the present study is examining the socioeconomic characteristics of return migrants to India from abroad. The study will also
examine the impact of return migrants on the diffusion and dissemination of new
knowledge and technology in the existing innovation systems through the regional
innovations systems framework.

3. Impact of Migration on Economic Development:A Study of some selected State.

Mobility has been an inherent part of human
existence since the days of civilization. Migration in todays
world is shaped by a number of factors related to economic,
political, religious, life risk, and various ethnic and sociocultural
issues. In this paper, an attempt has been made to
investigate firstly, the impact of a variety of economic and noneconomic
factors on net in migration and secondly, the impact
of net migration on the level of economic development in
fifteen major states of India. Using pooled cross section data
for fifteen major states, it has been found that net migration is
positively influenced by level of Per Capita Income and level of
road infrastructure, and negatively influenced by
unemployment rate and cost of living. The other variable,
crime rate, has been found insignificant as a determinant of

migration, indicating that people migrating from one state to

other do not concern about risk of life, they are rather
concerned about basic needs of life. Further, migrationdevelopment
relationship tested in the present study indicates
that level of development is positively associated with net
migration. This finding defends the controversial belief that
migration is beneficial for development and there is no reason
to raise voice against human mobility in the context of Indian
economy.

auses and Impact of Migration : A Sociological Study of

Emigration From Kandebash, Baglung, Nepal
Tika Ram Gautam
1. Introduction
People are moving from one place to another since ancient period, which is a continuous
international phenomenon resulted due to complex mechanism, involving social, economic,
psychological, political, institutional and other determinants (Singh, 1998). Migration is a form
of
geographical or spatial mobility, which involves a change of usual residence of a person between
clearly defined geographical units. A person who crosses the boundary of own country or places
of country is called an out-migrant. Emigration refers to movement out of a particular territory in
connection with the international migration (Bhende and Karnitkar, 1998). On the basis of
assumed causes influencing human movement, international migration can be broadly
categorized
into two groups: voluntary and involuntary (Peterson, 1978). This article concentrates on
voluntary international migration in Nepal although in many cases, the difference between
voluntary and involuntary movements may be unclear (David, 1970: 73-95).
The current situation of population in Nepal results in part from both emigration and
immigration.
Historically, three forms of emigration are evident: a) movement related to military recruitment,
b) Movement for agricultural and other economic activities, and c) marriage migration. More
than
90 percent of all emigrants are from Hills and Mountains of Nepal (Subedi, 1991).
In past, Nepal had been a country of destination for immigrants from both north and south.
Instances of emigration from Nepal were not known then. However, after the Treaty of Sugauli
(1816), Nepalese people started to migrate to India to be recruited in the British Indian Army.
The
raising of the first Army Battalian (Sirmour Battalian) from among the Nepalese prisoners of war
was the major turning point in the large-scale emigration of Nepalese people (Kanskar, 1984). Of
course, there were Nepalese from Kathmandu who used to go to Tibet for business but their

numbers were limited (400 to 500 families). Therefore, it was not of a large-scale nature and
played very insignificant role in Nepalese emigration phenomenon. Besides, the recruitment in
British-Indian Army, new agricultural programmes, carried out by then British India in the
provinces such as Assam, Darjelling, Burma attracted many peasants of Nepalese Hills to work
and settle there. Later, many people also started and still continues going India to work as
Watchmen (guards), hotel boys etc. and the recent trend is also going on to European, American
and Arab (UAE-United Arab Emirates) countries for skilled and unskilled jobs (Singh, 1998).
The history of emigration in Kandebash Village Development Committee (VDC), Baglung was
started from 1914 A.D. (Gautam, 1999).
There are no empirical records on emigration till 1951. The 1952/54 census of Nepal was the
first
to report the volume of emigration from Nepal. According to this census altogether 1,98, 120
Nepalese were absent from home for more than six months prior to census taking. Subsequently,
all successive censuses (except 1971) provided the figures of absentee population from Nepal.
The figures of absentee population from Nepal and information on absentee population in the
censuses were collected from the household schedules.
Migration is one of the most important trend and process in Nepal. Several studies have been
conducted in this field by different research institutions and scholars. But most of these are
concerned with internal Hill to Terai and rural to urban types of migration. Subedi (1991) has
also
studied about emigration in Nepal. These studies have provided only the trends of emigration and
causes as "Push and Pull" factors. Actually, these studies don't portray the causes and impact of
emigration in the point of origin in detail from sociological perspective.

5. International Migration, Remittances and its Macroeconomic Impact on Indian

Economy.
This paper tried to study the impact of remittances on various macroeconomic
and developmental aspects for the Indian economy. For this, the data regarding
remittances and some of the macroeconomic variables like GDP, PFCE, GDFC,
savings, FDI, FII, export, import and balance of trade deficit etc have been
analyzed for the period 1971-2008. The study shows that remittances have been
consistently increasing at very fast rate for the last 15 years which have
significant implications on the above mentioned macroeconomic variables.
Through this study, the importance of remittances as a source of external
development finance has been discussed. At last, some of the regulatory
frameworks governing the flow of remittances have also been discussed.

Migration, remote rural areas and chronic poverty in India

This paper is one of a series on spatial poverty traps that has been published jointly by the
Overseas Development Institute and the Chronic Poverty Research Centre. The series has been
edited by Kate Bird and Kate Higgins, with support from Tari Masamvu and Dan Harris. It draws
largely on papers produced for an international workshop on Understanding and Addressing
Spatial Poverty Traps, which took place on 29 March 2007 in Stellenbosch, South Africa. The
workshop was co-hosted by the Overseas Development Institute and the Chronic Poverty
Research Centre and jointly funded by the Overseas Development Institute, the Chronic Poverty
Research Centre, Trocaire and the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation.
The author would like to express her gratitude to the people in the study villages in Andhra
Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh whose generosity and time made this exercise possible. She is
grateful to Shaheen Akter for econometric analysis and to Laxman Rao, Pramod Sharma and
Sushil Kumar for their hard work in data collection. She is also grateful to Kate Bird and
anonymous reviewers from the Chronic Poverty Research Centre for reviewing earlier drafts of
the paper.

This paper is one of a series on spatial poverty traps that has been published jointly by the
Overseas Development Institute and the Chronic Poverty Research Centre. The series has been
edited by Kate Bird and Kate Higgins, with support from Tari Masamvu and Dan Harris. It draws
largely on papers produced for an international workshop on Understanding and Addressing
Spatial Poverty Traps, which took place on 29 March 2007 in Stellenbosch, South Africa. The
workshop was co-hosted by the Overseas Development Institute and the Chronic Poverty
Research Centre and jointly funded by the Overseas Development Institute, the Chronic Poverty
Research Centre, Trocaire and the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation.
The author would like to express her gratitude to the people in the study villages in Andhra
Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh whose generosity and time made this exercise possible. She is
grateful to Shaheen Akter for econometric analysis and to Laxman Rao, Pramod Sharma and
Sushil Kumar for their hard work in data collection. She is also grateful to Kate Bird and
anonymous reviewers from the Chronic Poverty Research Centre for reviewing earlier drafts of
the paper.

Consumption Smoothing, Migration, and Marriage: Evidence from Rural India

A significant proportion of migration in low-income countries, par-ticularly in rural areas,

is composed of moves by women for the purpose of marriage. We seek to explain these

mobility patterns by examining marital arrangements among Indian households. In particular, we hypothesize that the marriage of daughters to locationally distant, dispersed yet
kinship-related households is a manifestation of implicit interhousehold contractual
arrangements aimed at mitigating income risks and facilitating consumption smoothing in
an environment characterized by information costs and spatially covariant risks. Analysis
of longitudinal South Indian village data lends support to the hypothesis. Marriage cum
migration contrib-utes significantly to a reduction in the variability of household food
consumption. Farm households afflicted with more variable profits tend to engage in
longer-distance marriage cum migration. The hy-pothesized and observed marriage cum
migration patterns are in dissonance with standard models of marriage or migration that
are concerned primarily with search costs and static income gains. Studies of migration in
low-income countries have been principally concerned with the flows of individuals and
families from rural to urban areas. Such studies for the most part have been based on theories of migration in which agents seek income gains (or expected income gains), and
migration is viewed as a wage (or expected wage) equilibrating mechanism. However, rural
to urban migration pro-pelled by earnings incentives is only one component of spatial
mobil-ity. Indeed, in one major low-income country, India, rural to urban migration plays
a relatively small role in total migration. Analyses of the 1981 Population Census of India
(Skeldon 1986; Sundaram 1987), which for the first time provides reasons for migration on
the basis of a 5 percent sample, indicate that the net outflow from rural to urban areas
between 1971 and 1982 represented only 2.2 percent of the 1971 rural population, with the
net outflow of migrants for rea-sons of employment representing only 1.6 percent of the
rural popu-lation in 1971 and only a little more than 8 percent of the 1971 urban work
force. Net rural to urban migration contributed less than 19 percent to the total growth in
the Indian urban population between 1971 and 1981.

Migration and Urbanisation in India in the Context of Poverty Alleviation

Amitabh Kundu
1. Introduction
Migration and urbanization are direct manifestations of the process of economic development in
space, particularly in the contemporary phase of globalization. Understanding the causes and
consequences of the former in terms of the changes in the distribution of population and
economic activities, along with the success and failures of the interventions by state and other
organizations would be extremely important for evaluating the available policy options and
exploring areas of possible strategic intervention.
A large part of migration and urbanization in the less developed countries have historically been
linked to stagnation and volatility of agriculture and lack of sectoral diversification within
agrarian economy, India being no exception to this. The growth rates in agricultural production
and income has been noted to be low, unstable and disparate across regions over the past several

decades, resulting in lack of livelihood opportunities in rural areas. A low rate of infrastructural
investment in public sector in the period of structural adjustment - necessary for keeping
budgetary deficits low also have affected agriculture adversely. This has led to out-migration
from several backward rural areas, most of the migrants being absorbed within urban informal
economy. The primary concern of migration related policies must therefore be addressing the
problems reflecting ecological footprints of large cities in regions that have become chronically
out-migrating and stabilizing their agrarian economy through creation of livelihood
opportunities1. Although the poor have a right to the city, they should not be forced to shift as
forced migration and transferring encompass more poignant vulnerabilities. Enabling rural
people avail urban amenities without having to shift to a town and strengthening rural urban
linkages and commutation would also be important maneuver in addressing the problem of rapid
urbanization in a few regions.
Withdrawal or displacement of labour force from rural economy and their absorption in urban
sectors have created serious stress in receiving regions as well. The capacity of the cities and
towns to assimilate the migrants by providing employment, access to land, basic amenities etc.
are limited. The problem have acquired severity as migrants have shown high selectivity in
choosing their destinations (understandably linked with availability of employment and other
opportunities), leading to regionally unbalanced urbanization as also distortions in urban
hierarchy. The UNFPA (2007) regards concentration of poverty, growth of slums and social
deprivation in cities as the major challenge of development in less developed countries2. It is in
this context that the MDG target 11 which stipulates significant improvement in the conditions of
100 million slum dwellers assumes importance. The Report of UN Secretary General of 2000
entitled We the Peoples makes it explicit that there should be no attempt to prevent formation of
new slums in order to make the cities more attractive for globalization through sanitisation

An overview of migration in India, its impacts and key issues

SUMMARY
This paper deals with internal and international
migration, both of which are large-scale with
impacts on economic growth and poverty
reduction in many regions of the country.
In some parts of India, three out of four households
include a migrant. However despite the large scale of
migration in absolute numbers of people involved and
Indias long history of population and labour mobility,
labour migration has rarely been reliably studied.
Labour migration is complex. Streams differ in

duration, origin, destination and migrant characteristics.

Economic and social impacts on migrants and their
families are variable. Migration often involves longer
working hours, poor living and working conditions,
social isolation and poor access to basic amenities.
At destination, migrant labour affects markets,
lowering the cost of labour. Migration also affects the
labour market at the place of origin. Migrant earnings
affect income, expenditure patterns and investment
and changes relations at household and community
levels. While there seems to be some positive impact
on incomes and investment, the major function of
migration is to act as a safety valve in poor areas. The
impact on asset and income inequality is more mixed.
Internal mobility is critical to the livelihoods of many
people, especially tribal people, socially deprived groups
and people from resource-poor areas. However, because
of lack of data, migration is largely invisible and ignored
by policy makers. There is a large gap between the
insights from macro data and those from field studies.
What data are available attest to the substantial
and growing scale of internal seasonal migration. In
one district of the rice-producing belt of West Bengal,
the flow of seasonal migrants, drawn from tribals,
Muslims and low castes, exceeds 500,000 people.
Migrants are disadvantaged as labourers and
labour laws dealing with them are weakly implemented.
Poor migrants have very little bargaining power. Most
migrant labourers are also employed in the unorganised
sector, where the lack of regulation compounds their
vulnerability. They are largely ignored by government
and NGO programmes (AIDS related work is a recent
exception).
Laws and regulations concerning working conditions
of migrants are largely ineffective: legislation fails
because regulatory authorities are over-stretched,
the state sees migrants as a low priority and because
migrant workers are vulnerable with little support
from civil society. But there are instances in which both
governmental and non-governmental organisations
have intervened to reduce the costs of migration and

to increase its benefits to migrants.

International migration, though involving a small
proportion of the workforce, has important local impacts.
Since independence, two distinct streams of migration
have left India: people with professional expertise or
technical qualifications emigrating to industrialised
countries, and semi-skilled and skilled workers emigrating
to the Middle East. Data on these labour flows are
limited, but estimates and trends can be discerned.
Migration to industrialised countries grew steadily
between 1950 and 2000. Nearly 1.25 million Indians
emigrated to the US, Canada, UK and Australia during
this period. Average annual flows to these destinations
increased nearly five-fold between the 1950s and the
1990s.
Migration to the Middle East increased rapidly
between the late1970s and early 1980s. In the midto
late 1980s, however, the number of Indian workers
migrating to the Middle East fell sharply. Labour migration
increased substantially again during the 1990s. Today,
some 3 million Indian migrants live in Gulf countries.
Most migrants come from Kerala, Tamil Nadu,
Andhra Pradesh and Punjab. The current number of
Indian migrants overseas accounts for less than 1% of
the total workforce in India, so has little direct impact
on the national labour market. However, the effects of
migration are significant in major sending regions. In
Kerala, for example, emigration has recently led to a
considerable reduction in unemployment.
Remittances are the main benefit of external
migration, providing scarce foreign exchange and
scope for higher levels of savings and investments.
Remittances over the past 30 years have financed
much of Indias balance of trade deficit and have thus
reduced the current account deficit.
Remittances have had a considerable impact on
regional economies. The most striking case is that of
Kerala, where remittances made up 21% of state
income in the 1990s. This flow appears to have
increased wealth: although the average per capita
consumption in Kerala was below the national average

until 197879, by 19992000 consumer expenditure

in Kerala exceeded the national average by around 41%.
International migration has also had considerable
impacts on demographic structures, expenditure
patterns, social structures and poverty levels. Impacts
include reducing population growth; enhancing the
dependency burden within households; increasing

ECONOMIC CONDITIONS OF THE IN-MIGRANT WORKERS IN KERALA

A Case Study in the Trivandrum District
The major objective of the paper is to examine the economic conditions of the in-migrant
workers in Kerala. This has been done by analysing their savings, income and consumption
pattern and nature of work before and after migration. The analysis is based on data from a
sample of 166 in-migrants workers in the Trivandrum district, which has been collected
through a primary survey during September-October, 2008. While existing studies provide
evidences for short distance migration from nearby states of Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh
to Kerala, our study observed that long distance migration from states like West Bengal and
Assam dominated the inflow of migrant workers in recent years. Informal information
networks through acquaintances that have already migrated plays important role in migration
of workers to Kerala. Poor economic conditions along with several other overlapping factors
have been identified as the reason of migration. There has not been any change in the nature
of employment of the migrants even after migration. However, there has been a shift from
the low-income brackets before migration to high-income brackets after migration. We
observed positive relationship of skill level and instance of migration with income level.
Notwithstanding the improved income level the living condition for most of them is
deplorable, most of them live together in either poor rented houses or work sites with one
room shared by many and no provision of hygienic sanitation. The amount and pattern of
food expenditure is found to be more or less same for all the migrants, whereas that of
nonfood
expenditure varies from person to person. The savings and investment habit among the
migrants is found to be very poor.
Inter-state migration and regional disparities in India
Kailash C.Das and Subhasis Saha
Abstract
The main objective of this paper is to study the spatial pattern and levels of inter-state
migration and to
understand how regional disparities in development influences inter-state migration pattern in
India. This study
is based on 1991 and 2001 census migration data. In this analysis, two rates namely inmigration and outmigration
rates have been computed separately for both males and females. Statistical method of
correlation and
regression has been used to find the linkage between regional disparities in development and
migration. It shows
that people mainly moved to the states which have witnessed higher growth rates of
urbanization and achieved
higher economic development compared to the states where employment opportunities are
less. However, there
are also some states which are showing significant in-migration as well as out-migration. The
decadal growth rate
of migration has increased during the period 1991 to 2001. Another important finding is that
the overall sex ratio

of migrants has reversed favouring males during the last decade. While there is a negative
relationship between
rate of in-migration and poverty, the volume of in migration is positively correlated with
development.
IMPACT OF INTERNAL MIGRATION IN INDIA
Trends and Patterns of Internal Migration in India
The decennial population Census and the quinquennial rounds of the National Sample
Surveys
(NSS) provide macrodata on internal migration, in India. Both these sources report data on
population mobility and not worker mobility and the trends on the latter have to be
disentangled carefully from population characteristics. It also needs to be noted that both due
to the conceptual framework adopted in these surveys, and due to empirical difficulties, the
Census and the NSS mainly identify long duration migration, chiefly covering permanent or
long
duration circular migrants. These surveys fail to adequately capture seasonal migration, the
magnitude of which is both large and growing (Srivastava and Sasikumar 2005, Srivastava
2005a) and also probably underestimate circular migration.
Data available up to 199900 has been analysed in detail earlier in several studies (Srivastava
1998, Srivastava and Bhattacharya 2003, Srivastava and Sasikumar 2005). This paper will
dwell
here more on the recent trends in population and worker mobility as revealed by the 2001
Census and the 200708 NSS.
According to the Census, about 309.5 million persons or 30.1 percent of the Indian
population
could be described as internal migrants in 2001 using the change in Usual Place of Residence
(UPR) definition. The National Sample Survey estimates that in 200708, 326 m people or
28.6
% of people were migrants by the UPR definition However, the bulk of the migrants in India
are
women who migrate out of their villages due to exogamous marriages. According to the 64th
Round of the NSS, of the total of 326.1 m migrants by change in UPR status, 67.6 m were
male
migrants and 258.4 m (79.3 %) were female migrants (census adjusted figures). Of these
female
migrants, 82.8 % migrated due to marriage.
The Puzzle of Marriage Migration in India
Scott Fulford_
October 2013
Abstract
Two thirds of all Indian women have migrated for marriage, around 300 million women,
but little is known about this vast migration. This paper provides a detailed accounting of the
puzzlingly large migration of Indian women and evaluates its causes. Contrary to
conventional
wisdom, marriage migration does not contribute to risk sharing. Nor is it driven by sex ratio

imbalances. Instead, I introduce a simple model in which parents must search for a spouse
for their daughter geographically. By adding geographical search frictions, the model helps
rationalize the large regional differences.
Causes and Impact of Migration : A Sociological Study of
Emigration From Kandebash, Baglung, Nepal
Tika Ram Gautam
1. Introduction
People are moving from one place to another since ancient period, which is a continuous
international phenomenon resulted due to complex mechanism, involving social, economic,
psychological, political, institutional and other determinants (Singh, 1998). Migration is a
form of
geographical or spatial mobility, which involves a change of usual residence of a person
between
clearly defined geographical units. A person who crosses the boundary of own country or
places
of country is called an out-migrant. Emigration refers to movement out of a particular
territory in
connection with the international migration (Bhende and Karnitkar, 1998). On the basis of
assumed causes influencing human movement, international migration can be broadly
categorized
into two groups: voluntary and involuntary (Peterson, 1978). This article concentrates on
voluntary international migration in Nepal although in many cases, the difference between
voluntary and involuntary movements may be unclear (David, 1970: 73-95).
The current situation of population in Nepal results in part from both emigration and
immigration.
Historically, three forms of emigration are evident: a) movement related to military
recruitment,
b) Movement for agricultural and other economic activities, and c) marriage migration. More
than
90 percent of all emigrants are from Hills and Mountains of Nepal (Subedi, 1991).
In past, Nepal had been a country of destination for immigrants from both north and south.
Instances of emigration from Nepal were not known then. However, after the Treaty of
Sugauli
(1816), Nepalese people started to migrate to India to be recruited in the British Indian Army.
The
raising of the first Army Battalian (Sirmour Battalian) from among the Nepalese prisoners of
war
was the major turning point in the large-scale emigration of Nepalese people (Kanskar, 1984).
Of
course, there were Nepalese from Kathmandu who used to go to Tibet for business but their
numbers were limited (400 to 500 families). Therefore, it was not of a large-scale nature and
played very insignificant role in Nepalese emigration phenomenon. Besides, the recruitment
in
British-Indian Army, new agricultural programmes, carried out by then British India in the
provinces such as Assam, Darjelling, Burma attracted many peasants of Nepalese Hills to
work

and settle there. Later, many people also started and still continues going India to work as
Watchmen (guards), hotel boys etc. and the recent trend is also going on to European,
American
and Arab (UAE-United Arab Emirates) countries for skilled and unskilled jobs (Singh, 1998).
The history of emigration in Kandebash Village Development Committee (VDC), Baglung
was
started from 1914 A.D. (Gautam, 1999).
There are no empirical records on emigration till 1951. The 1952/54 census of Nepal was the
first
to report the volume of emigration from Nepal. According to this census altogether 1,98, 120
Nepalese were absent from home for more than six months prior to census taking.
Subsequently,
all successive censuses (except 1971) provided the figures of absentee population from
Nepal.
The figures of absentee population from Nepal and information on absentee population in the
censuses were collected from the household schedules.