By Amit Kapoor and Meenakshi Ajith
Fear vs. Flow: Can Indian cities still be engines of migration?
For decades, Indian cities have been magnets of opportunity and a hope for social mobility. Millions of migrants move from the rural hinterlands to the cities, and this is not a recent phenomenon. From the textile mills of Mumbai to the tech parks of Bengaluru, migrants have been the hidden force that continues to power India’s urban transformation. This movement has not been just incidental to India’s growth story but has been central to it. Yet, an emerging pattern of fear-based governance now threatens this circulatory system, raising the question of whether India’s cities can continue to serve as engines of migration and, by extension, engines of economic growth and development. Internal migration in India is massive in scale. As per the census in 2011, there were over 450 million internal migrants which is about 37% of the population. This reflected a sharp rise from the 30% recorded a decade earlier as per analysis by the World Bank. Rural-to-urban flows have been a major component, with some states seeing as much as a 30% surge in their urban populations during the 2001–2011 decade due largely to migration. These demographic shifts have reshaped the economic geography of the country. Migrants are integral not only to the informal economy, which contributes roughly 45% of the country’s GDP, but also to the formal sectors that depend on their labour as a flexible and low-cost resource.
Urbanisation when managed sensibly, has consistently been associated with poverty reduction and improved standards of living. In developing economies particularly, migration to cities raises incomes for poorer households and expands access to services. This effect is particularly pronounced in countries like India, where productivity and wages in urban areas are significantly more than in rural areas. For instance, the PLFS 2023–24 data show that average annual wages in urban India (₹88604) are nearly double those in rural areas (₹45785), highlighting a gap of about 1.94 times.
Fear can be as effective a brake on migration as any legal restriction. India does not impose internal passports, yet the barriers are often invisible and psychological. While basic distinctions including language play a critical role, there is also a tacit perception that entering a new state or city means navigating a new social and administrative environment. For migrants and especially those in the informal sector; access to healthcare, housing and basic ration often depends on this tenuous sense of belonging. In recent years, that sense has been eroded. Political rhetoric and administrative measures targeting specific linguistic, ethnic, or religious groups have created unease among migrant populations. Notably, during the 2020 Covid-19 lockdown, millions of migrants who were facing sudden job loss, housing insecurity, and a collapse of transport, walked or hitched rides back to their villages and many of them never returned. This was perhaps the largest mass migrations in India since Partition, revealing how fragile urban life can be for those without a safety net.
This fragility is exacerbated when governance itself becomes a source of fear. Policies that appear to single out outsider communities whether through enhanced police checks, documentation drives, or arbitrary enforcement create an environment in which migrants calculate that their best chance of security lies in retreating to their place of origin. The loss to cities is twofold. First, there is the immediate disruption to sectors reliant on migrant labour: construction projects stall, service industries struggle to hire, and costs rise. Second, the longer-term erosion of trust in urban governance makes it harder to attract and retain the very workers who underpin economic dynamism. The cultural costs are harder to measure but no less significant. Migrants are the vectors of cultural exchange that make cities cosmopolitan. They bring new cuisines, languages, and entrepreneurial energy. In the absence of this dynamic ecosystem, cities risk becoming more insular, less inventive, and ultimately less competitive in the global marketplace. Restoring confidence in the city as a safe and welcoming space for migrants is not merely a moral imperative but an economic one. The World Bank and UN agencies have emphasised that the portability of social benefits is key. Programmes that allow migrants to access healthcare, education, and subsidised food regardless of location reduce the insecurity that can push them out of cities. Equally important is dismantling the bureaucratic frictions that come with crossing state borders, harmonising regulations, and ensuring that basic services are not contingent on fixed, long-term residence.
India’s urban infrastructure already faces enormous pressure: It is estimated that the country will need to invest $840 billion over the next 15 years to meet its urban demands. Those investments will only pay off if the human capital that fuels city economies is maintained. Cities are complex organisms, and their health depends on openness, on the flow of goods, ideas, and people. For India, which aspires to be the world’s fastest-growing major economy, the lesson is stark: migration is not a problem to be managed away; it is the source of urban vitality. Fear may buy political advantage in the short term, but it erodes the very foundation of prosperity. To remain engines of growth, Indian cities must be engines of trust.
The article was published with Business Standard on August 20, 2025.
