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After Uganda, today's migration thread explores Immigration & Bangladesh from the just-released Census 2011 migration data on India #Census2011Migration. Big News: The Bangladeshi migrant stock in India FELL between 2001 & 2011 and why the pan-India NRC rollout is a stupid idea !
First, the number of immigrants/return migrants or those who reported last place of residence outside India grew only marginally from around 5.1 million in 2001 to 5.5 million in 2011. In fact, the number for males fell by 6% over the decade and the number for females grew by 20%
This marginal increase was because of countries outside Asia, which reported large increases, including perhaps spuriously for Uganda as reported in the previous thread-
The stock for Nepal increased by 30% over the decade to nearly 0.8 million but interestingly, the figure for males FELL by 6% and the figure for females rose by 60%. Cross-border marriages usually account for the female migrations.
The stock for Sri Lanka (mostly refugees) rose marginally from 149K to 152K as it did for Myanmar (spelled wrong by the Indian Census as Mayanmar) from 49k to 52K; this is before the recent Rohingya refugee crisis.
Strikingly the figure for Bangladesh FELL from 3 million to 2.3 million (for males and females) over that decade. Note that under-reporting biases are real but existed in both Censuses and in 2011, the NRC was not really an issue.
The falling trend in that decade is probably true; potentially reflects the diversification of emigration to the Gulf region in that decade for Bangladesh. The falling trend is pan-India including Assam (114k to 64K), West Bengal (2.5mln to 1.9 mln) and Tripura (260K to 215K).
Those reporting migration in the past decade from Bangladesh fell from 280K (in 1992-2001) to 172K (in 2002-2011); For very long durations, it tends to fall in any case because the old who came in 1947/1971 have higher mortality rates.
The Bangladesh-India migration story is very similar to Mexico-USA. In both, previous mass migrations of the 20th century, FELL in the 21st century. In both cases, 21st century reactions of anti-migrant hysteria was unwarranted since immigration flows were ebbing.
The number of Bangladeshi immigrants in India outside the bordering states recorded in Census 2011 is less than 100k. Scale that number up by even 4-5 for under-reporting bias, scale it down for "illegal" migrants within that number and what you have is about 0.0001% of the popln
The low and falling trend of Bangladeshi immigration across Indian states for 2001-2011 should caution against the STUPID idea of rolling out the NRC across India. Like demonetization, the cost-benefit ratio is extremely lopsided towards the costs.
Previous Censuses of India released the migration data within 6-7 years of the Census. There is now at least one really good reason why the migration data of Census 2011 was released only in 2019. It smashes the case for an all-India NRC. @SanjoyHazarika3
