The puzzle that I wish to bring to your notice is that the global experience has been that as countries develop, the pace of rural to urban migration accelerates, and deceleration happens only when the level of urbanisation is very high – usually well over 50 per cent. In India, on the other hand, migration started to decelerate at a time when the urban population was below 25 per cent of total population, and continued to decelerate over three Censuses – 1991, 2001 and 2011. This principal puzzle contains within it some other subsidiary puzzles, which I shall come to shortly.
URL : 20170621122705.pdf