The Patterns of Internal Migration in Maharashtra: An Analysis of 1971 Census Data

Aims, methods and materials:
Internal migration is a necessary element of normal population redistribution and equilibrium. 'The mobility of people within its national Borden has been the subject of increasing study in recent decades. Of all the components of population change, internal mobility has been the moot difficult to measure. Such studies are therefore laboring under a major handicap of insufficient data. 'The reasons for such inadequate data are:
1) not including questions sufficiently on internal migration in census slips,
2) not including questions uniformly in successive censuses to facilitate the process of comparison over a period of time to maintain the trend, sequence and continuity, and
3) delay in tabulation and publication of census results. Unless the country in question is so fortunate, demographically speaking, as to have a good continuous population register, it has not been easy to obtain accurate measures of net or gross movement of people. Nonetheless, both direct and indirect methods of measurement have gradually been introduced and refined so that there is a variety of approaches from which to choose.