Irrigation Development and Rural Migration Nexus: Insights from Village Studies in Tamil Nadu

The rising rural–urban migration, especially youth migration has been a composite challenge across the world particularly in India. The migration from rural to urban has declined the share of workforce employed in agriculture and in the process, it has declined agriculture's share of national income over the years. Studies in literature have documented that irrigation development has played a vital role in reducing rural—migration in India. However, such an impact is not given attention in literature at micro level. In this study, therefore, an attempt has been made to explore the impact of irrigation on rural migration using field survey data collected from the Pudukkottai district of Tamil Nadu. Descriptive analysis revealed that employment days, income and consumption expenditure of agricultural labourers were found to be relatively higher in groundwater-irrigated village followed by canal-irrigated, tank-irrigated, and rainfed villages. On the other side, the percentage of migration of agricultural labourers was reported to be higher in rainfed villages as compared to irrigated villages. The logit model analysis showed that the marginal impact of groundwater irrigation in reducing rural migration of agricultural labourers is higher as compared to canal and tank irrigation. Further, among the variables included for analysis, the coefficient of irrigation is predominantly significant, implying irrigation development reduces the migration of agricultural labourers. Therefore, the installation of groundwater irrigation, wherever needed, and the extension and improvement of micro irrigation systems need to be focused upon to increase employment opportunity, farm productivity, and income to the agricultural labourers to reduce the level of migration at a greater margin.