Rural urban migration, what happens next?

Abstract

If urban migration trend is compared worldwide, developing countries have a higher percentage. This is because the number of people added each year escalates to add more to the already increasing population. We have had countless discussions on the effect of urbanization challenges that these countries face. But how often did we ponder on the deserted rural alleys? The “pull” and the “push” factors for urban migration are discussed worldwide, where economic, social and financial sectors are often debated on. But then, the question outstands as, would there ever be “pull” factors back in the rural areas or they would continue to be tagged as “abandoned”. The objectives settled for this discussion are first and foremost, to promote and encourage incentives that would reduce urban migration to some extent besides discovering ways that could be implied to revive these areas, so that even after major migration phases, the rural areas would not be considered inappropriate to function for the existing inhabitants. The approach is exploratory, incorporating qualitative research strategies. Scenarios from different countries are compared in the context of South Asia, where the urbanization rate seems to have reached the height. The results however are expected to have brought out ideas in for the country sides to be re-enacting, most importantly, highlighting the involvement of different actors in the process. It is expected that through these findings, we would be able to conclude that urbanization, besides being an effect of current globalization trend, with social aspects as well as the economic ones, would not always bring negative phases for rural sides of the developing countries but might as well open new opportunities for future development sectors.