Ujjal Kumar Bhagat
History
December 2021
The demography of both sending and receiving populations may be significantly impacted by large-scale migrations, particularly involuntary ones. We calculate the effects of the 1947 partition of the Indian subcontinent, which resulted in one of the biggest and fastest population transfers in recorded human history. Comparing adjacent districts helps separate the impact of migration movements from long-term changes. Within four years, we discover significant impacts on the educational, vocational, and gender mix of a district. Higher levels of education among migrants caused literacy rates in districts with more inflows to rise by 16% more, whereas literacy rates in areas with greater outflows fell by as much as 20%. Indian areas with substantial inflows showed a fall of 70% in the development of agricultural professions because fewer lands were left vacant by people who departed Indian Punjab. The gender makeup of affected districts saw significant changes as well, with a noticeable decline in the number of males in Indian districts that saw significant outflows and Pakistani areas that saw significant inflows. Our findings indicate that although the split, which was motivated by religious differences, enhanced religious homogeneity within communities, it was also accompanied by a rise in educational and vocational inequalities across religious groupings. We suggest that these compositional impacts, in addition to a population-wide impact, are probable characteristics of forced migration and may have significant long-term repercussions, as they did for India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh.
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