Migration is an age-old phenomenon and has existed since the times of our nomadic existence. Human migration from one place to another is a simple activity that results in complex economic, socio-cultural sometimes seriously political implications. Human migration can happen internally within a country, between state to state, or province to province, or from rural countryside areas and villages to urban localities or cities. It also happens externally across borders between countries and even between continents.

People's movement from rural areas to cities, also referred to as rural migration, happens across the world due to fairly similar reasons. These reasons can be related to climate and nature on one hand and socio-economic on the other. In case of the former, drastic climatic changes that damage agriculture and other rural production activities suddenly or over a period of time may result in the movement of farmers and other dependent people towards cities in search for alternatives. Natural disasters such as long term famines, floods, earthquakes, crop diseases and epidemics can also trigger such migration. Socio-economic reasons include lack of survival amenities in villages, lack of income opportunities beyond farming and growth aspirations, and so on.

The result of this is a continual surge of people and families pouring into cities that are already choking under pressure in most cases. And as a matter of fact, the quality of life that is hoped for is hardly achievable for most of the people coming in from villages. The situation with infrastructure healthcare and civic management in cities goes from bad to worse from developed countries to developing to poor countries. And the influx of migrants can make matters worse in the absence of forecasting and proper urban planning. Apart from putting pressure on the infrastructure, problems such as unemployment, poverty, pollution or crime increase manifold when these people are unable to make ends meet.

The answer to this persisting problem is taking development beyond the realms of urban areas to rural. And the beginning could include support and proper management of agriculture and agri-based economy of the villages, because this is the root of existence for millions of people living in these zones. At the level of governments’ rural development planning, availability of proper healthcare, education and basic infrastructure should be ensured. Financial support to micro-level rural industries and proper regulations to ensure that the benefits reach the people can also help the unemployed youths to get engaged in the same place. It will also bring opportunities beyond farming and employment for women. Modernising and upgrading farming techniques; better weather forecasting; disaster and crisis planning; educating farmers, and improving livestock businesses can go a long way in creating better life in the countryside and lesser stress in the cities. Such measures, if effectively implemented, could also result in reverse migration for millions of people who may be able to finally get the quality of life back home that they went chasing in the cities.

Coherence and Cohesion

• a simple activity that results in - we suggest tightening sentences, and aiming for ‘economy of language’. Here, the word ‘that’ slows down the pace of the sentence, and we could remove it and change ‘results’ to ‘resulting’: …a simple activity resulting in…

• Creating lists in your narrative: “Modernising and upgrading farming techniques; better weather forecasting; disaster and crisis planning; educating farmers, and improving livestock businesses…”

  • Here, you can see the semicolon highlighted in the list. It creates a pause as you read, and indicates that every item connects to the outcome of the sentence, and that there is a relationship between each item and the conclusion(s) made at the end. For more, see How to Use the Semicolon.

Grammar

• …that results in complex economic; socio-cultural; and sometimes seriously political implications…

  • you can say that something ‘has implications’; or you can say that something ‘results in’ (the outcome), but ‘results’ is a synonym for ‘implications’, making one or the other redundant (i.e. unnecessary or without purpose)

• Numerous times, the candidate starts a sentence with ‘And’. While this is considered grammatically incorrect, it has become more acceptable in informal writing, and you will see it a lot in literary fiction.

Lexical Resource

• manifold - many or numerous times, usually referring to cumulative effects