Immigration from Bangladesh to West Bengal

Pranati Datta, Indian Statistical Institute

This paper is devoted to provide basic feature of documented Bangladeshi migration to West Bengal, a state in India, relating to volume, trend, sex ratio, spatial distribution, using census records. An effort has been made to estimate fresh migration rate to study the impact of migration on population of West Bengal. It is observed that though documented Bangladeshi migration reflects declining trend and negligible impact on population of West Bengal, an Indian State, issue of undocumented migration is a burning problem in West Bengal. Contributory factors and effects of undocumented migration obtained from qualitative survey done by Population Studies Unit have been explained. Economic, demographic, and political push factor motivated migration from Bangladesh to West Bengal. Lastly some policy issues including maintenance of national register of citizen, multi purpose photo identity card, complete border fencing, bipartite agreement between India and Bangladesh are taken into consideration to tackle undocumented migration.