While lots of data are now available on volume and pattern of migration as well as the causes and consequences of migration there is less information of vulnerability of migrants at the place of destination. For several countries, including India , internal migration is a burning issue. In the future it would become a more important issue than fertility and mortality. If the regional inequalities – economic, political and social – increase further, as that seems to be the case, more people will be forced to migrate from one region to another. In several cases this will involve migration of a large number of people which would affect the composition of population at the place of destination. Usually when the size of migrants is small, the stream of migration is followed by absorption and assimilation but when a large number of people migrate they have a tendency to form a distinctive ethnic identity at the place of destination and that may result in ethnic conflicts caused by economic conflicts and increasing misery. There are already signs of such conflicts in several cities of India .

DISABLED POPUALTION

Apart from the regional, sex and social class differences there are special problems of the physically challenged people who have been made a part of the horizontal reservation policy in the country. There is a need to estimate their population, understand the various problems they face, and how disability is intertwined with religion, sex, class and caste. Census 2001 provided data on disabled population. It revealed that over 21 million people in India are suffering from some or other disability. They constitute about 2.1% of the population of India . Sex wise break up shows that among the 21 million disabled people 12.6 million are males and 9.3 million are females. The disability rate (number of disabled per 100,000 populations) for the country as a whole comes out to be 2130; 2,369 in the case of males and 1,874 in the case of females. Here one may ask: why is the disability rate among females lower than that among males? Is it due to under reporting or due to higher death rates among the disabled females as compared to disabled males? We require an elaborate data to have an understanding of this issue however. Further, the census data (Census of India, 2009) shows: