Meta Data Making sense of mobility Tanmoy Chakraborty with Debarshi Dasgupta

The criss-cross of cultures

Oriya speakers in Gujarat Marathi Marathi speakers in Bihar Malayalam
speakers in UP speakers in Assam
Census 1991: 38,280 7,750
Census 2001: 1,22,421 17,700 14,002 3,580
13,074 8,141
NDIA’S linguistic map is
I being constantly redrawn,
post-1991. While Oriya speakers
Gujarati speakers in Gujarat grew more than
in Orissa three-fold because of an influx
Hindi speakers
in Maharashtra
24,640 of workers, Gujarati speakers

6.17 mn 15,820 probably chose to move out of

Orissa and head back to their
Tamil speakers
10.68 mn in Karnataka
more prosperous state. Kar-
nataka’s growing economic
1.73 mn Kannada speakers
clout drew in more Tamil
in Tamil Nadu
1.87 mn speakers and possibly brought
1.21 mn back even some of its own from
Assamese speakers 260 1.04 mn TN. Hindi speakers don’t stop
in Kerala
421 growing in Maharashtra.

Nine out of 10 Indian workers Tibet Refugees and

asylum-seekers
who travelled abroad went 1,10,000 in India in 2009
to West Asia for jobs.
Nepal
98.3 million Indians migrated
within India for jobs between 25,000
1991-2001 Afghanistan

30,000 Bhutan

25,000
Capital colours
city that no community can claim as
A its own, Delhi, welcomes without
prejudice. Result: A growing linguistic
cornucopia.
Cross-border
Bengali Tamil conglomeration Myanmar
speakers speakers 1,00,000
2,08,414 NDIA is a growing home to for-
I eigners looking for freedom, forced
out of their countries because of war
1,21,938 92,426 or repression. The scale could go up
84,873 to millions if the dire predictions of
2001

sea-levels rising come true, sending

2001

1991
1991

waves of refugees from Bangladesh

Sri Lanka
Source: Census 2001; and elsewhere into India.
Figures for 1991 & 2001
Source: World Refugee Survey 2009 1,20,000

34 23 August 2010 OUTLOOK