Joe Shearer
INT'L MOD
- Apr 19, 2009
- 31,874
- 48,680
- Country of Origin
- Country of Residence
A partial answer to this is that, unlike the west, where there was a cataclysmic event where everything happened in a matter of weeks, in the east, in Bengal, very large numbers moved over a period of decades, not weeks. As a result, people like the founder of Bandhan Bank, who learnt the basics of micro-finance from Mohammed Yunus while still living in Bangladesh, migrated very, very recently, set up a very efficient micro-finance operation, and then launched, in parallel, a scheduled bank, that is doing very well, came long after even 1971. People are still moving across; one of Mamata Bannerjee's sources of support used to be the cult known as Matua, that started in Bangladesh and found itself new moorings in West Bengal.Its the total aggregate estimate existing over full time.
i.e people that were born in the area called Bangladesh today, that are estimated to reside in India (legally with citizenship or work visa etc and illegally without either).
Some large chunk of it is economic based (i.e illegals) and inevitable to large degree given the context of the population sizes and wealth concentration effect to labour pull (past hard borders) like I mention also combined with other factors like Indians largely being non Bengali (but having a Bengali population for BD migrants to subsume under etc) but vice versa not being the case for BD (could most Indians pass off as Bengali etc? nope...language gives game away right away etc)
I can dig out the UN paper later if ppl want to read it.....but no "4 million" is not a recent flux kind of thing at all, but the total estimate from larger flow/time integral estimate....and large period when BD was in much more economic stressed state too compared to today. In fact iirc, the UN paper(s) had the estimated stock at decadal intervals, say 1980, 1990, 2000 etc....and I think more or less it is stable from 2010 to 2020 as both economies averages come closer due to BD making gains and making strong wealth concentration in say Dhaka and CTG to some extent compared to before....and also ofc wage draws in middle east and so on.
There is also the caste thing.
The Brahmins, Vaidyas and Kayasthas moved first. They had the money, they had the insight and they muddled through. The rest - the Namasudras and similar - moved in these pulses, reluctant to leave their old homes, but forced out under pressure. This, too, is a generalisation; the founder of Bandhan, Chandra Shekhar Ghosh, is a kayastha, and shifted only around the turn of the century.