Telling Numbers: International migrant count slopes downward in India

The 51,54,737 international migrants in 2019 represent just 0.4 per cent of the total population of India.

Of the international migrants in India in 2019, the country of origin for 31 lakh — or just over 60 per cent — was Bangladesh. Another 21 per cent were originally from Pakistan and 10 per cent from Nepal.

On Wednesday, the UN Population Division released the dataset International Migrant Stock 2019. While the size of the Indian diaspora in other countries was reported in The Indian Express on Thursday, the exhaustive dataset also showed striking trends in international migration into India. The number has been consistently going down in the last three decades; from 75.9 lakh in 1990, the international migrant population is 51.5 lakh in 2019, the dataset showed.