Geo-Eye

Abstract

Human migration is one of the interdisciplinary fields of research of social processes; this has a widespread consequence on both, individuals and the society. Rural to rural migration, although an overlooked field but it has also a particular stand in the arena of migration studies. In many developing countries, intra rural (rural to rural) migration was an important phenomenon up to late 1980s. This present paper discusses the various dimensions of Malabar migration in connection with intra rural migration with the focus over land use change. The quest for acquiring more land led to this migration, a venture into deep forests of the high and mid land area where untamed lands were abundantly found. Malabar district with large amount of uncultivated land appeared as a rescue from poverty, lack of land and social/political constraints held at the place of destination (Travancore, Kerala) for migrants. Malabar migration/high-mid land migration played an important role to introduce Plantation agricultural system in Malabar regions which later made the way for prosperity and development of capitalistic economy. Three temporal bases have been taken as 1.) Period prior to, 1921 with the help of SOItopographic sheets of scale 1: 63360 (inch sheets) (2.)Year 1971 using topographic sheets of 1: 50,000 scale, and 3.) Recent time period i.e. Year 2016 processing the Landsat 8 satellite imagery obtained from USGS website. Thus, land use change study is done using suitable software platform for above mentioned time periods. It is evident that plantation agriculture was introduced as a major impact of Malabar Migration in the hilly areas after clearing the dense forest.

Keywords: Malabar Migration, plantation, land, prosperity.