A comparative analysis of patternsof in and out-commuting in rural areas of Bijnor District

Commuting provides the social and economic links between urban centers and rural surrounding areas.Nearby rural areas are benefited from urban agglomeration through commuting anda good understanding of commuting characteristics in rural areas may be proved considerably useful for the effective implementation of rural development schemes. However, a large number ofstudies have been brought outmainly focusing in urban centers related to commuters’ characteristics, commuting's impacts and other related aspects but empirical studies have little focused on rural commuting characteristics while the rural commuting is becoming more complex with the transformation in its demographic, social, economic and infrastructural structure. Thus, in order to establish the equilibrium in rural-to-urban commuting, it is imperative to explore the different pattern of commuting of rural and urban areas.Therefore, having all these things into mention, the present study has been carried out to examine the commuting pattern of rural commuters. The commuters were categorized into two groups: in-commuters and out-commuters. The major thrust of this study is to compare the commuting time, commuting distance and modes of commuting of above two groups. The study is based on primary sources of data collected through the field survey. For the purpose of data collection 30 commuting households of out-commuters from one village of each block have been selected randomly while in case of in-commuters, it was attempted to cover all commuter respondents from each village due to their small extent. Thus the surveyconsists of total550 respondents including the both in-commuters and out- commuters. The overall result of the study shows the significant differences in the demographiccondition as well as commute pattern of in-commuters and out commuters. In-commuters werefound better educated compared to out commuters. Besides, the ratio of in-commuters covering the longer distance to commute was comparatively higher than the out-commuters. The percentage share of out-commuters having long time on commute was lower than in-commuters. The modes of transportation to commute availed by out commuters were slightly different from those used by in-commuters.