Migration in India is both a historical and present phenomenon. People have always moved in search of work, in response to environmental shocks and stresses, to escape religious persecution and political conflict. Uttarakhand is facing a very big problem of migration from hill to plains not from now but from a long time before. The poor status of agriculture, absence of industries and other sources of income and employment generating activities have been pushing the rural inhabitant especially the rural youth for migration from the rural areas. There are two types of factors which trigger process of migration in any area and these are known as push and pull factors. This is changing the population distribution between rural and urban areas. The rural areas are facing the problem of decreasing agricultural production as they are constantly losing their valuable human assets to urban areas. This paper aims to find out the push and pull determinants of migration in garhwal division of uttarakhand. The study was conducted in Tehri Garhwal district of Uttarakhand state. The district was selected purposively for the present study because in overall state, percentage of migration is highest in this district i.e. 17.97 percent. Two blocks namely Chamba and Thouldhar was selected randomly. Four villages of Kainch, Jaspur, Kot and Bhainskoti were also selected randomly. Total 120 respondents were selected from these four villages through PPS sampling procedure. The descriptive research design was used to meet the objective of the study. It was evident from the result that majority of the respondents 64.16% have high level of push factors of migration, majority of the respondents 59.165% have medium level of pull factors of migration. All of the migrants (100%) perceived that lack of employment opportunities as the major push factor. Migration has been used by the rural people as survival strategy to cope with the employment and financial problems. Rural-urban migration can be controlled on a large scale if the government will provide all kind of support to the rural migrants for getting their livelihoods and provide them basic amenities for a decent standard of living at the rural areas as like as its urban counterpart. The government should develop public policy by integrating social inclusion in milieu of rural diversity for the wellbeing of all the segments of rural community.

Keywords: Migration; Rural youth; Push and Pull Factors; Employment.