The Biographies and the Population Movement: An Indian Experience

Jay Prakash, Jawaharlal Nehru University
Aslam Mehmood, Jawaharlal Nehru University

Addressing the question as to why biography-oriented data is not being used in economic and social science research, this paper describes the general characteristics of life course data. Focusing on a satellite town of Delhi Metropolitan Area in India, our study focuses on the collection of life history data for migration studies of 397 households and the same number of individual biographies of one person from each household. The paper mainly highlights the methodological issues of survey design, questionnaires, samples, data collection, fieldwork, and the reaction of respondents in the Indian context. The study reveals that people living in the central city of Delhi moved from planned sectors to the urban villages and slums.