The introduction of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Programme, is designed to help “increase incomes of the poor directly and reduce expenses incurred on distress migration.” Through agro-food processing, sericulture and other village enterprises, India hopes to “check rural-urban migration by gainfully employing people in villages.”

The plan also references crop insurance and more secure land tenure rights, including of women, as other mechanisms to reduce rural poverty and distress migration. These strategies are consistent with theories that migration often occurs as a risk management strategy when households do not have other mechanisms to manage crop failures and similar shocks.