Integrated Development of Small and Medium Towns in India

Abstract

The objective of this chapter is to examine briefly the efforts for development of small and medium towns in India and to comment on some of the conceptual and operational doubts that are emerging about these efforts. Like many other developing countries, the pattern of urbanization and economic development in India are characterized by metropolitan dominance and polarization leading to inter-regional disparities and inequities in development. In countering such an undesirable process, the development of small and medium towns is seen as a strategy to encourage a more balanced urban hierarchy, and in turn to help reduce pressure on primate cities, moderate spatial inequities, enhance rural-regional development and foster embryonic or latent forces of polarization reversal. India, one of the rapidly-developing countries, has accepted the rationale of this strategy and is making efforts in this direction for more than a decade now. It may be appropriate to make an assessment of the Indian initiatives in this context in order to define orientations and directions for the future.