Judging the Quality of Urbanisation in Cities and Towns of India

Abstract

In this chapter, we examine the quality of urbanisation in terms of the deprivation index developed at a highly disaggregated level of urban centres on the basis of dwelling conditions and basic amenities. Further, we analyse the demographic and economic characteristics in relation to the deprivation index and city size. Very large cities are endowed with better living conditions and infrastructural facilities, and they show lower values on the index, though this relationship is not very strong. This suggests the importance of other variables in driving the city size and impact on the index value. The current government has selected a group of “smart cities” with populations of over one million to receive further investment to become key centres of growth, and other large cities have already benefitted from past investments. However, a number of counter-intuitive results follow from the exercises carried out for the smart cities. For example, the phenomenon of inclusive growth seems missing. This chapter argues that at least all Class I cities, each with a population 100,000 and above, should have been considered for development as smart cities.