Nature and Determinants of Urbanization in a Developing Economy: The Case of India

Abstract

Trends in Urbanization The data generated by the 1971 census reveal that the rate of growth of urban population has increased from 26 percent during 1951-61 to 38 percent during 1961-71. The rate of increase has been much more pronounced in the case of the western zone, comprising the industrialized states of Gujrat and Maharashtra. Its growth rate of urban population increased from 21 percent in 1951-61 to 41 percent in 1961-71. The larger towns and cities showed substantially greater growth rates in their urban populations. The population of towns with 100,000 persons or more increased by about 49 percent. The second category of towns having a population of 50,000 or more but less than 100,000 persons showed an average increase of 41 percent in their populations. The population of class 3 towns having a population of 20,000 or more but less than 50,000 increased by only 29 percent. An analysis of the distribution of total urban population among the towns of different population size classes (see table 1) shows that class 1 towns account for 52.11 percent of the total urban population in India. As much as 82 percent of the total urban population lives in the towns of 20,000 or more in size. A high rate of growth in urban population during any particular reference period, however, does not necessarily mean a higher rate of urbanization. Although many developing economies of the world are experiencing faster growth rates of urban population, their proportions of urban population to total population do not show significant temporal variations. In other words, the rate of growth of the urban population has