Urbanisation trends in India

The process of urbanisation in India during the first half of this century is marked by increased urban-based economic activities concentrated around minoral based reqions and major port-cities. After adopting systemetic economic planning during the post-independent period, this process of urbanisation had wide-spread effects all over the country. In spite of deliberate attempts on the part of the National as well as State Governments to encourage in a controlled manner the growth of urban areas,one finds wide inter-State differences in urbanisation indicating the absence of a national policy on urbinisation. The differences are also wide among different sizes of urban areas. Metropolitan agglomerations have been growing faster and the medium and small towns are recording slower and declining growth rates. Slow growth or decline in urban population of an area can take place under two sets
of the situations. In both the situations large-scale employment opportunities are created transitorily. In one situation, em-
ployment opportunties are created.where new mines come up with a possibility of the gradual depletion of the newly discovered mineral reserves. Under such a situation the capacity of an activity to retain a high level of employment weekens year after year, resulting in the outmigration of people. Another situation where large-scale in-migration takes place would be the areas
where major irrigation projects are undertaken. If a major construction work takes place in the vicinities of an urban centre,
then there would be wide variations in the proportion of population entering and leaving the town during and after the pro-
jects. A good example of such a situation is the work undertaken to construct Tunqa bhadra irrigation project in the vicinities
of Hospet town whose population doubled within a span of twenty years (1941-61) and began declining later(1961-71). But the
hopes of establishing a major steel plant, Hospet warrants an immediate exercise of stock taking of the present problems of
such towns by all the agencies interested in the planned growth of towns. Among many aspects worth pursuing in depth,
a study of the socio-economic structure of the town is quite crucial for planning the future" development of Hospet and also
academically rewarding for students and researchers interested in the problems of urbanisation in India.