India's Decelerating Urbanization and Its Consequences for Country's Socio-Economic Development

Kamla Gupta, International Institute for Population Sciences (IIPS)

Urbanization is closely linked with socio-economic development and cities play an important role in the national development. The 2001 Census of India shows that over the last two decades there has been considerable deceleration in the growth rate of urban population and rate of urbanization in India. This deceleration of urbanization should be seen as a matter of serious concern keeping the fact in mind that in 2001 only a little more than one fourth (28 percent) of country's population was living in urban areas. This paper discusses some of the implications of this deceleration of urbanization for country's socio-economic development like, increasing pressure of population on already crowded land resources and further immiserisation of the rural poor who have used migration to cities as a potential medium to improve upon their socio-economic conditions, particularly in states which leg behind in socio-economic development but continue to experience high natural increase.