Large towns at risk of losing development due to ‘rural’ label

India, the most populous country, will continue to live in its villages until the 2050s, even as several rural settlements now have more people than they need to be called cities, putting them at risk of missing out on growth opportunities. , experts said Thursday.

With the last Census exercise delayed due to the Covid pandemic, available data from the 2011 Census shows that there are 23,335 villages with a population of more than 5,000, but they remain in the village category as they do not meet other criteria, placing themselves at risk of being lost in programs aimed at urban centers, they said.

In India, a settlement is considered urban if it has a population of more than 5,000, the population density is at least 400 people per square kilometer, and at least 75 percent of the population must be involved in non-agricultural activities.

The number of people living in centers with more than 5,000 inhabitants exceeds 23.5% of the total rural population.

“India is still living in its villages demographically, although we do not have definitive data because the 2021 census has not been conducted. India will most likely still be living in its villages demographically until the 2050s, but economically it has been predominantly urban since the late 1950s. the 1990s,” said Aromar Revi, director of the Indian Institute for Human Settlements (IIHS), a national interdisciplinary university focused on urbanization.

“India uses a three-tier urban classification using density, population size, and the percentage of male non-agricultural workers. There are many problems with these criteria in the midst of a massive urban transition, which several researchers have identified, but even with changes to those definitions, India as an aggregate still lives in its villages,” he told PTI.

According to the latest UN data, India has become the most populous nation in the world with 142.86 million inhabitants.

However, while more people live in villages, Indian cities already contribute about two-thirds of India’s GDP, with this number expected to rise to 75 percent by 2031. At the same time, about 70 percent of all The new jobs are expected to come from urban areas, shows data from the Ministry of Urban Development.

The IIHS in its ‘Urban India 2015’ report highlighted the emergence of high-density population clusters around established urban centers accompanied by a massive increase in people living in settlements with a population of between 5,000 and 20,000. This is even when it has been assumed that urbanization in India is very heavy in nature, resulting in the formulation of infrastructure investment plans that focus on large cities, those with a population of more than 100,000.

“This points to a gray population that is still classified as rural but increasingly urban in character and deeply connected to established urban spaces and their economic and social development,” the report said.

The report also said that between 2001 and 2011, more people were added to the urban than rural population and projections indicate that India may well become semi-urban by 2041.

He said these “potentially urban” settlements, which are defined as rural but exhibit urban characteristics due to their population size, density and proximity to established urban spaces, could drastically change the spatial distribution of what is and is considered urban in India. , and therefore should be included in policy decisions.

Nirmalaya Chowdhury, an associate professor at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, said that in such a scenario, these large rural settlements housing crores of rupees risk losing development.

“If we compare rural and urban areas, the difference is clear why people want to migrate to urban areas. Areas under panchayats have fewer facilities, but when a center becomes a municipality, there is more investment and development,” Chowdhury told PTI. .

“Rural areas benefit when they become a municipality. On top of that, there are also peri-urban areas that have a high population density,” he said.

Asked if there is a need to redefine towns and villages, Revi said the need is instead to focus on small town and large town development.

“What needs to change is the governance and development regime that is not focused enough on the small town and large town classes, where many of the development opportunities are being wasted,” said the IIHS director.

According to government figures, in 2021, 65% of the country’s population lived in rural areas and 47% of the population depended on agriculture for their livelihood.

In 1960, 80 percent of the Indians lived in villages and in 2000, 72 percent of the population was in rural areas.