The word urban underlies a basic theme. One that its population size is larger than its rural counterpart, two that its size is definitely larger and three that its functions are varied. Function is probably the most important criterion to define a town. The other criteria are population size and population density. Different countries have different parameters to explain an urban space. India has one too.
In India, the criteria for identifying urban places kept changing with time. The frequent changes in the criteria reflected the basic problem of identifying urban places and the issue could not be settled till 1981.
In India, urban areas are given different administrative status by different state governments. The conferring of this status depends on the state-level Municipal and Local Bodies Acts. A place has to satisfy all the three Census criteria in order to be designated as an urban place even if the requirements are criticised by some to be vague, rigid and conservative.
| The 1981 Census defined an urban place as: |
| (A) a place with a municipality, corporation, or cantonment, or notified town area |
| (B) any other place which satisfied all the following criteria:(i) a minimum population of 5,000; (ii) at least 75 per cent of the male working population engaged in non-agricultural; and, (iii) a density of population of at least 400 per square kilometre or 1,000 persons per square mile. |
At present, we have 35 million cities (2001 census) in India and 27.8 percent of our people live in the towns and cities.
Many eminent scholars have studied the intricacies of a city and have proposed some unique findings. It was J. Gottman who first coined the term Megalopolis. This city was envisaged to have a population size over 35 million people. G. Sjoberg in his book ‘The Pre-Industrial City’ examined the structure of urban settlements both in Europe and elsewhere in the world, prior to the impact of large-scale industrialization. Then there were many more like Harvey, Peet, Pred etc. who went to make our understanding of cities more lucid.
| The Eminent Titles |
| J. Gottman, Megalopolis: The Urbanized North-eastern Seaboard of the United States, M.I.T. Press, Cambridge, Mass, 1961. |
| G. Sjoberg, The Pre-Industrial City, Past and Present, The Free Press, New York, 1960. |
Building a city isn’t an easy job. The site factors have to be taken into account so that the city is provided with its basic amenities. Then comes several others factors that depend upon what the city’s basic function is to be.
Administrative Towns
These towns include, capital cities of nations, provinces, district and other administrative units.
Example: Delhi, Chandigarh.
Defence Towns
Most countries maintain Armies, Navies and Air forces for the defence. Such towns generally have barracks and training facilities for the armed forces.
Example: Jalandhar, Jodhpur and Jammu.
Cultural Centres
Many towns have cultural functions such as the provisions for education, art galleries or religious buildings, pilgrimage centre, and more.
Example:
- Shantiniketan, Pantnagar etc. are educational towns.
- Bombay and Pune etc. film centers.
- Lhasa, once the seat of the Dalai Lama of Tibet.
- Banaras, Hardwar, Ajmer etc. pilgrimage centers.
Collection Centres
Mining Towns, fishing Ports and Lumbering Centres are included in collection centres:
Examples:
- Mining Towns— Raniganj and Jharia.
- Fishing Ports — Calicut, Cochin and Pondicherry.
- Lumbering Towns: Papernagar, Kathgodam, Haldwani.
Commercial Town
Business houses, Banks, Insurance Companies and other financial organisations are included in it. It mainly includes those related to trading, retailing and commercial services.
Examples: Muzaffarpur (in Bihar), Nagpur, Bhopal, Kanpur etc.
Market Towns
These are places where exchanges of goods take place i.e collection and distribution. They mainly include large business markets or mandis besides, a wide range of shops,stores,warehouses and godowns, supported by a well knit network of transport facilities.
Examples: Ludhiana, Tirupur.
Resort Towns
These are located in favourable geographical surroundings basically recreational pleasant places to live in. It has hotels, guest houses, film theatres, night clubs, amusement parks, shopping centres etc.
Examples:
- Coastal Resorts with sea-side recreational facilities for water sports such as Goa, Kanya kumari, Allepey;
- Hill Resorts provide scenic beauty, cool climate and adventurous and thrilling sports i.e. trekking, skiing etc. such as Darjeeling, Auli, Shimla etc.; and,
- Health Resorts mainly based on health-giving waters somewhat like health spa such as Manikaran, and favourable climate in Ranikhet, Kasauni etc.
Residential Towns
These are mainly modern towns with all facilities for healthy, good and comfortable life away from congested and polluted cities. These are often well planned and located in a neat and healthy milieu.
Example: Chandigarh, Salt Lake City (Kolkata)
Last but not the least; a mention must be made of the shanty town and slums, a product of the accelerating urbanization process. It is a district of temporary, generally overcrowded, lacking in amenities and characterized by a high incidence of disease, extreme poverty and more.
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Steve Ovett, the famous British middle-distance athlete, won the 800-metres gold medal at the Moscow Olympics of 1980. Just a few days later, he was about to win a 5,000-metres race at London’s Crystal Palace. Known for his burst of acceleration on the home stretch, he had supreme confidence in his ability to out-sprint rivals. With the final 100 metres remaining,
[wptelegram-join-channel link=”https://t.me/s/upsctree” text=”Join @upsctree on Telegram”]Ovett waved to the crowd and raised a hand in triumph. But he had celebrated a bit too early. At the finishing line, Ireland’s John Treacy edged past Ovett. For those few moments, Ovett had lost his sense of reality and ignored the possibility of a negative event.
This analogy works well for the India story and our policy failures , including during the ongoing covid pandemic. While we have never been as well prepared or had significant successes in terms of growth stability as Ovett did in his illustrious running career, we tend to celebrate too early. Indeed, we have done so many times before.
It is as if we’re convinced that India is destined for greater heights, come what may, and so we never run through the finish line. Do we and our policymakers suffer from a collective optimism bias, which, as the Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman once wrote, “may well be the most significant of the cognitive biases”? The optimism bias arises from mistaken beliefs which form expectations that are better than the reality. It makes us underestimate chances of a negative outcome and ignore warnings repeatedly.
The Indian economy had a dream run for five years from 2003-04 to 2007-08, with an average annual growth rate of around 9%. Many believed that India was on its way to clocking consistent double-digit growth and comparisons with China were rife. It was conveniently overlooked that this output expansion had come mainly came from a few sectors: automobiles, telecom and business services.
Indians were made to believe that we could sprint without high-quality education, healthcare, infrastructure or banking sectors, which form the backbone of any stable economy. The plan was to build them as we went along, but then in the euphoria of short-term success, it got lost.
India’s exports of goods grew from $20 billion in 1990-91 to over $310 billion in 2019-20. Looking at these absolute figures it would seem as if India has arrived on the world stage. However, India’s share of global trade has moved up only marginally. Even now, the country accounts for less than 2% of the world’s goods exports.
More importantly, hidden behind this performance was the role played by one sector that should have never made it to India’s list of exports—refined petroleum. The share of refined petroleum exports in India’s goods exports increased from 1.4% in 1996-97 to over 18% in 2011-12.
An import-intensive sector with low labour intensity, exports of refined petroleum zoomed because of the then policy regime of a retail price ceiling on petroleum products in the domestic market. While we have done well in the export of services, our share is still less than 4% of world exports.
India seemed to emerge from the 2008 global financial crisis relatively unscathed. But, a temporary demand push had played a role in the revival—the incomes of many households, both rural and urban, had shot up. Fiscal stimulus to the rural economy and implementation of the Sixth Pay Commission scales had led to the salaries of around 20% of organized-sector employees jumping up. We celebrated, but once again, neither did we resolve the crisis brewing elsewhere in India’s banking sector, nor did we improve our capacity for healthcare or quality education.
Employment saw little economy-wide growth in our boom years. Manufacturing jobs, if anything, shrank. But we continued to celebrate. Youth flocked to low-productivity service-sector jobs, such as those in hotels and restaurants, security and other services. The dependence on such jobs on one hand and high-skilled services on the other was bound to make Indian society more unequal.
And then, there is agriculture, an elephant in the room. If and when farm-sector reforms get implemented, celebrations would once again be premature. The vast majority of India’s farmers have small plots of land, and though these farms are at least as productive as larger ones, net absolute incomes from small plots can only be meagre.
A further rise in farm productivity and consequent increase in supply, if not matched by a demand rise, especially with access to export markets, would result in downward pressure on market prices for farm produce and a further decline in the net incomes of small farmers.
We should learn from what John Treacy did right. He didn’t give up, and pushed for the finish line like it was his only chance at winning. Treacy had years of long-distance practice. The same goes for our economy. A long grind is required to build up its base before we can win and celebrate. And Ovett did not blame anyone for his loss. We play the blame game. Everyone else, right from China and the US to ‘greedy corporates’, seems to be responsible for our failures.
We have lowered absolute poverty levels and had technology-based successes like Aadhaar and digital access to public services. But there are no short cuts to good quality and adequate healthcare and education services. We must remain optimistic but stay firmly away from the optimism bias.
In the end, it is not about how we start, but how we finish. The disastrous second wave of covid and our inability to manage it is a ghastly reminder of this fact.