# **I. Introduction**

# **India’s urbanization and the emergence of Census Towns**

India is still in the early stages of its urbanization process. According to the latest Census of 2011, the urbanization level in India has increased from 27.8% in 2001 to 31.2% in 2011, and for the first time, the absolute increase in urban population exceeded the increase in rural population. However, the statistical method used to measure urbanization in India can be interpreted as contributing to understating the share of India’s population living in urban areas. The definition of urbanization in India is rather restrictive. It is the only country to use population, density and economic character together as criteria. The agglomeration index (AI) - originally developed for World Development Report 2009: Reshaping Economic Geography provides a consistent basis for comparing urbanization across countries. By this measure, it was estimated that 52% of India’s population lived within an hour’s distance of large cities, compared to 36% in China, based on the census of 2001 and 2000 respectively.<sup>1</sup> In addition to India’s “hidden” urbanization, the 2011 census highlighted a new feature in its urban transformation. A total of 3,894 settlements were identified as Census Towns while there were only 1,362 such settlements in the 2001 census. Census Towns are part of India’s “visible” urbanization, since they satisfy the three criteria set by the Registrar General of India for defining an urban area: population of at least 5,000, density of at least 400 persons per square kilometer and workforce of at least 75% of male main workers in the non-farm sector. The remarkable increase in their number between 2001 and 2011 means that a large number of settlements were reclassified from rural to urban, because of the change in their demographic and workforce characteristics.

It is important to note that there are two dimensions to the distinction between urban and rural spaces in India: a statistical one, and an administrative one. The statistical dimension is measured through the criteria mentioned above and used by the census. The administrative dimension distinguishes between: (i) Statutory Towns, which are administered by different types of Urban Local Bodies (ULBs); and (ii) Villages, which are administered by village councils (Gram Panchayats). The two categories of local governments function under different principles outlined in the 73<sup>rd</sup> and 74<sup>th</sup> Constitutional Amendment Acts which were enacted in 1992 to introduce local governments as the third constitutional tier of government. Therefore, among settlements, CT is a specific subgroup defined as urban by the Census of India but under rural governance.

Importantly, of the total urban growth of approximately 90 million people, about 44% is due to natural population growth in urban areas that existed in 2001, 21% is due to migration from urban to rural areas and the remaining, i.e., more than a third is because of re-classification of rural settlements as urban areas due to the change in the character of settlements, i.e., mostly new CTs - with a small proportion due to villages being reclassified as urban local bodies (Pradhan, 2013). As such, the ‘morphing’ of places is more important in urban growth in India than the ‘movement’ of people. A recent World Bank report on “Leveraging Urbanization in South Asia” (Ellis and

> 1 Large cities are defined as settlements of more than 50,000 persons, similar to the Metropolitan Statistical Area in the United States (Uchida and Nelson, 2010).

2