Question

urbannization has been more in South compare to the north of India ? give reason​

Answer 1

Question-

Urbanization has been more in the south compared to the north of India? Give reason​.

Answer-

India’s urbanisation rate gradually rose from less than 9% in the 1870s to 17% in the 1950s and 31% in 2011. The urbanisation rates for the southern states are now inching towards the 50% mark while many of the northern states are still stuck at rates below 25%. My study shows a robust relationship between urbanisation and per capita income levels, and more importantly, growth rates over the past four decades at the sub-national level. However, India’s urbanisation rate is observed to be more than 10 percentage points lower than the rate predicted for its level of per capita income at the cross-country level. Further, the pace of urbanisation has been slower in India than in many other countries with similar or lower growth rates. India thus poses two challenges to urban trends: Why is the level of urbanisation low relative to its per capita income level, and why has the pace of urbanisation been slow in the last four decades despite relatively high economic growth rates?

Two explanations often discussed pertain to urban definitions and migration restrictions. India uses a conservative urban definition that assigns many settlements to be ‘rural’ when they would have been classified as ‘urban’ in other countries. A more liberal definition would raise the urbanisation rate and explain part of the difference between the actual urbanisation rate and the rate predicted at the corresponding per capita income level. The urbanisation rate in India in 2011 could vary between 31% based on the official definition and 47% if rural settlements with population exceeding 5,000 were classified as urban areas - a practice followed in many countries. However, my analysis reveals that irrespective of the definition used, the change in urbanisation rate between 2001 and 2011 remains constant at 3 percentage points. That is, a definition-based explanation addresses the issue of low urbanisation but not slow urbanisation.

Another explanation on the slow pace of Indian urbanisation focusses on low levels of spatial mobility. Census statistics on in-migration show low rates of mobility especially for non-marriage related reasons. However, as documented in Chapter 12 of the Economic Survey 2016-17, alternative estimates of migration reveal magnitudes of a much higher order such that at least 20% of the workforce can be considered to be migrant in nature.

Definition and migration-based explanations have overlooked another potential reason for India’s relatively slow pace of urbanisation. This is related with the fact that urbanisation also depends on rural-urban differences in natural growth rates which correspond to their respective demographic transitions.