Dr.
Devendra K. Kothari
Population
and Development Analyst
Forum
for Population Action
No
doubt, India is urbanizing, but very slowly. Some forty-year ago, I
raised and analyzed this question in my doctoral dissertation –
Patterns of Rural-Urban migration: A case study of Four Villages in
Rajasthan, India. 1
Even today, it is a puzzling question. A recent paper, titled
Urbanization, Demographic Transition and the Growth of cities in
India, 1770-2020 by Chinmay Tumbe, gave some useful insights on this
issue. 2
What
explains the tepid growth in urbanization in India? It can be
explained better by analyzing the four components of urban growth,
namely (i) natural increase (births-deaths), (ii) net rural- urban
migration, (iii) reclassification of rural settlements into urban,
and (iv) expansion of boundaries of existing towns/cities. An
assessment of their relative contributions is very important to
understanding the dynamics of urban growth.
From
Table 6, it is clear that natural increase has been the most
prevalent source of urban population increase except in 2011 when
inclusion of new towns and expansion of urban boundaries combined
with net rural- urban migration have caused the maximum increase.
There could be some role of international migration especially from
Bangladesh in urban growth. The emergence of a large number of new
towns in 2011 supports the emerging scenario. The number of towns at
the national level increased from 5,161 to 7,935 – a net addition
of 2,774 towns in 2011 compared to the 2001 Census.
Table
6: Disaggregation
of total growth in urban population into components 1961-71, 1971-81
1981-91, 1991-01 and 2001-11
|
Components
|
1961-71*
|
1971-81*
|
1981-91*
|
1991-01*
|
2001-11**
|
|
1
|
2
|
3
|
4
|
5
|
6
|
|
Total
Increase (Million)
|
30
|
50
|
58
|
68
|
92
|
|
Share
of components (in per cent)
|
|||||
|
Natural
Increase on base year population and on intercensal migrants
|
64.6
|
51.3
|
61.3
|
59.4
|
44.8
|
|
Net
rural- urban migration
|
18.7
|
19.6
|
21.7
|
21.0
|
19.6
|
|
Population
of new towns less declassified towns
|
13.8
|
14.8
|
9.4
|
6.2
|
25.8
|
|
Increase
due to expansion in urban areas and merging of towns
|
2.9
|
14.2
|
7.6
|
13.0
|
9.8
|
|
Sources:
* Kundu, A. (2007): Migration and Urbanisation in India in the
context of the Goal of poverty Alleviation, The International
Conference on “Policy Perspectives on Growth, Economic
Structures and Poverty Reduction”, 7-9th June, 2007, Tsinghua
University, Beijing, China. **. Computed by the author based on
the data obtained from Census of India, 2011.
|
|||||
During
doctoral research, I found that seasonal migration or semi-permanent
nature of migration from rural areas is responsible for slow
progression towards urbanization. Tumbe lists a similar reason
“counter-intuitive”, which is responsible for holding back
India’s urbanization speed. It is the freedom to keep on migrating
from villages to cities and then back to villages which is acting as
a fetter on speed of urbanization in India. He finds that migration
from India’s rural areas has always had a gender bias and male
workers leave their families in rural areas to look for employment
opportunities in urban areas. As time passes, older cohorts go back
to the villages to live with their families only to be replaced by
younger ones. The process is facilitated by the important role of
kinship ties in getting such jobs. Given the fact that there is
neither any restriction on rural-urban movement of labour, nor is
there adequate infrastructure for women migrant workers in cities,
the net effect is a slowing down of India’s urbanization pace.
There
has been a decline in the rate of migration to urban areas since
1981. Table 6 shows that the contribution of net rural-urban
migration has gone down from 39 per cent in 1971-81 to 20 per cent in
200-11. This is really surprising in spite of rural poverty. Further,
a majority of the population in the working age group of 15-59 years
is residing in rural areas is alarming.
Lower
increase in contribution of migration to rise in urban population
suggests that there has not been enough additional space and
opportunity in the cities to absorb or attract more rural population
on a permanent basis.
Due
to the increasing cost of living in large cities, the rural migrants
have adopted a different strategy; in spite of migrating to the
cities on the permanent basis, they have started commuting. A
population is usually broken down into two categories—the
residents, who permanently stay in an area for a considerable amount
of time and are part of the official population count, and the
floating types, who are in the area but do not live there permanently
and are not considered part of the official census count. The
incidence of floating population in form of commuting (daily and/or
weekly) is very much in mega and million cities.
Half
the people using public transport in Vasai Virar travel more than 20
km-one way. In Mumbai, around 31 per cent of commuters take train,
while in all other cities bushes come next. Chennai and Bengaluru
have a high proportion of two wheeler users. Such findings can be
gleaned from a data set obtained from the Census 2011 on the mode of
transport that “other workers”- those not engaged in household
industry or agricultural occupations—use to commute daily to work
and the distance they travel. 3
A
survey conducted by the author in Jaipur in 2011 revealed that more
than 125,000 people come to Jaipur in morning from nearby places for
work and go back to their respective villages and/or towns in the
evening. Among those 125,000 workers who do commute for work, the
distances tend to be quite small. A half of commuters travel less
than 10 kms on one way to work and another one forth travel between
ten to twenty kms. And remaining of them has a commute over 20 kms.
Over one-tenth of workers in Jaipur commute to work on foot,
followed by cycle, moped or motorcycles and bus and train. Fewer than
five per cent take cars or vans. 4
Planning
in most cities does not take into account the realities of Indian
commuting and that is one of main reasons, why our cities face
transport, water and power and other problems.
It
does not mean that role of permanent migration to urban areas is
going to decrease further. Migration and in particular, net
rural-urban migration, is expected to pick up speed in coming years
with the onset of economic reforms and acceleration in economic
growth as well as urban reforms.
People
move into cities to seek economic opportunities. A major contributing
factor is known as "rural flight". In rural areas, often on
small family farms, it is difficult to improve one's standard of
living beyond basic sustenance. Cities, in contrast, have strongly
emerged as the prime engines of the Indian economy and generators of
national wealth, the future is inescapably urban. In addition, an
increase in agricultural productivity will push rural people to urban
areas with better qualification.
A
similar phenomenon was noted during my doctoral research. It was
observed that there is a positive relationship between level of rural
development and amount of rural-urban migration. In other words,
rural development pushes people from rural areas to urban centres.5
With
declining urban fertility (Table 7), and simultaneously increase in
number of urban centres, it is predictable that the contribution of
migration will increase in coming decades, especially when 70 per
cent of working population age group in rural locations are looking
out for opportunities.
Latest
data suggests that urban fertility has fallen sharply in recent years
and is already at the ‘replacement level’ needed to keep the
population stable. Urban fertility is now at levels seen in developed
countries and in some places among the lowest in the world.
In
the 1970s, natural growth rates in urban and rural India were
identical. Since then, they have dramatically diverged with rural
natural growth rates currently standing substantially higher than
urban natural growth rates. This is mainly due to higher birth rates
in rural areas as death rates have converged between rural and urban
settings.
Table
7: Trends in fertility 1971-2013
|
Year
|
Total
Fertility Rate (number of children per woman)
|
||
|
Rural
|
urban
|
difference
|
|
|
`1
|
2
|
3
|
4
|
|
1971
|
5.4
|
4.1
|
1.3
|
|
1981
|
4.8
|
3.3
|
1.5
|
|
1991
|
3.9
|
2.7
|
1.2
|
|
2001
|
3.4
|
2.3
|
1.1
|
|
2011
|
2.7
|
1.7
|
0.8
|
|
2013
|
2.5
|
1.8
|
0.7
|
|
Source:
Registrar General of India
|
|||
As
a result, the rural-urban migration is expected to pick up speed in
coming years with the onset of economic reforms and acceleration in
economic growth. In some countries, notably China and Indonesia,
migration and reclassification has accounted for 70 to 80 percent of
urban growth in the recent decades. The same could be seen in India
in coming years.
The next post discusses: Urban problems and smart city concept.
1
Kothari, Devendra K. 1980. Patterns of Rural-Urban Migration: A
case study of Four Villages in Rajasthan, India, Unpublished Ph.D.
Thesis in Demography, The Australian National University Canberra,
Australia. In this field-based study, rural-urban migrants were
traced from the four villages to selected destinations like Mumbai,
Ahmadabad, and Udaipur among others.
2
Tumbe, Chinmay. 2016. Urbanization, Demographic Transition and the
Growth of Cities in India, 1870-2020, working paper, C35205-INC-1,
International Growth Centre.
3
Refer at:
http://www.thehindu.com/data/india-walks-to-work-census/article7874521.ece
4
Kothari Devendra. 2011. Increasing level of commuting in Jaipur city
and its consequences, FPA Working Paper no. 13, Forum for Population
Action, Jaipur.
5
Kothari, Devendra K. 1980. Patterns of Rural-Urban Migration: A
case study of Four Villages in Rajasthan, India, Unpublished Ph.D.
Thesis in Demography, The Australian National University Canberra,
Australia
