The book examines the pattern of non-farm development at the national level and identifies the correlates and determinants of occupational diversification for the major states. It is one of the few studies that unravels the dynamic processes associated with growth and development at the sub-national level; wherein it elucidates changes in rural employment pattern and its implications for urban growth.
The book fills a crucial gap in current research, notably, an understanding of conditions that enable large villages to assume an urban character. By providing micro-level study of census towns to capture the nuances of the dynamic situation in the countryside, the book would offer useful insights and provide reference material on the social and economic impacts of urban growth, thereby satisfying the needs of students, researchers and practitioners of regional economics, rural development, and sustainable urbanization.
The book is the outcome of financial support received under the Research Programme Scheme of the Indian Council of Social Science Research (ICSSR), New Delhi, India.
Tag Archives: Gujarat
An ignored boom in India
It’s time to refashion policies keeping in mind India is urbanizing at a faster pace than estimates
Recently, Mint published a series on urbanization and small towns in India. It is also important to look at the analytic aspects of the process of urbanization and policies for it.
In the middle of the last decade we established what we called “large villages” which met the census criteria of towns that were not classified as urban areas by the government. This led to a pessimistic perception of urbanization by experts like Rakesh Mohan and Amitabh Kundu. We argued then that a part of this pessimistic perception might arise from settlements which are “urban” by census definitions but which are still not classified as “urban”. While the absolute differences on this account may be small, due to the nature of computational methods to arrive at population projections, in the end “small” absolute differences can lead to “large” end differences and may affect projections. These can lead to the wrong policy choices on urbanization.
Applying the census criteria of considering rural areas as non-statutory towns, to village-wise data of 2001 census, it was estimated that out of 18,539 populated villages of Gujarat, 122 villages were classified as non-statutory towns, which the Mint articles call census towns.
Yoginder K. Alagh for live mint, 7th October 2012
Full article here