Emerging Pattern of Urbanization and the Contribution of Migration to Urban Growth in India

As India has embarked upon economic reforms during the 1990s, published data from the 2001 Census provides an opportunity to study the country's urbanization process with reference to regional inequality and to the contribution of the components of urban growth, namely, natural increase, emergence of new towns, and the net contribution of rural to urban migration. India has more than 4000 cities and towns, which comprise 28 per cent of India's population of 1028 million as enumerated in 2001. However, about two-fifths of India's urban population live in only 35 metropolitan cities. The rate of urban population growth slowed down during the 1990s despite the increased rate of rural to urban migration due to a significant decline in natural increase in urban areas. This has led to an observable slowdown in the pace of India's urbanization.