The State of India’s Cities and Towns

This Paper tries to paint a numbers- and chart-based picture of the current scenario of India’s Cities and Towns by taking five states into consideration- NCT Delhi, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Mizoram, and provide the public with a broad overview of selected urban topics, indicators and developments in the last decade. Thus, it is a story about the state and its people, the city and its citizens, and different sections of the population within the city as told by available data. The urban scenario in India is to a large extent characterized by disparities and inequalities. In Section I we take the state as the unit of analysis, asking how the selected states compare with each other and overall urban India (Interstate Disparities). Section II deals with questions like How and to what extent are disparities and inequalities manifested within the states, and how are they characterized in terms of different urban areas and sections of the society. in Section III (Intercity Disparities) to shed some light on the performance of and, by using available data for all statutory towns and cities in 2011, the prevailing infrastructural disparities between different size-categories of Urban Local Bodies.