Growth of urban settlements in India

Urbanisation refers to the process by which an increasing proportion of a population shifts from rural to urban areas, leading to growth in cities and towns. This transformation involves not only the expansion of urban population size but also profound changes in social behaviour, lifestyles, and economic activities. People move away from agriculture towards non-agricultural pursuits such as trade, manufacturing, industry, and management, reflecting a structural change in the economy and society.

In the Indian context, urbanisation has brought significant social transformations. It has contributed to the emergence of new class systems and the decline of traditional social structures such as the joint family and caste system. The shift towards nuclear families, secularism, and more individualistic lifestyles are some of the key social changes accompanying urban growth. Urbanisation thus shapes not just the spatial organization but also the cultural and social fabric of India.

Several related concepts help understand the complexity of urban growth in India. Over-urbanisation refers to excessive urban development that spills beyond city limits into surrounding rural areas, often without adequate infrastructure. This process leads to rural spaces acquiring urban traits, such as mechanisation and commercial activities, sometimes at the expense of traditional rural lifestyles. Cities like Mumbai and Kolkata exemplify over-urbanisation, where rapid expansion has created challenges of congestion and resource strain.

Suburbanisation describes the growth of suburbs around major cities, driven by overcrowding in urban cores. This phenomenon leads to an increase in non-agricultural land use around cities and the inclusion of surrounding towns within metropolitan governance. For instance, the National Capital Region (NCR) around Delhi includes suburbs like Noida, Gurugram, and Ghaziabad, linked closely to the city through transport and communication networks. Suburbanisation helps relieve pressure from city centers but also creates new patterns of urban living.

Despite these trends, India also exhibits under-urbanisation, characterized by a relatively low rate of urban population compared to its level of economic development. As of 2018, only about 34% of India’s population lived in urban areas, a figure much lower than countries like China (56%) and the USA (82%). Moreover, urban growth tends to be concentrated in a few mega-cities such as Mumbai and Delhi, while smaller cities and towns show stagnation. This uneven urbanisation preserves rural communities and their cultural traditions but also means limited economic opportunities and inadequate infrastructure in smaller urban centers.

Understanding urban life requires moving beyond statistics to the sociological experience of urbanism. Georg Simmel, in his seminal work The Metropolis and Mental Life (1903), examined how city life intensifies sensory stimuli and creates a fast-paced, impersonal environment. He described how urban dwellers develop a rational, calculating outlook and a blasé attitude, characterized by emotional detachment, as a psychological adaptation to overwhelming urban stimuli.

Building on this, Louis Wirth made a key distinction between urbanisation and urbanism. Urbanisation refers to the demographic and spatial process of increasing city populations, while urbanism denotes the complex social and cultural traits that emerge from living in urban settings. According to Wirth, urbanisation leads to urbanism, as growing cities bring changes in lifestyles, values, and social interactions, fostering traits like social heterogeneity, anonymity, and impersonal relationships.

History of Urban Settlements in India

The history of urban settlements in India spans several millennia, reflecting the country’s rich and diverse cultural, economic, and political heritage. From the advanced cities of the ancient period to the evolving urban forms under medieval and colonial influences, India’s urban landscape reveals dynamic patterns of growth and transformation.

Ancient Cities

The earliest urban settlements in India, such as Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa of the Indus Valley Civilization, showcase some of the world’s most sophisticated examples of urban planning. These cities were characterized by well-organized streets laid out in grid patterns, advanced drainage systems, and public amenities that highlight remarkable civic engineering for their time. Other ancient cities like Varanasi, Pataliputra, Ujjain, Hampi, Ajanta, and Mahabalipuram developed as prominent centers of trade, culture, and religion. These cities served as hubs for local and international commerce, attracting merchants and facilitating economic exchange.

Culturally, ancient Indian cities were vibrant centers of learning, art, and religious practice. They housed temples, palaces, and monumental public buildings that stand as architectural marvels even today. The flourishing of music, dance, and literature further enriched their social fabric. Moreover, these urban centers were sites of significant technological advancement in fields such as metallurgy, agriculture, and medicine, reflecting an integrated and progressive civilization.

Medieval Cities

During the medieval period, cities such as Delhi, Agra, Jaipur, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad, Lucknow, and Vijayanagara rose to prominence. These cities saw the emergence of powerful urban elites, including traders, merchants, money-lenders, and nobility, who played key roles in shaping urban society. The medieval urban economy was marked by active trade and commerce in food grains, textiles, and handicrafts such as swords, carpets, and perfumes.

Fortified cities and garrison towns became prevalent as security concerns grew, with massive walls and forts constructed to defend urban populations. The guild system organized artisans and merchants into regulated bodies that controlled quality and trade practices, ensuring economic stability within cities.

Despite their growth, medieval cities often depended heavily on surrounding rural areas for resources, exhibiting what some scholars term ‘parasitic’ characteristics. These cities extracted surplus from villages without equivalent reciprocal benefits, though vibrant markets and distinct urban identities nonetheless flourished. The close linkage between rural and urban areas was significant. Sociologist S.C. Misra described the medieval Indian urban populace as “peasant urbanites,” emphasizing that cities maintained socio-economic continuities with villages. This rural-urban continuum slowed the development of distinctly ‘urban’ features, resulting in a blend of rural and urban characteristics rather than a sharp urban-rural divide.

Modern Cities: British Influence

The advent of British colonial rule brought profound changes to India’s urban settlements. Cities such as Calcutta (Kolkata), Bombay (Mumbai), and Madras (Chennai) were transformed through systematic town planning and architectural development. The British constructed civic buildings including town halls, courts, and administrative offices, often in neoclassical or gothic styles, symbolizing colonial authority and power.

Commercial districts grew around major ports, bolstering trade with the British Empire. Infrastructure projects such as railways, roads, and bridges connected internal markets to ports, facilitating the movement of goods and raw materials essential for colonial economic interests. Additionally, public parks such as Victoria Memorial in Kolkata and Hanging Gardens in Mumbai were created in the English landscape tradition, providing recreational spaces for the colonial urban population.

Contemporary Scenario: Types of Indian Towns

Post-independence and contemporary India exhibits a wide variety of urban settlements classified by their dominant functions. Administrative towns like Chandigarh, Srinagar, and Bhopal serve as centers of governance. Industrial towns such as Mumbai and Bhilai are engines of manufacturing and production. Commercial towns like Kolkata remain important hubs of trade and finance. Mining towns such as Raniganj and Jharia have developed around resource extraction, while garrison or cantonment towns like Ambala and Jalandhar originated as military settlements.

Educational towns including Roorkee and Aligarh have grown around major academic institutions, and tourist towns such as Nainital and Mussoorie attract visitors for their natural beauty and cultural significance. This diverse typology illustrates the complexity and multifunctionality of India’s urban system today.

Impacts of Urbanisation

Urbanisation is more than just the physical growth of cities; it represents a profound transformation in social life, economic structures, cultural patterns, and human relationships. The shift from rural to urban living produces distinct ways of life and has widespread impacts on individuals, communities, and institutions.

Urbanism as a Way of Life

Urbanism refers to the distinctive social and behavioral patterns that emerge in large, dense, and socially heterogeneous settlements. According to sociologist Louis Wirth, urbanism is not confined within city limits; its influence extends to surrounding rural areas and even distant communities. This highlights that urban lifestyles permeate beyond physical cities, transforming traditional rural modes into urban patterns. In sociological terms, urbanism embodies a new way of life tied to the complexities of city living, marked by diversity, anonymity, and fast-paced interactions.

Primary and Secondary Urbanisation

Robert Redfield and Milton Singer distinguished between primary and secondary urbanisation to explain the cultural dynamics of urban growth. Primary urbanisation refers to cities that carry forward and reinforce regional traditions and cultural norms, often called the ‘Great Tradition.’ In contrast, secondary urbanisation emerges during industrialisation and involves heterogenetic development, which leads to cultural disintegration and the rise of new social forms. This dual process illustrates how urban centres can both preserve and transform cultural identities.

Changing Social and Economic Institutions

Urbanisation reshapes social relationships by weakening traditional bonds such as kinship and neighborhood ties, replacing them with impersonal, formal, and goal-oriented interactions. Community ties in cities become more contractual and transitory, reflecting the utilitarian nature of urban life. Economically, there is a marked shift from agriculture to non-agricultural sectors such as industry and services, accompanied by increased division of labour and specialization.

Traditional institutions like the caste system and joint family undergo significant challenges in urban contexts. However, as noted by sociologist Yogendra Singh, these institutions do not vanish but adapt by incorporating modern roles. For example, while caste continues to influence social and political life, it also transforms in response to urban economic realities.

Rural-Urban Migration

The expansion of cities and industrial development attract large numbers of rural migrants seeking better livelihoods. While this accelerates urban growth, it also generates challenges such as pressure on housing, sanitation, healthcare, and employment. Slums proliferate, and issues like unemployment, crime, pollution, congestion, and health hazards increase, placing enormous strain on urban infrastructure.

M.S.A. Rao described three situations in rural areas due to urbanisation: (1) out-migration villages where many people move to cities, elevating urban employment as a prestige symbol; (2) villages near towns experiencing influxes of immigrant workers and related social challenges; and (3) villages engulfed by expanding metropolitan cities, becoming rural pockets within urban environments.

Caste and Urbanisation

Caste retains a complex presence in urban India, marked by both continuity and change. Harold Gould’s study of Lucknow’s Rickshawallas showed that while caste differences blurred in work settings, caste consciousness remained strong in private life. Pauline Kolenda further explained this through the concepts of fusion—where inter-caste marriages and occupational mobility blur boundaries—and fission—where new caste identities and sub-castes emerge.

In the public sphere, caste becomes less visible, but it persists in the personal and religious domains. Networks based on caste often facilitate migration and employment, with trade unions and interest groups frequently organized along caste lines, as seen in Gujarat’s Bania communities.

Family and Kinship

Urbanisation tends to weaken kinship ties due to migration, promoting the rise of nuclear families as proposed by Parsons’ Industrial Nuclear Family Thesis. However, scholars like A.M. Shah and K.M. Kapadia argue that joint and extended family traditions still survive alongside nuclearisation in India. Urban women often face a ‘dual burden’—balancing housework with professional careers—while gaining increasing independence, sometimes leading to higher rates of separation and autonomy.

Class Structure

Urbanisation contributes to the emergence of a professional middle class marked by education and specialized occupations. However, it also intensifies social inequalities, widening the gap between rich and poor within urban areas. This growing class divide influences access to resources, opportunities, and quality of life.

Religion

With urbanisation, religion undergoes secularisation, becoming more privatized and less central in public life. New forms of ‘civic religion’ tied to nationalism and ‘invisible religion’ practiced privately emerge. Nonetheless, religious revivalism also finds fertile ground in cities, where sects, cults, and communal movements grow and mobilize, impacting urban social dynamics.

Economic Life in Urban Areas

The urban economy is characterized by a growing informal sector, where unregulated jobs and child labour are prevalent. Alongside this, division of labour becomes more specialized, with a wider range of job roles and industries. Urban centres offer more employment options and potential for upward mobility, but these benefits are unevenly distributed, contributing to socio-economic disparities.

Problems of Urbanisation

Urbanisation, while often associated with progress and economic growth, also brings a range of complex problems that affect cities and their inhabitants. These problems arise due to the rapid and often unplanned growth of urban areas, putting enormous pressure on resources, infrastructure, and social fabric.

Over-Urbanisation

One of the foremost problems is over-urbanisation, which occurs when the rate of urban population growth exceeds the capacity of cities to provide adequate employment opportunities and basic amenities. This mismatch is evident in many Indian cities, where urbanisation has outpaced industrialisation and economic growth. The result is widespread overcrowding, expansion of slums, poor living conditions, and rising unemployment. Urban areas struggle to maintain a decent quality of life for their rapidly growing populations.

Resource Drain and Civic Breakdown

Urbanisation also leads to a significant drain on economic resources. Cities consume a large portion of a country’s resources, sometimes to the detriment of overall economic growth and rural development. This resource pressure often causes the breakdown of civic amenities such as water supply, sanitation, transportation, and waste management. Many urban facilities are unable to cope with the demands of burgeoning populations, leading to deteriorating living conditions and public health challenges.

Inadequate Housing

Housing shortages and substandard living conditions are acute problems in urban India. According to the 2011 Census, approximately 65 million people—nearly 17% of the urban population—reside in slums, characterized by inadequate access to water, sanitation, and electricity. Surveys reveal that many urban households lack basic facilities such as toilets and drainage, and a significant portion lives in cramped spaces with poor ventilation. These conditions contribute to health problems like respiratory diseases and social issues including limited access to education and employment.

Unsafe Water Supply and Transport Infrastructure

Urban residents frequently face unsafe drinking water and irregular supply, leading to waterborne diseases. Furthermore, inadequate and overcrowded public transport systems result in severe traffic congestion, long commutes, and inefficiency. Urban sprawl worsens these problems, stretching transport networks thin and increasing pollution levels.

Pollution and Environmental Crisis

Margaret Mead identified pollution as a defining problem of modern urban-industrial civilization. In many Indian cities, pollution is exacerbated by unchecked industrial growth, outdated urban layouts, and unplanned vertical expansion. The lack of planned land use combined with commercial speculation creates ecological imbalances. Environmental theorist Murray Bookchin critiques such development for prioritizing productivity and profit over ecological sustainability, leading to a modern environmental crisis. He advocates for social ecology, emphasizing decentralization, participatory democracy, and ecological harmony as solutions.

Social Consequences: Crime and Isolation

Urbanisation brings social challenges including rising crime rates. Economic disparities, unemployment, weakened community bonds, and the anonymity of city life contribute to increased theft, violence, organized crime, and white-collar offenses. Sociologists like R.K. Merton explain this rise in crime through the concept of anomie, where a disconnect between societal goals and available means drives individuals toward deviance.

Despite physical proximity, many city-dwellers experience social isolation due to heterogeneity and residential segregation, where people cluster by caste, class, or religion, reinforcing social distance. This social fragmentation further weakens community ties and fosters alienation, as described by Marx and sociologist Robert E. Park’s concept of the ‘Marginal Man’ who struggles to belong to either rural or urban culture.

Increasing Inequalities

Urbanisation often intensifies inequalities. The rising cost of living, combined with shortages in schools, healthcare, and transportation, disproportionately affects the poor. A large informal sector, lacking job security and decent wages, deepens income inequality and socio-economic marginalization.

Need for Reforms

Addressing urban problems requires multi-faceted reforms. Developing suburbs and satellite cities, such as Delhi NCR and Navi Mumbai, can relieve overcrowding. Controlling rural-urban migration by empowering rural economies is essential to manage urban growth sustainably. Government initiatives like AMRUT, Smart City Mission, and PM Awas Yojana aim to renew urban infrastructure and improve housing. Employment-focused programs, such as the National Urban Livelihoods Mission, provide opportunities to marginalized populations.

Moreover, combating social isolation and anomie through community spaces, festivals, and cultural activities is vital to rebuild social cohesion and a sense of belonging in urban environments.