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Trends in Urbanization: The Office of the Registrar General and Census Commissioner of India
projected the urban population for the year 2011 at 358 million, and estimated that urban population
growth rates would decline from 2.75 per cent per annum observed during 1991-2001 to 2.23 per cent
per annum during 2001-2011 (Registrar General and Census Commissioner, 2006). Urban experts
also believed that India’s urbanization would slow down because of its exclusionary nature and its
inability to spur rural-to-urban migration. However, the 2011 Census showed some unexpected
results. According to the 2011 Census, the urban population grew to 377 million showing a growth rate
of 2.8 per cent per annum during 2001-2011. The level of urbanization in the country as a whole
increased from 27.9 per cent in 2001 to 31.2 per cent in 2011, an increase of 3.3 percentage points
during the decade 2001-2011 compared to an increase of 2.2 percentage points during 1991-2001. It
may be noted that the Indian economy had grown from about 6 per cent per annum during the 1990s
to about 8 per cent during the first decade of the 2000s .This clearly reflects the power of economic
growth in bringing about faster urbanization during 2001-2011.
The urban-rural natural increase growth differentials remained almost constant (Four persons per
population of 1,000) between the census period 1991-2000 and 2001-2010. Therefore, it is the net
rural-urban classification and net rural-to-urban migration that are responsible for the higher urban
rural growth differentials and the speeding up of urbanization during 2001- 2011.
Issues of urbanization: The population of India in the urban areas is rising due to migration of
people to urban areas, due to lack of employment opportunities in rural areas and certain other
reasons. Moreover, the population of metropolitan cities is rising at a much faster pace than that of
other towns, adding a lot of socio-ecological problems.
It is also well known that increasing urbanization and the growth of cities is closely associated with
economic development, as judged by most current interpretations of the term. According to the
United Nations (2008 p.1), most of the population growth expected in urban areas will be
concentrated in cities and towns of less developed regions. Asia will experience the greatest increase in
urban population of any geographical region. Its urban population is projected to rise by 1.8 billion.
Even the number of large cities will increase considerably in the coming decades. An increasing
proportion of the world’s population level in mega cities (with a population of 10 million or more) and
in cities with 5- 10 million inhabitants. In 2007, there were 19 megacities but by 2025, the number is
expected to be 25; and most of these megacities were in Asia.
Social Infrastructure: India’s eight biggest cities, all end up rated as average or a little worse, and
there are few clear reasons why this is so. For starters, commuting is a problem area in every one of
them. In some cases, this is because public transport infrastructure is absent and in others because
traffic and parking woes make life a hell.
Environment: Another problem area is the broad category of ‘environment’. While weather is
something administrators can do nothing about, air quality emerged as a concern in every city, as did
lack of open spaces and sporting facilities. This broad category plays an important role in deciding
how people view the quality of life in their city.
Physical and Civic Infrastructure: While physical infrastructure in terms of power and water
supplies, for instance, has been beefed up, civic infrastructure – namely law and order; efficient and
clean local administration remains something our citizens can only dream of.
Quality of Life: In a period that has seen sustained high inflation rates, particularly in food, it comes
as no surprise that cost of living is a parameter on which every city ranked low. Predictability,
residents of every city also said life was more stressed out than relaxed in their city.

Q6. Discuss trends, reason and consequences of migration.
Ans. Human migration is the movement of people from one place to another with the intentions of
settling, permanently or temporarily, at a new location (geographic region). The movement is often
over long distances and from one country to another, but internal migration is also possible; indeed,
this is the dominant form globally. People may migrate as individuals, in family units or in large
groups.
Migration Trends and Projections: During the colonial period, Indians were described as highly
immobile population. Low levels of education, lower capacity to deal with the uncertainty linked to
migration, poor transport and communication facilities, traditional value systems and other social
factors have often been pointed out as the cause for their low rate of migration. Kingsley Davis in his
pioneering work “The Population of India and Pakistan” had attributed this immobility to the
prevalence of caste system, joint families, practice of early marriage, diversity of language and culture,
lack of education, and predominance of agriculture in the economy. He argued that a society bound by
caste and family system and traditional values, often acts as a deterrent to migration.
There are several demographers, however, who would not consider the migration rate as very low,
notwithstanding the socio-cultural diversity in the country. This is largely due to a high rate of