A Demographic-Economic Lens On India’s Urbanization

The level of India’s urbanization has thus far been consistently lower compared with the average for the less developed countries. Nor has India demonstrated any initiative that will bring its urbanization parameters close to what scholars such as Neil Brenner and Henri Lefebvre call, ‘planetary’ or ‘generalised’ urbanization, a process associated with economic globalization and integration and information revolution . This essay examines firstly, the trends in India’s urbanization, covering the scale, pace, rate, composition, and its spread and distribution across city-sizes and spaces at various levels and secondly, the interconnections and interdependence between urbanization and key economic parameters such as the gross domestic product (GDP) and the labour market.