Prioritize the enablers of urbanization in india

PRIORITIZE THE ENABLERS OF URBANIZATION IN INDIA

Daniel, Dhanraj, Gaurav, Girish, Sanidhya

Department of Building Engineering and Management

School of Planning and Architecture New Delhi

Abstract

The process of urbanization in India creates a better and higher order of infrastructures of

education, employment, modernization, industrialization and healthcare facilities. As per Chetan

Vaidya (2011), Urbanization is inevitable and necessary to achieve the 10% GDP growth rate of

India. As per that calculation India has to increase its urban area by 40% in the next 25 years.

However, the current urban governance and management of the services is far from satisfactory.

This study presents a coexisting scenario of migration that is ongoing in India. Post independent

India witnessed several transformations in different sectors. Due to unequal progress and the

apathetic approach of development agencies and the Government, a considerable proportion of

the rural population has immigrated to the urban places in search of better opportunities resulting

in many problems such as unidentifiable population groups and slum formation. Migration from

rural to urban has changed the nature and proportion of population and its supportive systems.

This paper describes how the migration is happening in the recent time and which the more

influential enablers among them are. If there are any significant enablers among the list, the

government policies for future can be made concentrating on those factors to get to the GDP goal

in stipulated time.

Key-words: Urbanization, India, migration pattern, government policies, education, employment,

modernization, industrialization, healthcare facilities.

1. Introduction

Urbanization is generally defined with respect to financial, civil and city development.

Urbanization is a course of action by which rural inhabitants get renowned into urban areas

either by incorporating them into existing urban lands or by changing them as town. People from

rural area migrate to the urban cities for several reasons and they need access to urban

infrastructures. There are several reasons which are referred as enablers in this research paper


they are the predominant factors of urbanization and plays a major role. This transformation

increases the number of people living in urban areas. Urbanization can be measured by the

percentage of people living in urban area of a country with respect to the total population of that

country. The logistic model used by the United Nations, the World Bank, and other international

agencies projected that India is poised for rapid urbanization, along with several other countries

in south and East Asia.

India is having a total population of 1027 million; about 285 million people lived in urban areas

(Census, 2001). The percentage of urban population has increased from 19.9% in the year 1971

to 27.8% in the year 2001. The decadal growth of urban population was 31.2% in 1991-2001.

The contribution of rural-urban migration is 19 to 21 percent of the net increase in urban

population (Table 1).

Increasing of density of urban population in larger cities is one of the key features of urban India.

The number of cities over 1.0 million population, in 2001, was 35 and its population share was

over 37 percent. The salient aspects of urbanization in India in recent decades are:

a) The inclination of increasing urban population in large cities forms a stack of people in the

same place.

b) Slowing down the natural increase of urbanization during 1971-1981 and 1991-2001 as

compared to 1961-1971 and 1981-1991; and

c) Huge variations patterns of urbanization in various states and cities.

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The Registrar General of India has projected that the rate of growth of urban population in urban

cities will be 67% of total population growth in India in the next 25 years. Urban population is

expected to increase from 286 million in 2001 to 534 million in 2026 (38%) (Table 2).

Unequal infrastructural growth across all over the country has been divided the modern India

into mainly urban and rural. This growth creates a shortage or deprivation of the electric supply,

quality of education and health facilities, transportation, drinking water and other basic facilities.

During the past few decades with the collaboration of local and central governments, efforts have

been made to connect villages via roads. But only road linkages are not enough for the

population living in the villages. For ensuring the quality of services is more important than

facilitating local development. For example, the quality of schooling has deteriorated in the rural

schools despite government’s efforts to improve the education by recruiting teachers with higher

credentials. Meal distributions during the school timings have hardly been able to raise the

standard of learning as well as the number of learners. Few deprived or marginalized (either

below poverty-line, education-ignoring households or no option other than primary schools)

families are sending their children to the government run primary schools. Education is one of

the examples. For getting higher education people usually migrate to different cities and

countries. Similarly employment is another factor or enabler which plays a major role in

urbanization in India. Many people in India migrate to different cities and towns in search of job.

Mostly people used to migrate in urban cities of India to get the maximum opportunity of job and

placement. And again it increases the concentration of existing urban cities. Government policies

play a major role in migration of people, if the small town gets more opportunities of jobs and

education then new urban areas will be formed with much faster rate. Therefore it is very

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important to channelize the policies or give some direction to produce these policies by

prioritizing the enablers.

Objectives of this research is to identify and then prioritize these enablers by running ANOVA

test and/or crosstab test on the data received by survey.

2. Literature review

In the course of this research paper, attempt has been made to find out the various definitions of

urbanization and its enablers which pre-dominate the rate of growth of India. Study is also made

on the urbanization history and its trends and pattern followed in India. This gives us a clear

image on what is really accelerating the urban growth rate in the process.

According to United Nation, urbanization is a process of movement of people from rural areas to

urban areas in the form of migration. This process also includes the physical growth of urban

areas as a result of globalization (UN, 2012). Urbanization is a process of the changing use of

land and the existing use of land for urban purposes where urban purposes have to be defined

(WATSON, 1993). He also tried to explain it another way taking people at center and refers that

it is the activities of people (social, economic and cultural) that defines the characteristic of a

place into urban area. Urbanization is a desirable process. Urban India faces a number of challenges

but it also offers opportunities and most important opportunities of employing our new generation

(Vaidya, 2011). There are three stages in the process of urbanization mentioned. Stage one is the

initial stage characterized by rural traditional society with predominance in agriculture and

dispersed pattern of settlements. Stage two refers to an acceleration stage where basic

restructuring of the economy and investments in social overhead capitals including

transportation, communication (Datta, 2006). The urbanization is the process by which villages

turn into towns and towns develop into cities (Sinha, 1979). The common criterion used by most

of the countries is population but it again varies from country to country. It is as low as 200 per

sq. mile in Denmark and Sweden to 30000 per sq. mile in Japan.

The Census of India defined the urban places on the basis of the following criteria (Census of

India, 2001).

(i) All places with a municipality, corporation, and cantonment board, notified town area

committee etc.

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(ii) All places which satisfy the following criteria.

(a) Minimum population of 5000.

(b) At least 75 per cent male working population engaged in non-agricultural

pursuits; and

(c) A density of population of at least 400 persons per sq. km (1000 per sq. mile).

Based on these definitions several researches have been carried out on recent trends of

urbanization in India. Attributes of the settlement system need to be explicitly recognized in

allocating investments for development of infrastructure along with plans to provide an

economic base (Dhar and Sen, 2006). Provoke the urbanization for the development of country

and make relevant policies for the development (Kundu, 2011). Increasing trend of India’s

urbanization and growth rate of city population; an expansion of boundaries of existing urban

centers is required (Tripathi, 2013). Due to unequal development throughout the country,

migration trends and patterns are unequal. This is indicative of a distressing level, because

imbalanced migration is detrimental to a variety of services (Mishra et al, 2010). The analysis of

trends of population growth and migration in recent years reveals that the growth rate of urban

population in India is likely to slow down in future decades. Small & medium towns, particularly

those in less developed regions, would attract very little urban industrial investment & therefore,

would report low & unstable growth (Kundu, 2000). The main idea is that the contemporary city

in both developed and developing worlds needs to build a coherent picture of patterns and trends

of urbanization (Besussi et al, 2010). Redirection of investment is recommended to develop

strong economic base for small and medium city neglected so far. Redirection of migration flows

is required (Datta, 2006).

Based on the literature review; noticeable enablers of Urbanization in India are,

Health care facilities

New Employment

Education

Industrialization

Modernization

Family business

Government Jobs

Transfer of current jobs

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3. Research methodology

A survey was conducted to assess the perceptions of general population of urban area on why

they have chosen to migrate to that city or what they think that is an important reason for others

to migrate. For this a questionnaire was developed which contained questions about their basic

information and their reasons or take on migration in India. There was also a question to rank the

contemporary enablers of urbanization to understand if they are all equally important or not.

3.1. Population and Sampling Size

For the purpose of this research respondents were chosen randomly between the age group of 18-

50 years old; the most prominent group of people who will be the deciding factor in migration to

urban area. Also, since we are doing the research to facilitate making policies for future and

considering that the modernization of last decade has affected the patterns of urbanization we are

counting on the most influential timeframe that is of last decade. The collection of data was held

in India from middle of October 2014 until November 2014. Samples were randomly selected

and the technique used is Stratified Disproportionate Random Sampling. A total of one hundred

(120) questionnaires were distributed to people via mail / by hand. From that, total of 80 were

replied and out of which 65 have been used for further analysis, which belonged to our target

population.

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Literature Review

Survey(Survey Monkey , By Hand)

Survey Results Analysis in SPSS

Conclusion


3.2. Hypothesis

After finding out the enablers we will find out if all the enablers are equally important

or not, for which we will provide our,

Null hypothesis as H0 : All the enablers are equally important, and

Alternate Hypothesis as H1 : All the enablers are not equally important.

4. Data Analysis and Findings 4.1 Information about Respondents - Gender

80%

20%

Gender

MaleFemale

Based on the chart above, we can see that majority of the respondents (80%) are male and this is

followed by female respondents which contributes to 20%.

4.2 Information from Respondents – Age group

The chart shows that 96% respondents were from the age group of 18-50 years which is our

target population. Out of 80 people only 3% respondents are more than 50 years old and only 1

respond we get below 18 years old. In our analysis, only the people between 18-50 years of age

were considered.

1%

96%

3%

Age Group

Less than 18 Years18-50 years oldMore than 50 years

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4.3 Information from Respondents – Migrated or Originated

88%

13%

Migrated or Originated

Migrated to Current CityOriginally from the City

As shown in the chart above, there were 87% respondents who were migrated to the city / urban

area they are living and 13% people which were originally from that urban area. The respondents

which were originally from that urban area were not considered into our target population.

4.4 Migration (when)

50%

26%

4%

9%

11%

Migration

Less than 5 YearsBetween 5-10 YearsBetween 10-15 YearsMore than 15 yearsNot applicable

The respondents who had migrated to the city were asked one more question to know when they

have migrated to that city. 50% respondents replied they had moved in last 5 years. 26% people

responded they had moved in last 5-10 years of duration. Remaining respondents were not

considered for this survey as mentioned in the population and sampling techniques head.

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4.5 Main reason for the respondents’ migration.

35%

43%

12%

3%

2% 5%

Respondents' Reasons

Higher EducationEmploymentModernizationIndustrializationHealthcareOther

The respondents who had migrated to the city were also asked about their reasons to migrate to

the city, to understand if there are any more reasons / enablers of migration in recent time. There

were 5% responses stating they had different reasons to migrate to their current city beyond the

five reasons we had given options of.

4.6 Ranking of the significant enablers.

The next question was to rank the five reasons we had given from 1 to 5. The percentage of

responses for each Preference is shown below. For this data analysis only 65% of respondents

were considered who fell into our target population.

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39%

20%

25%

12%

5%

Employment

Preference 1Preference 2Preference 3Preference 4Preference 5


All the data set is analyzed using anova statistical tool and the we found that the most significant

reason for the migration is employment as respondent give maximum preference to the

employment. 38% respondent say that employment is the major cause of migration and

according to them the second most important reason for the mitigation is education with 71%

say that higher education is the second most important reason.

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20%

71%

3%

5% 2%

Higher Educatoin


25%

5%

29%

28%

14%

Modernisation


15%2%

22%

32%

29%

Industrialization


8%3%

25%

20%

45%

Health Care



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as seen from these ratings, we may say that Employment has received the most responses for

Preference-1; for Preference-2, Higher education is ahead with 38% responses. For Preference-3

& Preference-4 Industrialization has received 29% & 34% respectively. We may therefore

consider Industrialization is ranked 4th and Modernization is ranked 3rd. The Healthcare is ranked

as 5th as per this responses.

5. Conclusion

As shown in the ranking, not all the enablers are equally important. Since the responses of their

ranking are different marginally, we can say there are some significantly important enablers

which should be focused on while producing the governmental policies, From Anova analysis we

can say that the employment is the most significant enabler of migration to urban area, the

funding or new policies by government should be around this enabler the most.

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Data & Analytics

Prioritize the enablers of urbanization in india