Cities and Towns in India: Judging the Quality of Urbanisation

In this paper we examine the quality of urbanisation in terms of deprivation index developed at a highly disaggregated level of urban centres (city/town) on the basis of dwelling conditions and basic amenities. Further, the demographic and economic characteristics in relation to the deprivation index and city size are examined. Very large cities are endowed with better living conditions and infrastructural facilities, displaying lower magnitude of the index though this relationship is not very strong, suggesting the importance of other variables in driving the city size and impacting on the index value. The group of “smart cities” selected by the present government for further investment and making cities the key centres of growth comprises a number of million plus and other large cities, which have already benefitted from the past investment. However, a number of counter-intuitive results follow from the exercises carried out for the ‘smart cities’ - for example, the phenomenon of inclusive growth seems missing. The paper argues that at least all class 1 cities (each with 100,000 and above) should have been considered for developing ‘smart cities’.