The Contending Definitions Of Urban In India And Need For A New Approach For Planning Census Towns

Abstract

With the proliferation of 2,532 census towns in the last decade has led to the arguments that there is a paradigm shift away from metro-centricity towards small urban centres in India’s urbanisation. Considering this as the bridgehead, the research, first, tries to appraise the definitions of ‘urban’ used in India- administrative and census, which may be deemed as contending due to the evident unequal participation of each in the policy discourse. Along with this, alternate methods and approaches of defining urban are explored. Second, an attempt at understanding the concept of census towns in made by investigating the reasons for such classification and what difference governance structure makes in the development of an area. A study of the socio-economic and geographical characteristics of the census towns is carried out in comparison with their statutory counterparts to explore differences, gaps and discrepancies between the two. It is determined that by the virtue of the definitional dichotomy, census towns are stuck in the middle, being neither urban nor rural makes them difficult to plan for. The fundamental contestation that remains is on the possible ways of planning and steering the growth of these towns in a way that they do not get absorbed into the more powerful larger centre and emerge as either the peri-urban, the periphery or dormitories for the larger urban centres. In this context, case studies of five census towns from the state of Karnataka is undertaken to study the current planning practices in the state and how and where do these census towns fit in the larger planning framework. Concluding the research, a few alternate definitions of urban are recommended along with ways of integrating census towns in the urban settlement hierarchy.