India is passing through a phase of rapid urbanisation in the contemporary phase of the transition of society. The modern urban centres perform diversified functions in terms of economic, administrative, political, and cultural and so on. Here, it is very difficult to classify the towns and cities in terms of a single activity.
Generally, people classify urban areas on the basis of some prominent socio-economic and political features. For example, people mention that there are historical cities like Delhi, Kolkata, Varanasi, Lucknow, etc. Industrial cities like Ghaziabad, Modinagar, Kanpur, Jamshedpur, Bhilai, etc., religious cities like Mathura, Hardwar, Madurai, Allahabad, etc., cities reputed for film making, like Bombay and Madras, have a special appeal for a villager or a small-town dweller. Sociology discusses the pattern of urbanisation in terms of its demographic, spatial, economic and socio-cultural aspects. While describing the urban places, the Indian census records consistently employ population size to classify the urban area into six classes.
Class I with 1, 00,000 and more population
Class II with 50,000 to 99,999 populations
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Class III with 20,000 to 49,999 populations
Class IV with 10,000 to 19,999 populations
Class V with 5,000 to 9,999 populations
Class VI with 5,000 of Population
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City and Towns
A city is defined as a place having a population of 100,000 or more. The following three conditions are being identified for a town (1) the population is more than 5,000; (2) the density is not less than 400 per square km, and (3) not less than 75 per cent of the adult male population is engaged in non- agricultural activities.
Since 1901, the ratio of rural population to urban has not changed drastically, but there is trend toward its slow decline. Today Indian cities are overcrowded. They contain many more people than the number for whom they can comfortably provide civic amenities. Cities which function as the state capitals have become over-burdened. The cities of Delhi, Bangalore and Jaipur have shown rapid increase in their population over past two decades. All towns and cities do not have a uniform pattern of population growth and development.
In 1981, there were 216 cities of one lakhs population or more (class I cities), containing 94 million people. Of these, 27 per cent lived in 12 big cities (with one million or more people). Of these 12 cities even grew by less than 48 per cent growth, two were between 55 and 65 per cent and only one, Bangalore, grew very fast.
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Eight cities grew more slowly than the urban population as a whole and nine at less than the rate of increase for all class I cities. Delhi and Bangalore exhibited rapid growth of the three cities which crossed the one million mark, Jaipur grew slightly faster than Class I cities, Nagpur slightly slower, and Lucknow at below the rate of natural increase for India.
Urban centres are classified into six categories on the basis of size. These are (1) 1, 00,000 and above, (2) 50,000-1, 00,000, (3) 20,000-50,000, (4) 10,000-20,000, (5) 5,000-10,000, and (6) less than 5,000. Besides these there are metropolitan cities like Delhi, Kolkata, Mumbai, Chennai, Ahmedabad, Hyderabad, Bangalore and Kanpur. The number of class V and VI towns has shown a marked decline after independence.