(a) Examine with suitable examples the recent trends in the growth of urban settlements in India. (10 marks) (b) Is there a…

(a) Recent Trends in Urban Settlements

• Scale: India was 31.1% urban in Census 2011 (37.7 crore people), and is estimated at about 35–36% today. Growth is steady rather than explosive, but is taking new forms.

Recent trends:

• Metropolitan concentration: 53 million-plus urban agglomerations held about 43% of the urban population in 2011; Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Bengaluru and Hyderabad keep expanding;
• Census towns and in-situ urbanisation: census towns rose from 1,362 (2001) to 3,894 (2011) and contributed nearly 30% of urban growth. These are large villages that became urban in character but are still governed as villages;
• Peri-urbanisation and sprawl: growth at the edges of metros (Gurugram, Noida, Bengaluru's outskirts, Pune's periphery), often unplanned and poorly serviced;
• "Subaltern urbanisation": small towns growing through their own economies, not only through metropolitan spillover (Denis, Mukhopadhyay and Zérah, 2012);
• Growth of Tier-2 and Tier-3 cities: Indore, Surat, Coimbatore, Jaipur and Lucknow, driven by services, trade and manufacturing;
• Corridors and new cities: industrial corridors (the Delhi–Mumbai Industrial Corridor), planned capitals (Naya Raipur, Amaravati) and gated townships built by private developers;
• Policy-led urbanisation: the Smart Cities Mission and AMRUT (2015), PMAY-Urban, and the Shyama Prasad Mukherji Rurban Mission (2016) for rural clusters;
• Exclusionary urbanisation: investment concentrates in large cities while the poor are pushed to peripheries (Amitabh Kundu);
• Climate vulnerability: building on floodplains and lakebeds has worsened urban flooding (Chennai 2015, Bengaluru 2022).
• Conclusion: urbanisation in India is increasingly dispersed, peri-urban and uneven, and its governance lags behind its spread.

(b) Labour Migration and the Informal Sector

Yes, there is a strong connection:

• Scale: Census 2011 counted about 45.6 crore migrants (by last residence), and the Economic Survey 2016–17 estimated about 90 lakh inter-state migrants a year; over 90% of India's workforce is informal (PLFS);
• Push and pull: agrarian distress, small landholdings and lack of rural jobs push people out; cities offer only informal jobs in construction, domestic work, street vending, brick kilns, factories on contract, transport and delivery;
• Harris–Todaro model: migrants move for expected urban wages and wait in the informal sector for formal jobs that rarely come;
• Circular and seasonal migration: workers move between village and city, keeping a foothold in agriculture (Deshingkar and Farrington), which suits employers seeking flexible labour;
• Jan Breman's "footloose labour" and "neo-bondage": contractors recruit and control migrant labour, often through advances;
• Exclusion from protection: migrants lack local documents, housing and social security, and are rarely unionised. The Covid-19 lockdown (2020) exposed this when lakhs walked home;
• Social networks: caste and kin networks channel migrants into specific informal niches (for example, Odia workers in Surat's textile units).

Qualifications:

• not all migrants are informal: skilled and educated migrants enter IT and professional jobs;
• many women migrate for marriage rather than work.

Policy responses:

• e-Shram registration (over 30 crore unorganised workers);
• One Nation One Ration Card;
• the Code on Social Security and the OSH Code (in force from 21 November 2025), which absorbed the Inter-State Migrant Workmen Act, 1979.
• Conclusion: migration and informality reinforce each other. Migrants are the main supply of informal labour, and informality keeps them insecure and circular.

(c) Slums, Industrialisation and Urbanisation

• Scale: Census 2011 counted about 6.5 crore people in slums, about 17% of urban households; in Greater Mumbai, about 42% of households lived in slums.

Slums as manifestations of industrialisation and urbanisation:

• Industrial labour demand: workers came to mill towns and found no housing. Examples are Mumbai's chawls and Dharavi, and Kanpur's ahatas;
• Rapid urbanisation without planning: the growth of population outpaced housing, land and infrastructure;
• Informal economy: low wages make formal housing unaffordable, so workers self-build near workplaces;
• Dharavi is also a productive hub of leather, pottery, garments and recycling, showing slums as part of the urban economy.

But not only industrialisation:

• "Over-urbanisation": many slums grow in cities with little industry, driven by rural distress and service-sector informality rather than factory jobs (Bert Hoselitz's idea of over-urbanisation);
• Land and housing market failure: high land prices, rent control, and zoning and planning rules that exclude the poor;
• State policy: evictions, uneven slum notification (notified, recognised and identified slums have different rights) and redevelopment schemes;
• Politics: slum dwellers negotiate services through votes and patronage, which Partha Chatterjee calls "political society" (2004);
• Mike Davis (Planet of Slums, 2006) sees slums as a global product of urbanisation without adequate industrial jobs.
• Policy: PMAY-Urban (2015; PMAY-U 2.0 in 2024) and in-situ slum redevelopment.
• Conclusion: slums are manifestations of a particular kind of urbanisation, in which population and informal work grow faster than formal jobs, housing and planning, rather than of industrialisation alone.

(d) Changing Nature of Political Elites

• Political elites: the minority who hold political power (Pareto, Mosca; C. Wright Mills). In India their social composition has changed greatly.

Changes over time:

• Nationalist phase (1950s–60s): upper-caste, urban, English-educated lawyers and professionals from the national movement, within the "Congress system" (Rajni Kothari);
• Rise of rural and intermediate castes (late 1960s–80s): landowning farmer castes (Jats, Yadavs, Kurmis, Marathas, Reddys) gained power after the Green Revolution; the Rudolphs called them "bullock capitalists";
• Mandal and Dalit assertion (1990s): OBC and Dalit leaders and parties rose, a "silent revolution" (Christophe Jaffrelot, 2003) and a "second democratic upsurge" (Yogendra Yadav);
• Regionalisation: state parties and regional leaders became central to coalition governments;
• Recent trends:
• a return of single-party majorities at the Centre since 2014, with leaders from diverse caste backgrounds;
• wealth: according to the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR), about 93% of MPs elected in 2024 were crorepatis;
• criminal cases: about 46% of these MPs had declared criminal cases;
• dynasties: Kanchan Chandra (Democratic Dynasties, 2016) shows a large share of MPs with family links in politics;
• new entrants: businesspeople, film stars and professionals; the decline of lawyers;
• media and digital skills as political resources;
• Gender: women were still only about 14% of the Lok Sabha elected in 2024, and the 106th Amendment's reservation is yet to take effect.
• Significance: the elite is more socially representative (democratisation), but also more shaped by money, muscle and family (plutocratisation). This raises concerns about the quality of representation.
• Conclusion: India's political elite has broadened socially while becoming more dependent on wealth, family networks and media.

(e) Assessment of the Recent Farmers' Movement

Context:

• three farm laws (September 2020) sought to allow trade outside regulated markets (APMCs), contract farming and easier stock limits;
• farmers, led by the Samyukt Kisan Morcha (a coalition of about 40 unions), camped on Delhi's borders from November 2020;
• the Supreme Court stayed the laws in January 2021;
• the government announced repeal in November 2021, and the protest ended in December 2021.

Assessment: strengths and significance:

• Scale and endurance: a year-long, largely peaceful mobilisation, one of the largest in independent India;
• Broad coalition: it cut across caste, religion and region in Punjab, Haryana and western Uttar Pradesh, with significant participation by women and support from traders, trade unions and the diaspora;
• Organisational resources: gurdwara and langar networks, khap panchayats, village-level rotations and social media sustained it;
• Outcome: a rare reversal of central legislation, which revived debate on consultation, federalism (agriculture is a state subject) and the role of MSP.

Assessment: limits and other views:

• Regional concentration: strongest where MSP procurement of wheat and paddy matters most; weaker in other states;
• Class composition: led largely by landowning farmers. Like the "new farmers' movements" of the 1980s (Sharad Joshi's "Bharat versus India", Mahendra Singh Tikait's BKU), which Tom Brass and others criticised as rich-peasant movements, it gave less attention to landless labourers and tenants;
• Supporters of the laws, including some economists, argued that the reforms would widen market choice and attract investment, and that the debate was polarised;
• the violence at the Red Fort on 26 January 2021 was an episode that dented the movement's image;
• the demand for a legal guarantee of MSP remains unresolved, and led to fresh protests in 2024.
• Conclusion: the movement showed the power of organised agrarian interests in Indian democracy, but the deeper crisis of small, unviable farms, rural debt and farm incomes remains unresolved.