Urban areas are integral to India's growth and development, accounting for around two-thirds of the country's GDP. Analysing India's rapidly expanding process of urbanisation, the book identifies the key challenges and opportunities and proposes suitable managerial and policy reforms. It addresses critical issues and puts forth suggestions for better planning financing alternatives and, most importantly, better governance for improved service delivery and affordable housing. Divided thematically into three sections, the volume takes into account the important facets of urbanisation, including the state of urban infrastructure and planning in India with due attention to sustainability, the role of finance in urban development and its dependence on governance, and methods to generate good governance in public institutions, and the impact on housing and climate change.The 11 essays included in this book have been written by leading analysts and practitioners, who propose critical reforms and policy interventions. The volume will be indispensable to students and scholars of urban economics, development studies, urban planning, business practitioners, policymakers as well as the informed general reader.

​This volume decentres the view of urbanisation in India from large agglomerations towards smaller urban settlements. It presents the outcomes of original research conducted over three years on subaltern processes of urbanization. The volume is organised in four sections. A first one deals with urbanisation dynamics and systems of cities with chapters on the new census towns, demographic and economic trajectories of cities and employment transformation. The interrelations of land transformation, social and cultural changes form the topic of the “land, society, belonging” section based on ethnographic work in various parts of India (Karnataka, Himachal Pradesh, Arunachal Pradesh and Tamil Nadu). A third section focuses on public policies, governance and urban services with a set of macro-analysis based papers and specific case studies. Understanding the nature of production and innovation in non-metropolitan contexts closes this volume. Finally, though focused on India, this research raises larger questions with regard to the study of urbanisation and development worldwide.

This IEA volume brings together a set of essays written by leading authors on themes relevant to the study of economic development. The book covers a range of topics many of which are relevant to policy issues. The contributors bring new insights from empirical research in a range of economies with chapters including discussions of the UN development agenda, fiscal policy in Latin America, poverty data in Africa and Jordan, and monetary policy in South Africa. Contemporary Issues in Development Economics is an essential read for researchers, scholars and policymakers interested in economic development in low- and middle-income countries.

Urban history is a rapidly expanding interdisciplinary field of research. The rate of urban growth in the twentieth century has also stimulated interest in the city as an object of socio-historical inquiry. Some historical studies on individual Indian cities like Bombay, Calcutta, Cawnpore, Delhi, Bangalore, Ahmedabad, Surat and Madras have primarily explored the growth of urban centres by tracing their histories under colonial rule. This study offers a macro picture of the urban process under British administration, giving an understanding of how colonial capitalism shaped and imposed urban patterns in India. It contextualizes the urbanization of India in the world capitalist system of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, explaining the multifaceted historical conditions in 1857, just before the imposition of direct Crown rule. Sahoo examines the socio-economic developments and demographic changes in India under British rule and analyzes the impact of the world capitalist economy, the pattern of urbanization under British rule, and the contribution of railways to urbanization. This volume is a profile of India’s primate cities, identifying the core, the periphery and the underdeveloped hinterlands.

Urbanisation is rapidly changing the geographic and social landscape of India, and indeed Asia as a whole. Issues of collective violence, urban poverty and discrimination become crucial factors in the redefinition of citizenship not only in legal terms, but also in a cultural and socio-economic dimension. While Indian cities are becoming the centres of a culture of exclusion against vulnerable social groups, a long-term perspective is essential to understand the patterns that shaped the space, politics, economy and culture of contemporary metropolises. This book takes a critical, longer-term view of India’s economic transition. The idea that urban growth goes hand in hand with the modernisation of the country does not account for the fact that increasingly higher portions of the urban population are comprised of lower-income groups, casual labourers and slum dwellers. Using the case study of Ahmedabad, this book investigates the history of city and of its people over the twentieth century. It analyses the contrasting relationship between urban authorities and the inhabitants of Ahmedabad and examines instances of antagonism and negotiation – amongst people, groups and between the people and the public authority – that have continuously shaped, transformed and redefined life in the city. This book offers an important tool for understanding the bigger context of the conflicts, the social and cultural issues that accompanied the broader process of urbanisation in contemporary India. It will be of interest to scholars of Urban History, studies of collective violence and South Asian Studies.