The inauguration of Andhra
Pradesh's new capital city is a valuable time to take stock of India's
urbanisation prospects
The inauguration of Andhra
Pradesh's new capital city is a valuable time to take stock of India's
urbanisation prospects.
A World
Bank study of urbanisation in South Asia released last month points out,
through Table 1, that South Asia is the least urbanised major world region.
However, the Bank's own estimate of urban agglomeration is considerably -
almost twice - as high as India's domestic estimate, a point made for all the
South Asian countries in Table 2. As Table 3 shows, South Asia is not
urbanising as fast as its low urban ratio would suggest, either, well behind
East Asia and on a par with sub-Saharan Africa. Nor is South Asia becoming
urban at the rate that seems appropriate for its stage of economic development,
as Table 4 suggests.
However,
South Asia's share of global gross domestic product (GDP) is well below its
share of the global urban population, as Table 5 makes clear. This suggests
that its cities are under-performing. The worry is that, as Table 6 shows,
manufacturing employment has simply failed to grow in the metropolitan core or
in suburban towns. In fact, the only real urban job growth has come in the real
estate sector.
As Table
7 shows, unorganised manufacturing, once a non-urban phenomenon, has
increasingly spread to the cities after liberalisation