Wake up government most of India lives in her cities
Proxy data proves an open secret: urban population is severely undercounted. This leads to policy distortions, and needs correction
India’s future is decidedly urban. Legacy overhang however is, perhaps subconsciously, contrarian and pulls us in the direction of demonstrably untrue statements such as, ‘India is a rural agrarian country and India lives in villages.’ This provides an opportune moment for us to redefine to measure the ‘urban’ in India and put together authentic relevant data to address important ramifications that we will flag in what follows.
Undercounting urban folk | The official figures available to us via Census 2011 and hence somewhat dated, put India at around 32% urban. That the official number is a gross underestimate. Scholarly papers using innovative proxies such as night light intensities, amongst other things, have been written on this subject, which have established the fact of severe underestimation. At least two World Bank reports of a decade back, have pegged the estimation of urban India then at already above 60%.
Disclaimer
Views expressed above are the author’s own.
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