Challenges of Urbanization in South India: Diverse Patterns and Different Trajectories

Abstract

There are broadly two strands of argument regarding the urbanization process in India. One, the urbanisation process is centred around large urban agglomerations and is exclusionary in nature (Kundu:2003); two, the process is taking place primarily through the spread of small towns and census towns and is a dispersed pattern of urbanization (Guin and Das:2015). When viewed from these two points of view, the urbanisation pattern in south India substantiates both the viewpoints. In the sense that the two large states, Karnataka and (united) Andhra Pradesh have witnessed an extraordinary growth of urban agglomerations of Bangalore and Hyderabad with urban primacy and to an extent exclusionary urbanisation being the main feature, while the two other states of Tamil Nadu and Kerala have experienced more dispersed and possibly more inclusive urbanisation process over the inter-census period of 2001 to 2011. This paper elucidates these processes of urbanization in South India and the challenges inherent to them.