Economic growth and urbanization in India an analysis of pre and post reform period

Abstract

Urbanization is commonly referred to as the gradual increase in the proportion of people living in the urban areas and the ways in which each society adapts to the change. The process of change that takes place when a country moves towards the path of development, it undergoes basic structural transformation. Urbanization in India involves several dimensions of analysis. Given the broad spectrum of urban dynamics, the present study is an attempt to analyse the degree, pace, tempo and decadal growth rate of urban population in India in the pre and post reform period. Second, to study the relationship between urbanization and structural transformation of Indian states. Third, to examine the inter-linkage between economic growth and urbanization in India and analyse the direction of the causal relationship between these two variables and lastly, to identify the problems and challenges of urbanization in India. The time period of the study extends from 1981 to 2011. The empirical analysis of the study is based on 24 states of India done using regression and other tests on STATA. The results of the study show that the trend of India varies significantly between the states. The non-agricultural states are more urbanized than the agricultural states. There is a short-run positive relationship between economic growth and urbanization across the states and there isn t a consistent pattern in the direction of the causality between economic growth and urbanization across the states in the both the pre and post reform period. newline