GROWTH OF URBAN SETTLEMENT IN CONTEMPORARY INDIA

GROWTH OF URBAN SETTLEMENT IN CONTEMPORARY INDIA
The new process of urbanisation which began with the advent of the British received a momentum at the beginning of twentieth century. The process of this urbanization has some distinctive features.
India is passing through a phase of rapid urbanization in the contemporary phase. of the transition of society. The modern urban centres perform diversified functions in terms of economic, administrative and political and so on. Here, it is very difficult to classify the towns and cities in terms of a single activity. Generally, people classify urban areas on the basis of some prominent socio-economic and political features. For example, people mention that there are historical cities like Delhi, Calcutta, Banaras, Lucknow etc. and industrial cities like Ghaziabad, Modinagar, Kanpur, Jamshedpur, Bhilai etc. and religious cities like Mathura, Hardwar, Madurai and Allahabad etc.
Cities reputed for film making, like Bombay and Madras, have a special appeal for a villager or a small-town dweller. In sociology, we discuss the pattern of urbanization in terms of its demographic spatial and economic and socio cultural aspects. But before
we take up these aspects, let us also briefly explain how we define a town in the Indian context.
Any place which satisfied the following criteria of
at least 75% of the working occupations are non-agricultural,
a minimum of 5,000 persons,
a place should have certain industrial areas, large housing settlements, places of tourist importance and civic amenities.
a density of not less than 1,000 persons per square mile and