Transformation from Village to City: A Study on Census Town

Abstract

This paper's goal is to make two recommendations for planners. The first concern is how to manage the expansion of metropolitan areas outside of major cities. Many of these urban places are known as Census Towns and are merely classified as urban but not regulated as such (CTs). It was highly illuminating to see how urbanisation affected social effects, consumption expenditures (food and non-food, education and health), and changing lifestyles. A recent analysis by the Centre for Policy Research estimates that 2,231 communities are likely to be named new census towns for the impending census (CPR). The second step is to discuss how the affected settlements are changing from "rural" to "urban" using data from the field. The essay makes the point that the structural transformation of the economy in such settlements is not always one-directional and that agriculture has a significant impact on this process by using the example of Kenny, a new CT in the state of Gujarat. The study also shows that when an area is populated with several large villages, towns like Kenny have little regional significance. The findings of a study of a few census towns in northern India are presented in this working paper on policy research. Census towns are localities that the Indian census defines as urban but which are nonetheless administered as rural localities