Beyond Metropolitan Shadow: Governing Small Towns in India

Gopa Samanta (1)

1 The University of Burdwan

The 2011 census has observed a tremendous rearrangement of the traditional pattern of metro based urbanization in India. Unlike earlier decades, this new urban growth is occurring in areas outside metropolitan shadow. The existing small cities are growing at much faster rate than that of metropolises and big cities. The new urbanization is also taking place in the form of huge growth of census towns (towns without statutory status) in India, most of which are again emerging in areas far away from existing urban agglomeration of more than one hundred thousand population. Globalization led private capital is looking for places which are beyond the existing statutory urban areas to bypass the stringent policies on monitoring the growth, and development of industries, real estates and service sector activities. However, the infrastructural development and the provision of basic services under the government grant are still biased towards big cities especially in JNNURM, the nodal programme for urban India. The nature of municipal funding is skewed neglecting the development of small cities. The census towns are growing without access to urban status and proper urban governance mechanism. The consequent development is ungoverned urban areas with complete absence of basic services and amenities. However, even without much support from the governments, these small cities and census towns are in most cases growing by the indigenous capital generated from farm sectors of surrounding rural areas and being invested in commerce and business activities. Sometimes the capital is also being invested in these small towns from the outside areas especially in industries and real estates. The article draws upon secondary data covering three states (West Bengal, Bihar and Jharkhand) of eastern India analyzes how and to what extent this new urbanization is challenging the urban core i.e. the metropolis and its shadow. With the help of ethnographic method and intensive empirical research carried out in small towns of West Bengal province, the article also explores how urban policies, complex governance structures and the politics of access to urban status are playing major roles in transforming the new urban territories in India.

Mots clés: Small town; statutory status; denied urbanization; governance; basic services

Domaines: Géographie

Gopa Samanta. Beyond Metropolitan Shadow: Governing Small Towns in India. 2014, pp. 283-299. ⟨halshs-00959944⟩