Urbanisation in India is accelerating, but the nature of that urbanisation is frequently mischaracterised in policy discussions. The standard narrative holds that millions are migrating from villages to large cities — that urbanisation means metropolitan growth. The data tells a more complicated story. Much of India's urban growth has occurred in smaller cities and towns — places with populations between 50,000 and 5 lakh — which are often administratively invisible, lacking the infrastructure investment or policy attention of large metros. These small urban centres absorb migrants from their surrounding rural areas, but they do so without the services that would make them sustainable over the long term: reliable water, sewage systems, public transport, quality schools and hospitals.
The consequences of this uneven urbanisation are significant. Workers who migrate to small cities often find themselves in conditions little better than what they left — informal employment, inadequate housing, lack of legal tenure over the land they occupy. The promise of the city — economic mobility, access to public services, anonymity and individual freedom — frequently remains out of reach. Meanwhile, large cities face infrastructure overload from a combination of internal population growth and continuing in-migration, even as their administrative boundaries rarely keep pace with their actual footprints.
A reorientation of urban policy to take small cities seriously — to invest in their water systems, transit, land tenure frameworks, and service delivery — may be more achievable and more equitable than continuing to focus predominantly on the largest metros.
