28 March, 2024The role of cities in ensuring good jobs
In light of India's rapid urbanisation, Rana Hasan looks at various factors which set large cities apart from smaller cities and rural areas: more job opportunities, higher wages, large manufacturing ...
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Rana Hasan 
14 September, 2022
- Perspectives
Are cities holding India back from reaching its ambitious net zero targets?
While per capita emissions in global cities are significantly lower than the national average, large Indian cities like Delhi and Kolkata emit up to double the national average. Shah and Downes look a...
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Sam Downes Jagan Shah
- 10 August, 2022
- Perspectives
Mobility and congestion in urban India
Urban transportation in developing countries is prioritised for massive investments, yet little is known about the determinants of urban mobility in these countries. This article applies a methodology...
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Prottoy A. Akbar Victor Couture Gilles Duranton Adam Storeygard
- 24 July, 2019
- Articles
Does it matter how we assess living standards in slums?
According to the 2011 Census, 17.4% of all urban households in India reside in slums. Analysing data from a household survey of slums in Delhi, Kolkata, and Mumbai, this column assesses living standa...
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Sugata Bag
- 21 August, 2017
- Articles
India's slum leaders - I
India’s demographic shift to cities has been accompanied by a number of pressing governance and developmental challenges, among the most serious of which is the rampant spread of slum settlements. W...
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Adam Auerbach Tariq Thachil
- 20 July, 2017
- Articles
Financing Indian cities
Indian cities are fund-starved and unprepared to handle the stresses of rapid urbanisation in the country. Urban local bodies and municipal corporations, particularly in tier-2 and tier-3 cities, do ...
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Nandan Sharalaya
- 12 July, 2017
- Perspectives
The puzzle of Indian urbanisation
The global experience has been that as countries develop, rural-to-urban migration accelerates, and decelerates only when the urbanisation level is very high – usually well over 50%. In contrast, m...
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Pronab Sen
- 12 April, 2017
- Perspectives
Household responses to information, communication of actions of community, incentives on solid waste management actions: A case study of Delhi househo
Delhi generates huge amounts of municipal solid waste per day. Given rising incomes, the already burgeoning mountains of waste will only grow further.
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Shivani Wadehra
- 31 March, 2017
- IGC Research on India
Constructing housing for the poor without destroying their communities
The Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana aims to achieve housing for all by 2022. However, vacancy of 23% was reported last year in urban housing built under the programme. In this article, Rohini Pande, conte...
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Rohini Pande
- 24 March, 2017
- Notes from the Field
The North-South urban paradox
Why is northern India experiencing faster urban growth but slower urbanisation relative to the South? This column addresses this question by highlighting the interconnection between the demographic t...
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Chinmay Tumbe
- 22 March, 2017
- Articles
Estimating economic value to the State from land title regularisation: Evidence from India
Nearly one in every six urban Indian residents lives in a slum that is created on encroached land. More than half of this land belongs to the government which often, for a variety of political, social...
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Venkatesh Panchapagesan Madalasa Venkataraman
- 31 December, 2016
- IGC Research on India
Moving towards better definitions of 'urban' in India
According to the 2011 Census, 31% of the country is ‘urban’. Using definitions of urbanisation that are different from those used by the government, this column demonstrates that this figure may ...
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Komal Hiranandani Mudit Kapoor Vaidehi Tandel
- 15 September, 2016
- Articles
The missing men
Studies on skewed sex ratios in India typically focus on female deficits attributed to factors such as gender discrimination. This column finds that regions covering over 200 million people in India ...
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Chinmay Tumbe
- 01 September, 2016
- Articles
Driving restrictions in Delhi: Real benefits and warning signs
The driving restrictions policy that Delhi experimented with in January was implemented for a second time in April for a fortnight. This column finds that the policy lowered traffic congestion; the i...
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Gabriel Kreindler
- 15 June, 2016
- Articles
The Growth of Cities in India, 1870-2020
The aim of this project is to understand the determinants of city growth in India in the short run and over the long period. By analysing data on cities from every decennial Census conducted in India ...
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Chinmay Tumbe
- 20 February, 2016
- IGC Research on India
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Tweets by Ideas4IndiaMost Popular Urbanisation Posts
Residential segregation in urban India and persistence of caste
B.R. Ambedkar had exhorted lower-caste people to move towards cities to defy localism and benefit from the virtues of cosmopolitanism that urbanisation might provide. Using 2011 enumeration block-leve...
- Naveen Bharathi Deepak Malghan Sumit Mishra Andaleeb Rahman
- 01 July, 2020
- Articles
Challenges of solid waste management: The case of Patna city
Rapid urbanisation with insufficient planning has led to problems of solid waste management in several Indian cities. In this note, Uma Sarmistha discusses preliminary findings from a field study in t...
- Uma Sarmistha
- 25 January, 2021
- Notes from the Field
Seasonal migration and health in India: Constraints for research and practice
Seasonal migrants in India engage in temporary informal work in work environments that actively flout labour laws on wages, work hours, and living conditions. The most significant impact of this is on...
- Divya Ravindranath Divya Varma
- 25 March, 2019
- Notes from the Field