Rural-urban change and population policy

Rural and urban: in 2011, 68.8 per cent of Indians lived in villages and 31.2 per cent in towns and cities. The urban share has grown from about 11 per cent in 1901.

Village life is changing too:

• Agriculture now gives only about one-sixth of India's GDP, though it still employs many people.
• More rural people take non-farm work: construction, transport, small business.
• Mass media carry urban tastes and lifestyles into villages.

Why people migrate to cities:

• Push factors: the loss of common property resources (village ponds, forests, grazing land) that the poor depended on, and lack of work in villages.
• Pull factors: work and higher wages in cities, and the city's anonymity.

Anonymity matters: in a village, everyone knows your caste, so low-caste people face daily humiliation. The city gives some protection from this. It also lets poorer members of dominant castes take low-status jobs that they would be ashamed to do at home.

Population policy: India was one of the first countries to announce a population policy, in 1952. The family planning programme tried to slow population growth through birth control.

During the Emergency (1975–77), it turned coercive: people were forced into mass sterilisation, especially poor men. The anger this caused was a big setback to family planning.

Afterwards it was renamed the National Family Welfare Programme, stressing choice and welfare. The National Population Policy 2000 and the National Health Policy 2017 focus on health, education and voluntary choices. The lesson: population policy works through development and consent, not force.