Industry and cities after 1947

After independence, the nationalist leaders wanted growth with equity. Their priorities:

• rapid industrialisation, especially heavy industry (steel, machinery, power);
• a large public sector owned by the state;
• cooperatives in farming and small industry.

New industrial towns grew around big public-sector plants: Bhilai, Bokaro, Rourkela and Durgapur (all steel towns). They drew workers from far away and created new, mixed communities.

Cities and villages: the sociologist M.S.A. Rao described three kinds of urban impact on villages:

• villages from which many people have migrated to far-off cities, even abroad, and send money home;
• villages near a new industrial town, whose land and people are drawn into it;
• villages swallowed up by the growth of a big city (a metropolis), becoming city neighbourhoods.

India's urban growth:

In 2011, for the first time, the absolute increase in population was larger in urban areas than in rural ones.

Sociologists see urbanism not just as living in a city, but as a way of life: anonymity, varied jobs, mixing of strangers, and looser control by family and caste.