Order and change in village and city

Village, town and city. Villages emerged when people moved from nomadic life (hunting, gathering, shifting agriculture) to settled agriculture, which created a surplus, accumulated wealth, social differences and occupational specialisation.

• In economic and administrative terms, rural and urban areas are told apart by population density and the share of agriculture in economic activity. Size alone is not always decisive: a large village and a small town may have similar populations. Villages are spread over larger areas, with lower density, and most income comes from agriculture.
• A town and a city are the same kind of settlement, differing mainly in size. An urban agglomeration is a city with its suburbs and satellite settlements; a metropolitan area includes more than one city or a continuous urban spread.
• Urbanisation, a growing share of people living in towns and cities, is happening worldwide: about 54 per cent of the world lived in urban areas in 2014 (UN), expected to reach 66 per cent by 2050. In India the urban share rose from a little under 11 per cent in 1901 to a little over 17 per cent in 1951, almost 28 per cent in 2001, and about 31 per cent in 2011.

Social order and change in villages. Villages are small, so relationships are personalised: people know most others by sight. Caste, religion and custom are stronger, so change usually arrives more slowly.

• Subordinate sections have much less scope to express themselves in villages than in cities, so an established power structure is hard to dislodge, and shifts in power come late.
• Villages were once less connected, but telephones, television, roads and rail have shrunk the cultural 'lag'; few villages are truly 'remote' now.
• Changes in agriculture have big effects. India's first land reforms after independence took rights from absentee landlords and gave them to groups managing the land, mostly intermediate castes. Numerous and now landowning, they gained economic and political power; M.N. Srinivas called them 'dominant castes'. Today they face challenges from castes further below them, causing upheavals in states such as Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Tamil Nadu.
• New machinery or cropping patterns change the demand for labour and the bargaining power of landlords and labourers. Price crashes, droughts or floods can cause havoc, as in the spate of farmer suicides. Large programmes for the rural poor, such as the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), 2005, can have an enormous impact.

Social order and change in cities. Cities are ancient, often located by trade, religion or warfare: trading towns such as Tezpur on the Brahmaputra and Kozhikode (Calicut) on the Arabian Sea; temple and pilgrimage towns such as Ajmer, Varanasi and Madurai. But urbanism as a way of life for most people is modern.

• The city offers anonymity and amenities that nurture the individual, yet real freedom is open mainly to a privileged minority; most city dwellers have limited freedoms. Crowding together can even intensify group identities (race, religion, ethnicity, caste, region, class).
• Most problems of urban order concern space: housing, mass transit, separating residential, public and industrial zones, and public health, sanitation, policing and safety, all amid divisions of class, caste, religion and ethnicity.
• Housing shortages lead to homelessness, 'street people', and slums: congested neighbourhoods without proper water, sanitation or electricity, where unsettled property rights let 'dadas' and strongmen take control. At the other end, gated communities wall off affluent neighbourhoods with their own security and services.
• Long commutes make transport central to quality of life; reliance on private cars brings congestion and pollution. Daily commuters can form sub-cultures: on Mumbai's suburban 'locals', groups sing bhajans, celebrate festivals, chop vegetables, and play cards together.
• Urban change is also about space: city centres declined in the late 20th century as the affluent moved to suburbs, and are now reviving in many Western cities. Gentrification converts a lower-class neighbourhood into a middle- and upper-class one as property prices rise. And Indian cities must cope with constant migration on top of natural growth.

Example (new): when a new metro line reaches an old working-class area, property prices may rise, small shops may give way to cafés, and long-time tenants may be pushed out by higher rents: a story of space, class and change in one neighbourhood.