April 4, 2004

This book comprises papers that discuss various aspects of urbanization in India. Organized in four parts, the papers in the first section dwell at length on the various perspectives through which urbanization can be understood. The second section throws light on how class and caste behaviour can be modified in an urban setting. The third section shows how the rural joint family and the neighbourhood community can adapt to urbanization and industrialization. And, the last section deals with slum-dwellers and the cultural assimilation of rural-urban migrants.

Even if the last three sections may interest only the dedicated students of urbanization, it is the first section that helps build an appreciation of this phenomenon that may be of interest to a wider segment of readers.

While urbanization is 5000 years old, it became a major force only in the last 200 years when, coupled with industrialization, it led to large-scale population redistribution. The five decades of the 20th century after the second world war marked a major turning point in rapid urbanization all across the world.

The urbanization issues that arose in the third world countries were a consequence of “maldevelopment”. Theoretically, the process of urbanization should result in integrated rural-urban development which is not how it played out in the third world due to a host of reasons. This book, however, touches upon the symptoms more than the underlying causes of what it describes as uneven and lopsided urbanization with highly contrasting socio-economic and socio-cultural composition of the people in rural and urban areas of India.

As for the causes, these are explored more in the sociological realm that could have socio-economic underpinnings which are not explored adequately and exhaustively enough. So, while the rural elite are found to be more powerful politically, the urban elite are more so economically. Since caste-specific selective migration takes place from rural to urban areas, the socio-cultural background of the urban population may change over time.

However, the higher castes and religious minorities are found overrepresented in the urban areas of India with the backward castes underrepresented. This results in polarization between the rural-urban segments of the population. However, within urban areas, people of the same economic and educational status tend to have better neighbourly relations as they tend to rise above community considerations.

The cross-class social distance is, however, difficult to bridge even through voluntary associations. Their memberships largely remain confined to one social class, some exceptions notwithstanding.

We, therefore, see that while polarity between rural and urban areas is accentuated with urbanization, class distinction emerges in urban areas even if the community distinction gets blurry due to the convergence of economic interest. Within this general trend, however, there are discernible situations in which some neighbourhoods, despite industrialization, could retain their form and caste composition while others broke down into newer trends.

Caste does not explain this difference since both are of the same caste. Other possible explanations could be found in the size of the community and its location but these propositions have yet to be tested. However, the community that changed lacked financial resources as compared to the one that retained its original composition as it was also more tradition bound.

According to another finding, the lower the caste the higher would the degree of status crystallization be and vice versa. How then would the lack of financial resources explain the adoption of newer trends by some neighbourhoods as above? Since, the work is a collection of papers by many, some of the loose ends still need to be tied up.

The problem of over-urbanization in the third world countries in general and in India in particular has been attributed to the capitalist mode of production which has been portrayed as avaricious. It feeds into all the socio-economic problems, which are viewed as a negative fallout of urbanization. Since the capitalistic mode has been presented as inherently flawed, it is held responsible for all the social problems.

This is a simplistic view as it is the same system that delivers for the benefit of the many in the developed West who continue to try to improve upon it by continuously striving to rein in its pathological tendencies. While the most harmful tendencies of unbridled rampant capitalism have been controlled through the visible hand of the government in the West, it is this visible hand that appears to be lacking in India due to which pathologies, as mentioned in the third chapter, probably abound therein.

So, apportioning all the blame to the capitalist mode, which no doubt requires oversight and regulation, is to absolve all other actors in the public and private realms of their responsibilities towards the people. So, while “property relations” and “property premises of the social order” remain at the centre of socio-economic issues, the author falls short of also including the rural areas where too these relationships require a redefinition for integrated rural-urban development that urbanization is all about.

This work tends to take the symptomatic urban-administration approach towards the issues arising out of urbanization. In Asia this process has not replicated the one of rural-urban transformation in Europe. Rather, we have what the book calls “rurban” cities some of which are pre-industrial with some others being a mere agglomeration of villages. The city mentality characterized by “sophistication, objectivity, utilitarianism, and rationalism” is also absent partially or fully.

While, in one chapter, the city issues are traced to national poverty, the work falls short of tracing the causes of poverty without whose resolution the urbanization issues are only likely to compound. It would have been good to have coupled this work with researches in development economics to give a fuller treatment to this important subject which has been presented herein from sociological perspectives only.

Urbanization in India: Sociological Contributions
Edited Ranvinder Singh Sandhu
Sage Publications, B-42, Panchsheel Enclave, Post Box 4109, New Delhi-110017, India
Tel: 91-11-2649 1290-7
Email: marketing@indiasage.com
Website: www.indiasage.com
ISBN 0-7619-9801-2
258pp. Indian Rs330

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