Abstract:As a part of the development process, India is currently going through a transformation from agriculture based economy to industry and service lead urbanized economy. However, no formal quantitative research has been done on this phenomenon. In this perspective, based on Matsuyama's (1992) theoretical framework and using panel data model, the impact of agricultural activities on urbanization in India is analyzed in this paper. For the analysis 15 major agricultural states of India are considered for the period of 1981 to 2015 by sourcing data from mainly Census of India and Ministry of agriculture, government of India. The empirical estimations reveal that the higher share of agriculture in GDP, amount of cultivated land area, and rural male employment in agriculture have had a negative effect on urbanization in India. On the other hand, higher consumption of fertilizer, state government expenditure on agriculture, production of major crops (wheat, maize, jowar, and bajra), rural female employment in agriculture, and rural literacy rate have had a positive impact on urbanization. The results also show that the effect of agriculture productivity is positive on urbanization for a less trade open economy like India. Finally, it is suggested that there is need of higher agricultural development in order to achieve a higher level of urbanization in India. For this purpose use of technology in agriculture sector along with higher level rural education is required. Finally, we need to have balanced rural and urban policy for a smooth rural-urban transformation in India.

The present paper, using data from the latest 2011 Census, and ordinary least squares (OLS) regression models, investigates the determinants of urbanisation in different classes of cities and towns in major states of India. Urbanisation is measured by size, growth and density of population in a city or a town. Environmental effect, spatial interaction effect and basic infrastructural facilities are used as independent variables in the study. The results show that urbanisation varies across different classes of cities and towns in India. Overall, our estimates show that favourable weather conditions encourage a city or town's population growth and its density, but not the size of the city or town's population. Political powers play a more important role than a city or town's economic potential for enabling urbanisation. But the current level of infrastructure is found to have a lower effect on urbanisation. The results obtained in this study differ from earlier studies with respect to different classes of cities and towns and also with regard to metrics used for estimating urbanisation. Finally, we suggest that for promoting urbanisation, appropriate urban policies that are suitable for different classes of cities and towns have to be evolved. Otherwise, India will face the problem of unbalanced urbanisation, thereby preventing the unlocking of the full potential contribution of urbanisation to economic growth in the country.