Planning for decentralized urbanization: case of Telangana

Abstract

Urbanization in South Asia is believed to be messy and hidden (Roberts 2016). India shows a pattern of lagged urbanization where the levels of industrialization and economic development exceed the levels of urbanization (Qian Zhang 2017). The large cities are becoming exclusionary due to the congestion pressures such as such as high infrastructural cost, energy consumption, regional disparity, threat to sustainable development. There is a need for dispersed urbanization if the large cities have become exclusive in nature. Thus, urbanization should be looked at as a solution rather than a problem (R. B. Bhagat 2018). Although India does not have a primacy-led urbanization at the country-level, it shows strong primacy at the regional level for few States leading to skewed urbanization in the States. Reduction of pressure on the primate city is badly called for due to the inherent inefficiency there in Telangana, the youngest state in India, was formed in the year 2014, after the bifurcation from the erstwhile Andhra Pradesh. Telangana currently has 10 districts namely Hyderabad, Rangareddy, Medak, Warangal, Nalgonda, Karimnagar, Nizamabad, Adilabad, Khammam and Mahbubnagar. Population residing in urban areas in Telangana, according to 1991 census, was 30.2%. This count increased to 31.8% according to 2001 census, and 38.67% as per 2011 census with uneven dispersed nature (Development 2017). Hyderabad constitutes more than 50% of the state’s urban population. Hyderabad is the sole million plus city in Telangana and the next biggest city, Warangal is 8 times smaller than Hyderabad in terms of population. Thus, capital cities are important, but not at the expense of stagnated growth in other towns. The percentage of the urban population is higher in Telangana solely because Hyderabad has a large population share of the urban population. Thus, Telangana needs an urbanization strategy that will direct the urbanization in a structured manner thereby reducing the regional disparities and reducing the primacy of Hyderabad. This research is an attempt to understand the trends and patterns of urbanization in the state of Telangana by studying the results from inter-censal periods for the state as well as the districts. This research includes analysis by taking into consideration the level of urbanization, rate of urbanization, density variation and the growth of towns across the districts for the three decades, 1991, 2001, 2011. The major determinant of urbanization is the economic development. The relationship between the urbanization and economic development has been established in the research by comparing the district domestic product (DDP) across the districts. The third phase of the research starts by taking Warangal district as the study area for the micro-level analysis and studying the urbanization pattern of the district and understanding the emergence of the towns for the previous decades. The centrality index will help in determining the potential of existing towns to become the linkage for rural and urban areas. It has been observed through the analysis, that rapid urbanization has occurred in the districts Rangareddy and Medak which are located around the primate city, Hyderabad. The growth of population in different classes of towns shows a topheavy urban structure in the state but the small and medium towns show a substantial increase in their number, the maximum seen in Warangal for the decade 2001-2011. The micro-level analysis of the towns in Warangal district include finding out the economic and social geographies of the towns. Study of small and medium towns in the district is essential to break the syndrome of contemporary urbanization which is metropolis and large cities. Thus, the settlement pattern of Warangal district might emerge with a more dispersed or concentrated pattern of urbanization for the upcoming census 2021. The recommendations from the analysis includes identifying the areas for policy action for Warangal district and recommend to employ a scheme that will benefit the small and medium towns for the district as well as the state including infrastructural improvement, employment opportunities as the growth is majorly taking place in the emerging small and medium towns. It is the need of the hour to identify areas for policy action. One reason why urbanization is not measured properly is because of the inability of the definition to capture the real scenario. Rethinking about the relaxation of criteria for urban for the upcoming census 2021 is one of the aspects that needs further research.