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Sunday,
April 6, 2003 |
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Books |
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Urbanisation and
its problems
P. K. Vasudeva
Urban Poverty and Urbanization
by Reena Bhasin. Deep and Deep Publications, New Delhi.
Pages 435. Rs 900.
 U
RBANISATION
is considered to be the sine qua non of economic
development. It has been seen that the pace of urbanisation in
developing countries like India has been dramatic. In 1973-74,
the urban population was 60 million. It increased to 64.6
million in 1977-78, 70.9m in 1983-84, 75.2m in 1987-88, 76.3m in
1993-94, and in 1999-2000 it had risen to 77.2m. The growth rate
of urban population is due to the large-scale shifting of rural
population to urban areas. This steep rate of growth of urban
population along with the urban bias in developing countries has
brought in its wake problems like population explosion in
cities, slum formation and urban poverty. Now that urban poverty
is understood to be an urban phenomenon, it has become
imperative to understand its complex dynamics.
The author has addressed the main issues pertaining to
urbanisation, that is, measurement of urbanisation and its
trends, analysis of urbanisation, forecasting of future trends,
and determination of the major components of urban growth. She
also takes into consideration the consequences of urbanisation.
Urban poverty, which has a serious impact on economic growth
in India, cannot be dealt with unless it is measured both
quantitatively and qualitatively. The author has dealt with this
serious issue logically and diligently. The incidence of poverty
has been gauged not only by employing the traditional poverty
measurement techniques in an absolute manner but efforts have
also been made to estimate the relative contribution of
different geographical units, socio-economic groups and
occupational categories in the incidence of poverty.
The author has used appropriate quantitative techniques to
measure the social indicators of poverty. She has used tables
and figures to illustrate her work.
The book will be useful for researchers who are interested in
the economic issues, especially the population problem and the
poverty elimination at the grassroots level. |
