Relationship between Infrastructure and Population Agglomeration in Urban India: An Empirical Assessment

Abstract

Deficiency of urban infrastructure facilities is one of the main problems behind the lower rate of urbanization in India. It has also unfavorably affected the realization of the full potential of the urban sector’s contribution to national gross domestic product in India. From this perspective, by considering the population in Class I cities (cities with more than 100,000 people), this paper tries to investigate the relevant infrastructure factors that contribute to increase the size of urban populations of large cities in India. Secondly, it assesses the status of class I cities in India as per the availability of different infrastructure facilities and quality of public services. For the entire analysis, the paper uses data pertaining to Census periods 2001 and 2011. The results of the Borda ranking show that bigger cities (e.g., Greater Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata, Bangalore, and Thiruvananthapuram) have better provision of infrastructure facilities for their urban dwellers than the smaller Class I cities (as per the city population size). On the other hand, ordinary least square regression results show that at the city level, the total number of electricity connections, and the total number of schools, colleges, and universities have a strong positive impact on city population size. Overall estimated results of the regression analysis suggest that improvement of infrastructure facilities may not significantly increase population agglomeration (measured by size, density, and growth rate of city population) in the large cities, but it will substantially improve the potential contribution of the cities to national economic growth in India by improving the ease of living and by facilitating business activities.