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Migration, settlements and urbanisation

Human geography of India · Part 3 / 4 · Fact-checked on 8 November 2026 · how we check

Written with AI from the sources listed at the bottom of this page, then fact-checked by a separate AI.

How the Census records migration and its four streams; push and pull factors, the main sending and receiving states and international migration; the effects of migration; rural settlement types and functional classes of towns; statutory towns, census towns and urban agglomerations; urbanisation from 1901 to 2011 and the largest cities; slums and the urban missions launched in 2015.

Parts 1 and 2 treated the population as if it stayed in place. In reality people move all the time, for marriage, work, study or safety, and their movement redraws the map of where Indians live. This part follows that movement and where it ends. It begins with migration: how the Census records it, its main streams, why people move and what it does to the places they leave and the places they reach. Finally it covers urban India: how the Census decides what is a town, how fast the urban share has grown, which states and cities lead, and the national missions for cities launched since 2015.

The Census asks two questions to identify migrants. The first is the place of birth: anyone counted somewhere other than the village or town where he or she was born is a migrant by place of birth. The second, used since 1971, is the place of last residence: anyone whose previous usual home was elsewhere is a migrant by last residence, even if he or she was born in the present place and moved away and back. The second measure picks up recent and return moves and is the one most often quoted. By last residence Census 2011 counted about 45 crore migrants, well over a third of the population. Most of this movement is internal, within India, and most of that is within the same state. International migration, out of India or into it, is far smaller in number but matters greatly for money and ideas.

Internal migration is usually sorted into four streams by origin and destination: rural to rural, rural to urban, urban to urban and urban to rural. The largest by far is rural to rural, and it is dominated by women, because in most of India a bride moves to her husband's village after marriage, usually within the same district or state. Among men, rural to urban is the most important stream, as workers leave farming villages for factories, building sites and services in towns. Urban to urban moves are common among the educated, who shift between cities for jobs and promotions. Urban to rural, the smallest stream, includes retirement and return.

Why do people move? Geographers group the reasons into push factors at the origin and pull factors at the destination. Push factors include poverty, too little land for a growing family, low farm wages, drought or floods, and lack of schools and hospitals. Pull factors include regular jobs and higher wages, better services and the variety of city life. The reasons differ sharply by sex. For women the main recorded reason is marriage; for men it is work or employment, followed by moving with the household and education. The pattern between states follows the economic gradient. Uttar Pradesh and Bihar send out the largest numbers, while Maharashtra, Delhi, Gujarat and Haryana receive the most.

International migration links India to the wider world. Large numbers of Indian workers, many from Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, have gone to the Gulf countries for construction, trade and service jobs, usually on fixed contracts, while doctors, engineers, scientists and students have gone to the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia. Over generations this has produced one of the largest diasporas in the world: the Ministry of External Affairs counts more than three crore people of Indian origin and Indian citizens living abroad. The money they send home, called remittances, has made India the world's largest recipient of remittances for many years, according to the World Bank. India also receives migrants, mainly from neighbouring countries such as Nepal, whose citizens may live and work in India under the 1950 treaty, and Bangladesh.

Migration changes both ends of the journey. The economic effects are the most visible: remittances pay for houses, education and debts in sending regions, as Kerala's Gulf money shows, and migrant labour keeps the factories, building sites and farms of the receiving regions running; the Green Revolution districts of Punjab and Haryana, for example, have long depended on farm workers from Bihar and eastern Uttar Pradesh. Demographic effects follow because migrants are mostly young men: receiving areas end up with more men than women and a larger working-age share, while sending villages are left with women, children and the old. Socially, migrants carry new ideas, skills and habits home, but they also face isolation, poor housing and weak legal protection in the city. Environmental effects appear when cities grow faster than their water, sewerage and housing, leading to overcrowding and the spread of slums.

Where people finally settle, the form of the settlement reflects land, water, security and society. Geographers sort India's villages into four broad kinds. In a clustered (compact) village the houses crowd into a single block, and the fields stretch away all around it. This is what one mostly sees across fertile alluvial country such as the Ganga plain; it also turns up where families huddled together for safety or around a rare well or tank, as in parts of Rajasthan and Bundelkhand. Semi-clustered villages have a compact core with a fringe of houses around it, often where a community is separated from the main village. Hamleted villages break up into a few separate clusters that still share one village name; the local word for such a cluster changes from place to place (para, palli, panna, dhani or nagla). Such villages are common in the middle and lower Ganga plain and in parts of Chhattisgarh. Dispersed settlements, single houses or tiny groups scattered over hills and forests, are found in Meghalaya, the hills of Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh, and parts of Kerala.

Towns are better classified by what they do than by their shape. Most large cities do many things at once, but many towns are known for one dominant function. Administrative towns are seats of government, such as New Delhi, Chandigarh and the state capitals. Industrial towns grew around factories, such as Jamshedpur around its steel plant and Bhilai around another. Transport towns are ports, rail junctions or road hubs, such as Kandla, now Deendayal Port, on the Gujarat coast. Mining towns, such as Jharia and Digboi, grew over coal and oil. Garrison or cantonment towns, such as Ambala and Mhow, began as military stations. Religious and cultural towns, such as Varanasi, Puri, Ajmer and Madurai, grew around shrines; educational towns, such as Pilani and Roorkee, around institutions; and hill stations, such as Shimla and Udhagamandalam (Ooty), as summer retreats that became tourist towns.

Whether a place counts as urban is settled by the Census of India, which accepts two different routes. The first way is legal: a place becomes a statutory town simply by having been given an urban local body, be it a municipal corporation, a municipality, a cantonment board or a notified town area committee. The second way rests on numbers. Even without any municipal body, the Census labels a place a census town when three tests are all passed together: 5,000 or more residents; three-quarters or more of its working men (main workers) earning their living outside farming; and 400 or more people living on each square kilometre. In 2011 there were about 4,000 statutory towns and nearly 3,900 census towns, the latter almost three times as many as in 2001, which shows how many large villages had quietly turned urban without being governed as towns. Where a town and its outgrowths, or several adjoining towns, form one continuous built-up area, the Census treats them together as an urban agglomeration. Towns of 1,00,000 or more are Class I; in 2011 there were 53 urban agglomerations or cities of a million or more.

India's urbanisation has been steady rather than explosive. The urban share was about 11 per cent in 1901 and about 17 per cent in 1951, and it reached about 31.2 per cent, or roughly 37.7 crore people, in 2011. The 2001–11 decade marked a first since independence: in absolute numbers, towns and cities added more people than the countryside did. Among the larger states, Goa was the most urbanised (about 62 per cent), followed by Mizoram, Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Maharashtra, while Himachal Pradesh (about 10 per cent), Bihar and Assam were the least. Delhi, at about 97.5 per cent, was almost entirely urban. The three largest urban agglomerations in 2011 were Greater Mumbai (about 1.84 crore), Delhi (about 1.63 crore) and Kolkata (about 1.41 crore), followed by Chennai and Bengaluru.

Rapid growth without matching investment strains cities. Housing falls short, so poor migrants crowd into slums; Census 2011 counted about 6.5 crore people living in slums in more than 2,600 towns. Water supply, sewerage, solid-waste handling and public transport lag behind demand, and congestion and air pollution follow. Since 2015 the Union government has run national missions to address these gaps, all launched on 25 June 2015. The Smart Cities Mission selected 100 cities to improve core infrastructure and use technology in services. AMRUT, the Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation, focused on water supply, sewerage and green spaces in about 500 cities, and AMRUT 2.0, from 2021, aims to bring tap water to every household in all statutory towns. Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana–Urban gives central help to build houses for the urban poor; its second phase was approved in 2024.

Migration, settlement and urbanisation are one process seen at three moments. People move, mostly short distances and mostly within their state, women chiefly for marriage and men chiefly for work; where they settle, the shape of the village or the function of the town reflects land and livelihood; and as more of them settle in non-farm places, the urban share rises, partly through big cities and partly through large villages crossing the census-town thresholds. The regional pattern repeats what Parts 1 and 2 showed: the more urban and more literate south and west receive migrants, while the densely peopled and less urban north-central states send them. Part 4 turns to the Scheduled Tribes, whose settlements and livelihoods are among the most tied to the land.

Exam traps

• Place of BIRTH and place of LAST RESIDENCE are different Census measures; the latter (used since 1971) also counts return migrants and is the one usually quoted.
• The LARGEST stream is rural-to-rural and is dominated by WOMEN (marriage); rural-to-urban is the main stream for MEN (work).
• Most internal migration is WITHIN a state and over short distances; Uttar Pradesh and Bihar send the most, Maharashtra, Delhi, Gujarat and Haryana receive the most.
• A STATUTORY town is urban because of its urban local body; a CENSUS town has none but meets ALL THREE tests (5,000 people, 75% of MALE MAIN workers non-farm, 400 per sq km).
• In 2001–11, for the first time since independence, the urban population grew by more in absolute terms than the rural population; census towns nearly tripled.
• Most urbanised larger state in 2011: GOA (not Kerala or Tamil Nadu); least: Himachal Pradesh. Largest UA: Greater Mumbai, then Delhi, then Kolkata.
• Smart Cities Mission, AMRUT and PMAY–Urban were all launched on 25 June 2015; AMRUT 2.0 came in 2021 and PMAY–Urban 2.0 was approved in 2024.
• Hamleted settlements (panna, para, palli, nagla, dhani) are typical of the middle and lower Ganga plain and Chhattisgarh; DISPERSED ones of Meghalaya and the Himalayan hills.

Recap

• Census measures: place of birth and place of last residence (since 1971); about 45 crore migrants by last residence in 2011.
• Four streams: rural–rural (largest, mostly women, marriage), rural–urban (men, work), urban–urban, urban–rural (smallest).
• Push (poverty, little land, disasters) and pull (jobs, wages, services); senders UP and Bihar; receivers Maharashtra, Delhi, Gujarat, Haryana.
• International: Gulf workers and professionals abroad; diaspora over 3 crore (MEA); India the largest remittance recipient (World Bank).
• Effects: remittances and labour supply; male-heavy receiving areas; new ideas but poor housing; overcrowding and slums.
• Rural settlements: clustered, semi-clustered, hamleted, dispersed; towns classed by function (administrative, industrial, transport, mining, garrison, religious, educational, tourist).
• Statutory town (urban local body) vs census town (5,000; 75% male main workers non-farm; 400 per sq km); urban agglomeration; 53 million-plus cities/UAs.
• Urban share: about 11% (1901), 17% (1951), 31.2% (2011); Goa most, Himachal least urbanised; Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata largest UAs.
• About 6.5 crore slum dwellers (2011); Smart Cities, AMRUT, PMAY–U (25 June 2015); AMRUT 2.0 (2021); PMAY–U 2.0 (2024).

Practice questions

Sources

• Office of the Registrar General and Census Commissioner, India: Census of India 2011, migration (D-series) tables, urban definitions and town directory, population of urban agglomerations and cities, primary census abstract for slums — https://censusindia.gov.in
• Press Information Bureau releases on the launch of the Smart Cities Mission, AMRUT and PMAY–Urban (25 June 2015), AMRUT 2.0 (October 2021) and PMAY–Urban 2.0 (2024) — https://pib.gov.in
• Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs: mission guidelines for the Smart Cities Mission, AMRUT and PMAY–Urban — https://mohua.gov.in
• Ministry of External Affairs: population of overseas Indians (NRIs and persons of Indian origin) — https://www.mea.gov.in
• World Bank: Migration and Development Briefs on remittance flows — https://www.worldbank.org
• Treaty of Peace and Friendship between India and Nepal, 1950 (Articles 6 and 7) — https://www.mea.gov.in