India’s Urban Classification Rules Outdated, Gender-Biased: Parliamentary Panel

India’s urban classification rules have come under scrutiny, with a parliamentary standing committee calling the existing criteria outdated and gender-biased. The panel flagged the Census provision that considers only the share of male workers engaged in non-agricultural activities and highlighted the gap between India’s conventional urbanisation figures and some international estimates.

The Standing Committee on Housing and Urban Affairs noted that the secretary of the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs had informed it that India was 36% urban under conventional definitions, while some international definitions suggested the share may already have crossed 50%. In its report on Census criteria for defining urban areas, the committee stated, “The issue of defining urban areas cannot be treated merely as a statistical exercise. It must be examined from the perspective of social justice, gender equality, decentralisation and the constitutional rights of ordinary people.”

The committee said the definition of urban areas needed to evolve with changing settlement patterns to support effective planning, infrastructure development and delivery of services. More than 3,000 Census Towns continue to remain under rural local bodies despite meeting the Census criteria for urban areas, reported Hindustan Times.

Gender Bias In Criteria

Under the existing Census criteria, a settlement is classified as a Census Town if it has a population of at least 5,000, a density of at least 400 people per square kilometre and at least 75% of its male main working population engaged in non-agricultural activities.

The committee said the last condition reflected a male-centric understanding of work because it did not adequately capture women’s participation in self-employment, informal and home-based work, service-sector activities and other forms of employment that may be undercounted.

It recommended that the ministry commission a focused study to develop a gender-inclusive methodology for identifying urban areas and consider a gender audit of Census definitions and data-collection procedures.

Regional Relaxation Dispute

The panel also examined the ministry’s February 23, 2024 communication on hill areas and northeastern states. In that communication, the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs had suggested lower population and density thresholds for those regions.

The committee noted that while the Office of the Registrar General and Census Commissioner of India (ORGI) received the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs' (MoHUA) February 23, 2024 Office Memorandum and deemed the proposed regional relaxations to be non-objective, the ORGI never communicated this finding back to MoHUA or asked them to furnish objective criteria.

Data gaps add to the problem. In several northeastern states, the absence of cadastral surveys has left gaps in village-area figures. That makes it difficult to calculate population density and identify Census Towns.

Census Towns Outlook

Urban growth is accelerating. The committee’s report stated that India’s urban population is projected to rise from 377 million, or 31% of the population, in 2011 to 876 million, or 53%, by 2050.

It stated that the definition of urban areas must evolve with changing settlement patterns to support planning, infrastructure and services. The scale of the issue is large because many settlements that meet Census norms are still not governed as towns.

Of the 3,892 Census Towns identified in 2011, 175 have since been notified as statutory towns and 367 have merged with existing statutory towns. More than 3,000 Census Towns remain under rural local bodies despite meeting Census criteria for urban areas.

The committee recommended that the ministry engage with states and union territories after the release of Census 2027 data to examine the conversion of eligible Census Towns into statutory urban local bodies. It also noted that the existing Census Town criteria have been retained for Census 2027 to ensure comparability with the 2011 exercise.