India's industrial cities

There has been a pervasive tendency, in India and elsewhere, to view urbanization in a critical, if not hostile, light. This book seeks to redress the imbalance in the debate. Whereas many studies have dwelt on the problem of labour supply and the negative role of excess migration, Dr Crook focuses on the question of labour demand and the positive role of necessary migration.

Whereas several studies have stressed the commercial and administrative function of cities, this book emphasizes the industrial nature of urbanization, and takes as case-studies those cities which have a predominantly industrial character.

The demographic outcomes of industrialization are as diverse as the industrial processes themselves. Their social implications are problematic: but the chapters here argue that they need to be addressed on their own terms, and not by stifling the very processes.

The themes of this book include the historical demography of India's urbanization as well as the reproduction and survival of the urban labour force; the economics of the housing and infrastructural-management problems; recruitment and migration of the labour force; and case-studies on the heavy industrial and single-industry cities of India, notably the steel towns, where the interplay of technology and demography takes a peculiar turn.

The author draws upon census material from 1891 to 1991, including the extraordinarily detailed data from the 1961 census and the little used industrial labour surveys of the 1950s. These are supplemented with his own survey work undertaken in Pune, Durgapur, and Bombay. This book will be of interest to economists, demographers, geographers, economic historians, and those concerned with urban management in developing countries.