Going Rurban: Will villages be relieved of 64% rural population & become the rich 'countryside'?

As India’s urban spaces get more crammed, it’s time to craft new policies around ease of living. One out of every three Indians now dwells in a city or a town, a number that is bound to rise as long as urban habitats continue to lure villagers with the bait of elevated earnings. If that trend is sustained, the nation’s urban hubs will turn utterly unliveable.

The answer does not lie in randomly picking out rural areas and showering basic amenities to create ‘model towns’.

After all, facilities such as an airport, a railway station or a university, can’t be replicated in every rural pocket.


What can and must be done by 2047 is focusing on rurban (rural-urban) development, meaning the creation and sustenance of a cluster of villages relatively proximate to each other and which house a robust economic driver.

Once developed, such a cluster will own an urban equivalent infrastructure and woo investment. Since 2016, the Centre has been running a rurban mission, investing Rs 27,700 crore for developing 298 such clusters. Such a mission will have a limited impact as long as it gets squeezed by the government’s binary approach of rural and urban development.

Instead, the government should create a separate department for rur-ban development and arm it with sufficient funds to have an impact. That will not only alleviate the pressure on our crowded cities but equip many rural habitats with robust urban features.