Evolution of towns in India: ancient, medieval, colonial and post-1947

Detail

1. Towns from prehistoric times

• Town: a settlement where most people do non-farm work, such as trade, crafts, administration and services.
• India has had towns since prehistoric times.

• Harappa (on the Ravi, Punjab, now in Pakistan) and Mohenjodaro (on the Indus, Sindh, Pakistan) were towns of the Indus Valley Civilisation.

• After that, towns kept rising and falling. Kingdoms grew and broke up, and trade routes shifted. This went on until the Europeans arrived.

2. Ancient towns (over 2,000 years old)

• Ancient towns are towns with more than 2,000 years of history. Most grew up as religious and cultural centres.

Town	Spatial anchor	Why it grew
Varanasi	Uttar Pradesh, on the left bank of the Ganga	Hindu pilgrimage and learning centre
Prayag (Prayagraj)	Uttar Pradesh, at the meeting point of the Ganga and Yamuna (Sangam)	Pilgrimage at the river meeting point
Pataliputra (Patna)	Bihar, on the south bank of the Ganga	Capital of ancient empires and a cultural centre
Madurai	Tamil Nadu, on the Vaigai river	Temple town and centre of Tamil culture

• Pattern: most ancient towns sit on rivers. Rivers gave them water, transport and a sacred status.

3. Medieval towns

• Medieval towns: about 100 of today's towns began in the medieval period.
• Most were headquarters of principalities and kingdoms (seats of rulers).
• Many were fort towns, often built on the ruins of ancient towns.
• Examples: Delhi and Agra (on the Yamuna), Lucknow (on the Gomti, Uttar Pradesh), Jaipur (Rajasthan), Hyderabad (on the Musi, Telangana), Nagpur (Maharashtra, near the centre of India).
• Cause → process → result:
• A ruler needed a safe seat of power.
• A fort and palace were built, and soldiers, traders and craftsmen settled around them.
• A walled capital town grew up. When the kingdom fell, the town often shrank.

4. Modern (colonial) towns

Step 1: European trading ports on the coast

• The Europeans first set up coastal trading ports:
• Surat: Gujarat, at the mouth of the Tapi, on the Arabian Sea.
• Daman: Portuguese enclave on the Gujarat coast.
• Goa: Portuguese, on the Konkan coast.
• Pondicherry (Puducherry): French, on the Coromandel coast, Bay of Bengal.

Step 2: British consolidation around three nodes

• The British built up three main nodes in British style: Mumbai (Bombay), Chennai (Madras) and Kolkata (Calcutta). These were the presidency cities.
• They then added:
• Administrative centres.
• Hill towns as summer resorts, where officials escaped the plains' heat: Shimla (Himachal Pradesh), Darjeeling (West Bengal), Ooty/Udhagamandalam (Nilgiri Hills, Tamil Nadu).
• Civil lines: planned areas for British officials, set apart from the old "native" town.
• Cantonments: permanent military stations with their own planned layout.

Step 3: Industrial towns after 1850

• Modern industry brought new towns after 1850.
• Jamshedpur (Jharkhand) grew around TISCO, the Tata Iron and Steel Company, set up in 1907.

Port–hinterland pattern and coastal primacy

• Hinterland: the inland area that sends goods to a port and buys goods through it.
• How the pattern formed:
• The British wanted raw materials (cotton, jute, tea, coal) to go out, and British factory goods to come in.
• Railways were laid from the interior towards the port cities of Mumbai, Chennai and Kolkata.

• Trade, offices and jobs gathered at these ports.

• Result: the coastal ports became dominant. This is coastal primacy. Primacy means one or a few cities are far bigger and more important than all the others. Many old inland towns declined.

5. Post-independence new towns (after 1947)

Planned administrative capitals

• Chandigarh: shared capital of Punjab and Haryana, a Union Territory. Designed by the architect Le Corbusier.
• Bhubaneswar: capital of Odisha.
• Gandhinagar: capital of Gujarat.
• Dispur: capital of Assam, within Guwahati.

Industrial towns (steel and fertiliser)

• Durgapur: West Bengal, Damodar valley, steel.
• Bhilai: Chhattisgarh, steel.
• Sindri: Jharkhand, fertiliser.
• Barauni: Bihar, refinery and fertiliser.
• These link to the planned growth of heavy industry (see manufacturing-industries-india).

Satellite towns and counter-magnets

• Satellite town: a smaller town that grows around a big city.
• It depends on the big city for jobs and services.

• It takes some of the big city's crowding.

• Old towns around Delhi grew into satellite towns: Ghaziabad (Uttar Pradesh), Rohtak and Gurugram (Haryana).

• National Capital Region (NCR): the region planned together with Delhi under the NCR Planning Board Act, 1985 [8].
• Parliament passed the Act in 1985 with the agreement of Haryana, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh. Delhi was then only a Union Territory [8].
• The original schedule gave the NCR 33,578 sq km: NCT Delhi 1,483 sq km, Haryana 13,413 sq km, Rajasthan 7,829 sq km and Uttar Pradesh 10,853 sq km [8].

• In 2013, the NCR Planning Board approved adding Jind and Karnal districts of Haryana to the NCR [9].

• Counter-magnet: a rival centre built to pull people and growth away from an overcrowded city.

• Navi Mumbai was planned from 1971 as a counter-magnet to Mumbai, across Thane Creek.

Spread of medium and small towns

• After 1947, investment reached rural areas, and many medium and small towns grew across the country.
• Census 2011: India's urban population was 377.2 million, or 31.16% of the total. These people lived in 7,935 towns: 4,041 statutory towns and 3,894 census towns [10].
• Statutory town: a place with a municipality, corporation, cantonment board or notified town area committee [11].
• Census town: a place with no urban local body but urban features: a population of at least 5,000, at least 75% of male main workers in non-farm work, and a density of at least 400 persons per sq km [11].
• 2,532 new census towns appeared between 2001 and 2011. They are still governed under State Panchayat Acts, have no building bye-laws and often lack basic town services [11].

6. Urban missions after 2015

• The government launched three urban missions together on 25 June 2015: the Smart Cities Mission, AMRUT and Housing for All (Urban) [2].
• Smart Cities Mission (2015) aims to improve quality of life in 100 selected cities, with efficient services, good infrastructure and a clean environment [3].
• The mission period was extended to 31 March 2025 so that ongoing projects could be finished [7].

• By 9 May 2025, 7,555 of 8,067 projects (94%), worth ₹1,51,361 crore, were complete [7].

• AMRUT (Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation) began on 25 June 2015 in 500 cities and towns [4].

• It builds basic infrastructure: water supply, sewerage and septage management, storm-water drainage, green spaces and parks, and non-motorised urban transport (walking and cycling) [4].

• AMRUT 2.0 was launched on 1 October 2021 to make cities "water secure" [5].

• It extends universal water-supply coverage from 500 cities to about 4,800 statutory towns [5].
• Its mission period is 2021–2026 [6].

Phase	Main function	Examples	Location pattern
Prehistoric	Planned early towns	Harappa, Mohenjodaro	Indus basin
Ancient (over 2,000 years)	Religious and cultural	Varanasi, Prayagraj, Pataliputra, Madurai	River banks and confluences
Medieval (about 100 towns)	Capitals and forts	Delhi, Agra, Jaipur, Lucknow, Hyderabad, Nagpur	Interior, on defensible or river sites
Colonial	Ports, administration, hill resorts, industry	Surat, Goa, Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata, Shimla, Jamshedpur	Coast, hills and mineral belts
Post-1947	Planned capitals, industry, satellites	Chandigarh, Bhilai, Gurugram, Navi Mumbai	Across India, around metros

Prelims Hooks

• Chandigarh was planned by Le Corbusier. Gandhinagar is the capital of Gujarat, and Dispur is the capital of Assam.
• Jamshedpur grew around TISCO (1907), an industrial town of the period after 1850.
• Hill stations built as colonial summer resorts: Shimla (Himachal Pradesh), Darjeeling (West Bengal), Ooty (Tamil Nadu).
• Early European coastal ports: Surat, Daman, Goa, Pondicherry. The British presidency nodes were Mumbai, Chennai and Kolkata.
• Steel towns: Durgapur, Bhilai. Fertiliser towns: Sindri (Jharkhand), Barauni (Bihar).
• NCR Planning Board Act, 1985 covers parts of Haryana, Rajasthan (Alwar, Bharatpur) and Uttar Pradesh. Its original area was 33,578 sq km [8].
• Navi Mumbai (planned from 1971) is a counter-magnet. Ghaziabad and Gurugram are satellite towns.
• Census town criteria: population of at least 5,000, at least 75% of male main workers in non-farm work, and density of at least 400 per sq km [11]. Census 2011: 4,041 statutory towns and 3,894 census towns [10].
• Smart Cities Mission covers 100 cities and AMRUT covers 500 cities. Both were launched on 25 June 2015 [2][3][4]. AMRUT 2.0 began on 1 October 2021 [5].
• Trap: Madurai is an ancient temple town on the Vaigai. Hyderabad and Nagpur are medieval towns.

Mains Points

• Colonial urbanisation was export-led and on the coast.
• Railways ran from the interior to the ports, so Mumbai, Chennai and Kolkata became dominant.
• Inland craft towns declined.

• This left uneven, top-heavy city sizes (primacy) that India still has.

• Post-1947 planned towns were tools of nation-building.

• New capitals (Chandigarh, Bhubaneswar, Gandhinagar) gave states new seats of government.

• Public-sector steel and fertiliser towns (Bhilai, Durgapur, Sindri) spread industry to backward mineral regions.

• Managing metropolitan growth.

• Satellite towns and counter-magnets (the NCR under the 1985 Act, and Navi Mumbai) aim to take pressure off Delhi and Mumbai [8].

• But towns like Gurugram and Ghaziabad still depend on the core city for jobs, which causes heavy daily commuting.

• Governance gap in new urban areas and the policy response.

• 2,532 census towns emerged in 2001–2011 without urban local bodies or building bye-laws [11].
• The Smart Cities Mission and AMRUT/AMRUT 2.0 target infrastructure, water security and sewerage [4][5]. The 94% project completion by May 2025 is a measure of delivery [7].