India's Urbanisation: Key Trends, Regional Disparities and the Path Ahead

From being home to 17.3% of the population in 1951, urban India now holds 35% of its 1.45 billion people—a figure expected to touch 50% by 2050, according to the UN, which translates into a population of 84 crores. This demographic transition will be a key driver of its 2047 Viksit Bharat ambition.

For India to urbanise on such a scale, its states must play a leading role, driven by faster economic growth or by narrowing the existing development disparities among them. According to the 2011 Census, states like Kerala (47.7%), Gujarat (42.6%), Maharashtra (45.2%), and Tamil Nadu (48.4%) urbanised at more than four times the pace of bottom-of-the-heap Bihar (11.3%), with Assam (14.1%) and Odisha (16.7%) performing just marginally better. Ironically, the states that have led India's urbanisation so far are also expected to continue leading the way in the future, further widening the gap.

Though no official urbanisation figures for 2025 are available, a Ministry of Health & Family Welfare projection states that currently 35.8% of Indians live in urban areas, a figure likely to reach 39.58% by 2036.

While urban population figures are useful for measuring urbanisation, they may not reflect the detailed patterns of urban growth, such as area development, migration, clusters, and agglomerations. The upshot: We may know which states will urbanise the fastest but may not be able to pinpoint the areas of agglomeration merely by looking at the population figures.

High Resolution Satellite Data from the National Remote Sensing Centre

The advent of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) has allowed us to capture high-resolution satellite data of Earth’s land use and land cover, including anthropogenic activity. This data allows us to track changes in land use, including urban structures and developments, over a period of time. The National Remote Sensing Centre (NRSC) has published open GIS data up to 5m resolution as per the National Geo-Spatial Policy of India 2022.

There is a module on Land Use Land Cover (LULC) at different resolution levels that captures the build-up of urban and rural areas along with agricultural land, forest, wasteland, and water bodies. The LULC data at a scale of 1:50,000 (high resolution) captures the build-up of urban and rural areas for three different years: 2005-06, 2011-12, and 2015-16.

The urban build-up area includes residential areas, mixed built-up areas, recreational spaces, public/semi-public utilities, communications, commercial zones, reclaimed areas, vegetated areas, transportation, industrial areas and their dumps, and ash/cooling ponds. Rural build-up areas, by contrast, include lands used for human settlements, typically smaller than urban settlements, with the majority of the population involved in agriculture.

A sample high-resolution image of LULC data for Delhi and Maharashtra is shown in Picture 1 from NRSC.

Urban Build-Up Area

This data, sourced from Land Use Land Cover (LULC) records, specifically reflects Urban Build-Up as a proportion of the Total Build-Up Area (Urban + Rural). This distinction is crucial because it highlights urban growth within the broader context of overall built-up areas, not just urban regions alone.

The analysis shows significant regional variations in urban build-uprates across India. States like Odisha, Goa, Haryana, and Maharashtra exhibit higher urban build-up proportions, with Odisha leading at 95.12% in 2015-16, while states such as Kerala, Chhattisgarh, West Bengal, and Bihar show much lower figures, with Kerala at just 25.29%.

It is important to emphasise that this data doesn't just indicate urbanisation but highlights how urban areas compare within the entire built-up region. Over time, Goa and Haryana consistently top the list for urban build-up, while states like Kerala, Odisha, and Bihar lag behind, underlining the disparity in urban growth.

Similarly, in the Northeastern and Himalayan states, Sikkim and Assam lead in urban build-up, while states like Manipur and Meghalaya show lower figures. This reflects the unique challenges these regions face in urban expansion.

Regarding broader trends, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Rajasthan, Maharashtra, and Tamil Nadu have the largest total build-up (Urban & Rural) areas as of 2022-23. States like Rajasthan, Haryana, Gujarat, and Uttar Pradesh have shown significant growth in total build-up area from 2011-12 to 2022-23, while West Bengal, Uttarakhand, and Bihar have seen slower growth.

The highest-resolution data available from NRSC provides the most granular insights, capturing detailed sub-components of both urban and rural build-up areas, such as residential spaces, commercial zones, transport infrastructure, and green spaces. This more detailed data helps assess how urban areas, like Mumbai, are developing and growing.

This data, sourced from the Land Use Land Cover (LULC) records at a resolution of 1:250,000, reflects the total Build-Up Area (Urban and Rural) across India. It offers a time series of trends from 2011-12 to 2022-23, allowing us to observe the overall expansion of built-up areas. According to the 2022-23 data, Uttar Pradesh has the largest total build-up area at 14.87 lakh hectares, followed by West Bengal (10.17 lakh hectares), Rajasthan (8.27 lakh hectares), Maharashtra (7.3 lakh hectares), and Tamil Nadu (6.01 lakh hectares).

In terms of growth, Rajasthan, Haryana, Gujarat, and Uttar Pradesh have experienced the highest increases in build-up area between 2011-12 and 2022-23, with growth rates of 51.74%, 31.74%, 23.98%, and 18.20%, respectively. On the other hand, West Bengal, Uttarakhand, and Bihar have shown slower growth, with rates of just 1.50%, 1.47%, and 1.15%, respectively.

While this data captures the overall total build-up area, it does not distinguish between urban and rural areas. However, it offers a valuable snapshot of the gradual expansion of human settlements across both urban and rural regions.

The NRSC provides a higher-resolution dataset (1:10,000 scale) that captures specific sub-components of build-up areas. This includes urban areas such as residential, institutional, commercial, green open spaces, and transport infrastructure, as well as rural areas such as villages, settlements, and hamlets.

In summary, this LULC data reveals the broader trends in the growth of both urban and rural areas across India while also providing a more detailed understanding of the specific components contributing to the expansion of built-up areas.

Since urban development is closely associated with economic activity, Night-Time Light (NTL) data has been increasingly used to capture economic development across Indian states to identify the states/cities where growth is likely to accelerate. All this data can be integrated and combined to measure the extent of urban build-up areas. In the absence of an official estimate of urban population, it can complement the measure of urbanisation across the states.

(Disclaimer: Liankhankhup Guite is a Deputy Director from the Indian Economic Service. Views expressed are personal.)