Urbanization
Context:
- As urbanisation increases with newness, speed, and mobility, new cities are emerging in India. These emerging cities create a stunning landscape of constant movement and change.
What is the definition of urbanisation?
- Urbanisation refers to the transfer of people from rural to urban areas, as well as the expansion of cities and towns. It is the process through which cities grow when larger proportions of the population move there.
- It is characterised by a complex collection of economic, demographic, social, cultural, technological, and environmental influences that increase the proportion of a territory’s population living in towns and cities.
What factors contribute to urbanisation?
- Because of better job prospects, more people have moved from rural to urban areas since the industrial revolution.
- Commercialization and trade are predicated on the belief that towns and cities provide better economic prospects and returns than rural places.
- Living in a city or town has a variety of social advantages. Enhanced educational facilities, higher living standards, improved sanitation and housing, improved health care, increased recreation facilities, and improved social life are just a few examples.
- Job opportunities: Higher-value-added occupations are created and expanded by services and industries, resulting in additional job opportunities.
Current City Concerns regarding Unity in Diversity:
- Cities are meant to be distinct from villages, allowing for a diversity that thrives in the absence of rural attitudes and limitations, but there have been reports of religious-based violence. Such an incidence calls into question both the concept of modern cities and the underlying principle of unity in diversity.
- The geographical diversity of the people that resides within the city’s new residential neighbourhoods the gated communities, in addition to a remarkable religious consistency.
- Land acquisition by both private and public groups to build cities has increased, suggesting the rise of increasingly affluent populations. However, the rise of rural prosperity related to urbanisation has had a unique impact on caste and religious identity.
- As a result, such a mindset develops and retreats to mono-religious regions, successfully eradicating evidence of actual diversity that are required for a peaceful and equitable urban life.
Such towns endanger religious tolerance and peaceful coexistence:
- In such a scenario, the newly wealthy rural population becomes even more linked with practises of the past through the present.
- These are ripe grounds for the development of a dystopic urban future, one that may provide political benefits but will only undermine the social fabric. They also allow for and tolerate religious vigilantism.
Conclusion:
- A city is essentially a collection of structures and governing systems, whereas urbanity is a mental attitude.
- As a result, the concept of urbanity involves religious belief and education in the arts of cohabitation, which should not allow for religious disharmony or discrimination within cities.
