Urban-rural relationships in India: a macro-scale approach using population potentials

The urban system in India is the product of a long and complex history and the urban-rural dichotomy is marked. While urban India is often viewed as ‘modern’ and ‘commercial’, rural India is generally characterised as myopic, backward and traditional. The diffusion of a modern commercial sector into traditionally agricultural areas is seen to be slow because of the lack of small sized towns, and many of the major cities are viewed as the centres of introverted economic systems. This paper seeks to examine these aspects of urban-rural relationships and levels of development in India at two scales, the national and the district. The national scale study analyses the urban and rural components of population potential surfaces. The study at the district level uses similar data, but at a finer scale, and in addition considers potentials of retail trade which gives a clearer illustration of ‘importance’ than population data alone. Several innovations in technique are discussed. The paper concludes with some general methodological comments about the nature of location as perceived by geographers.