1. Indicus Analytics, An Economics Research Firm www.indicus.netLaveesh Bhandari., Indicus Analytics, 2006The Diversity of the Top 100 Cities of India Laveesh Bhandari1. BackgroundCities are 24-hour market places where a large group of people reside and trade. The high concentration of people brings with it a variety of tastes, preferences, wants, resources, products and services. People from within the city and outside interact, thereby generating the necessary mass for trade to occur. And so markets and cities are two sides of the same coin.The history of great civilizations is essentially the history of great cities. There is a direct relationship between human progress and dynamic and prosperous cities. India is well endowed with cities spread more or less evenly across the country. Like in other countries, cities in India tend to be located in areas with adequate water and on trade routes. And like in other countries, its cities also contain the bulk of the economic wealth.However, unlike in other countries, modern India does not know much about its cities. Apart from decadal reports from the Census of India, little information is available on cities. The situation is worse where information on the extent of economic and market activity is concerned.However, information from various sources can be put together, trends analyzed, matched with other sources, and analyzed to gain some important insights into cities.The unit for defining a rural area is the village while urban areas are classified as either a Town or City. The defining character of a village is its agriculture-based economy. The Census of India lists about 638 thousand villages in the country, though some of these are uninhabited. The definition of a town varies, but the most commonly used in India is that of the Census of India. It considers a town to be that location which has (i) a minimum population of 5,000 (ii) at least 75 per cent of the male working population engaged in non- agricultural pursuits, and (iii) a density of population of at least 400 per square kilometer (1,000 per square mile). Cities are simply larger towns, as per the Census definition towns with a population of greater than 100,000 are cities. There were 5180 cities in 2001. However, there are many large villages that could be considered to be towns but are not for many reasons. Take for instance the 10,000-population benchmark. There were about 1300 towns with a population less than 10,000 in 2001. And there were almost 4000 villages with a population greater than 10,000 in the same year.Urban areas are governed in different ways. Municipalities, Municipal Coporations, Cantonment Boards, Notified Town Area Committee, Nagar Panchayats are some urban local governing bodies (ULBs) but not the only ones. Many times what we consider to be the same city is covered by different ULBs. Delhi for instance has the New Delhi Municipal Corporation and Delhi Municipal Corporation. On the other hand the districts of Mumbai and Suburban Mumbai have the same ULB overseeing their functioning - The Brihanmumbai I

2. Indicus Analytics, An Economics Research Firm www.indicus.netLaveesh Bhandari., Indicus Analytics, 2006 Municipal Corporation. In the case of Hyderabad, the ULB oversees the urban area in the whole of Hyderabad district and also some portion of urban areas in Rangareddi. Table 1: Population Concentrations in India UnitPopulation Interval Number Village