Subaltern Urbanization: The Birth of Census Towns in West Bengal

The decade of 2001–2011 has seen a magnificent growth of small towns, named as ‘Census Towns’(CTs), in India. These are the towns governed by the rural local governments having a population of 5000 or more, with a population density of at least 400/km2 and 75% of its male main workforce working in non-farm sector. There are three different kinds of theoretical argument that attempt to explain the dynamics of formation of the CTs. The first is related to the impact of developments in the large city in the neighborhood; the second is to development of transport infrastructure connecting the villages that are identified as ‘would be CTs’; and third is the local development at the ‘would be CTs’. Since, these factors cause each other, this paper performs a Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and identifies some uncorrelated variables that can potentially affect the formation of CTs. It uses the data from the state of West Bengal, India which has seen the birth of maximum number of CTs during this period, to find out that in all the districts of West Bengal, the presence of highways within 5 km radius of a village played an important role. In the districts bordering Kolkata, the capital city of the state, the population density at the nearest city had been important.