“Urbanization is not a new phenomenon, but today it is taking a different form from in the past. From the 1940s to the 1970s, the move to the city was in search of jobs in the new industrial economies. From the start of decline in the 1980s and 1990s, the new migrants to cities were ore like economic refugees, fleeing the rural economic collapse triggered by structural adjustment and the strictures of prolonged drought in the Sahel. In the new century, economies have kickstarted again, and urbanization is taking a new pattern.

Within Mahashtra—the western Indian state in which Mumbai is the capital—more than 74 percent of the migration is from rural to urban areas. Sixty percent of all migration within the state is into Mumbai from four nearby districts, Ratnagiri, Satara, Pune and Raigad. However, according to Strategic Foresight Group Asian Horizons, this trend is changing rapidly.
“The last census in 2001 revealed that the migration from districts farther away from the city, i.e. the other parts of Maharashtra, such as Latur, Nanded, Solapur, Parbhani, Jalna, Osmanabad and Beed is on the increase.”