In the Census of India 2011, the definition of urban area adopted is as follows:
a) All statutory places with a municipality, corporation, cantonment board or notified town area committee, etc.;
b) A place satisfying the following criteria:
> Population is more than 5000.
> 75% of the male population engaged in non-agricultural occupations.
> A density of population of at least 400 per sq. km.
Keeping the above criterion of 'urban area' in mind, urbanisation, in general, can be defined as the sM from a rural society to an urban society. It involves an increase in the number of people in urban areas during a particular year or period. It is the outcome of social, economic and political developments that lead to urban concentration and growth of large cities, changes in land use and transformation from rural to metropolitan pattern of organisation and governance.
It has been viewed as an important factor in the areas of economic transformation, orchestrating the breakdown of the feudal order and talung societies to higher levels of social formation. Urbanisation is intrinsically connected and irrevocably enlaced with the development process, as an essential strand in the contemporary economic system.
Urbanisation implies a cultural, social and psychological pmss whereby people acquire the material and non-material culture, including behavioural patterns, forms of organization, and ideas that originated in or are distinctive of the city. Although the flow of cultural influences takes place in both the directions towards and away from the city -there is substantial agreement that the cultural influences exerted by the city on non-urban people are probably more pervasive than the reverse.