Approved DPR for Rajeev Awas Yojna Project - Municipal ...

1.4 Language
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The spoken language in Jalandhar is Punjabi being the mother tongue of Punjabi
people. The Jalandhar falls in Doaba region, comprising the districts Jalandhar,
Hoshiarpur and Kapurthala. Doaba region is sided by the rivers Beas and Sutlej. The
dialect of this region is called Doaba by the linguistics.
1.5 Connectivity
Jalandhar is well connected by roads & trains, including a Shatabdi train from Delhi to
Amritsar via Jalandhar.
1.6 Demographics
As of 2011 India census, Jalandhar had a population of 8,73,725. Males constitute 53%
of the population and females 47%. Jalandhar has an average literacy rate of 77.2%,
and female literacy is 72%. In Jalandhar, 9.7% of the population is under 6 years of age.
1.7 Urban Population
Urban population in Punjab has reached ten million in the year 2011, with two cities -
Amritsar and Ludhiana - figuring in the million plus cities. It is expected that Jalandhar
will also have a million plus population by 2021. Despite having the highest per capita
income in the country, one fourth of the urban population in Punjab resides in slums.
Moreover, the growth rate of urban population in the past three decades has been
lesser than the national average, while the growth of urban population was not evenly
spread in the state.
The existing studies indicate that emergence of slums in Punjab is essentially the
product of demographic growth in the cities, inability to meet the housing demand and
the existing urban land policies which prohibit the access of the poor to the urban land
market.
The decadal growth rate of urbanization in Punjab has been lagging behind the national
average. While the national decadal growth rate has been 36.19 per cent during the
years 1981-91, the rate of growth in Punjab has been 29.06 per cent. Similarly, the
decadal growth rate of urban population in the preceding two decades has also been
lesser than the national average. The 10 Class I towns (those with population above
one lakh) account for nearly 55 per cent of the total urban population.
Jalandhar ranks high in the rate of urbanization and has the density of population at 668
persons per square km, as per the 2011 census. The reason for this is growing
industrialization
However, these very towns which are acting as magnets for industrialization are also
centres of pollution and growth of slums. The suspended particulate matter in industrial
zones of Ludhiana, Mandi Gobindgarh, Amritsar, Jalandhar and Batala rank very high
and Mandi Gobindgarh has been identified by as suffering from high pollution levels.
“Due to significant number and variety of industries operating in the city there has been
an influx of people from the neighboring towns / villages to work in these industries and
this has led to setting up of slums in the city.