Reflections

People were moving into cities because they had better jobs or something more
interesting.
An Indian parallel is the Punjab.Because rural agriculture has beenstrong, smaller
towns have sprung up near villages to provide servicing and marketing. They have
developed industries of their own such as hosiery, sports' goods, tractor repairs and so
on. Allthis means that the pressures on urbanisation which we see elsewhere are
missing in the Punjab. There areno large towns bursting at their seams. And towns in
Punjab like Ludhiana, Bhatinda, Jalandhar, do work.In the rest of the country, people
migrate from villages because they are 'pushed' by pressures there, not 'pulled' by job
opportunities.
When you talked about manufacturing activity being present in the villages of
Western Europe, I take it these would be in the form of smithy or ironmongery.
Surely this happens here too.
True. But the advantage the West had was that technology then was not as
sophisticated as it is now. Because we have industrialised much later, we have
suddenly adopted this sophisticated technology. There has been a quantum jump. And
that makes it very difficult for our villagers to adapt to.
Are the problems the same in all our cities whether it is Bombay, Delhi or Calcutta?
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