Breaking down the question
The question asks you to examine recent trends — so both description and analysis are required — in how urban settlements are growing in India, supported by examples. The focus is on the changing patterns and geography of urbanisation rather than its causes or consequences alone. You are expected to show familiarity with contemporary features of Indian urban growth and to interpret them sociologically.
Urban settlements in India range from metropolitan cities to statutory and census towns. Recent decades have reshaped this landscape through the rise of new town categories, the swelling of peripheries, and the emergence of new urban forms. A strong answer identifies these trends and illustrates each.
How to approach it
Frame urbanisation, following Louis Wirth, as a way of life marked by size, density and heterogeneity, and note M. S. A. Rao's classic distinction between the varied processes of Indian urbanisation. Then organise the body around clear trends — the growth of census towns, top-heavy metropolitan concentration, peri-urbanisation and sprawl, the rise of new planned and satellite towns, and small-town and regional urbanisation. Attach an example to each. Keep the analysis grounded and evaluative. Our note on the growth of urban settlements in India supports this discussion.
Model answer
Urbanisation in India, understood in Wirthian terms as a distinctive way of life shaped by size, density and social heterogeneity, has entered a phase of both quantitative expansion and qualitative change. Several recent trends define the growth of its urban settlements.
The most striking is the proliferation of census towns — settlements that meet the demographic and occupational criteria of urban areas without formal municipal status. A large share of recent urban growth has come from such places rather than from municipal expansion, indicating an in-situ urbanisation of erstwhile rural settlements across states such as Kerala and West Bengal.
A second trend is top-heavy growth, in which a handful of large metropolises and million-plus cities absorb a disproportionate share of population and investment. Cities such as Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru and Hyderabad continue to dominate, producing an unbalanced urban hierarchy and immense pressure on infrastructure.
Third, peri-urbanisation and urban sprawl have blurred the rural-urban boundary. The peripheries of major cities — Gurugram and Noida around Delhi, or Whitefield around Bengaluru — have grown into dense mixed zones of housing, industry and services, exemplifying M. S. A. Rao's insight that Indian urbanisation follows several distinct processes rather than one.
Fourth, planned satellite and greenfield towns have emerged, from earlier examples such as Navi Mumbai to new information-technology and industrial townships and smart-city initiatives, reflecting deliberate attempts to decongest and channel growth.
Finally, small and medium towns and regional urban centres are growing as nodes of trade, education and administration, spreading urbanisation beyond the largest cities into the interior.
Taken together, these trends show an urbanisation that is dispersed, uneven and increasingly driven from below by census towns and peripheries, even as metropolitan concentration persists. The result is a complex settlement system whose growth outpaces the capacity of governance to plan and service it.
Examiner's perspective
A 10-mark answer should be trend-led and example-rich. Examiners reward candidates who name specific mechanisms — census-town growth, top-heavy metropolitan concentration, peri-urbanisation, satellite towns and small-town growth — and anchor each to a real place.
Opening with Wirth and M. S. A. Rao lends conceptual weight without displacing the empirical content the question demands. Avoid drifting into causes or problems of urbanisation at length; the focus is the pattern of growth itself. Crisp structure, British spelling and concrete illustrations distinguish the stronger scripts.