India is primarily an agrarian society, where majority of the population lives by agriculture and linked occupations in rural areas. Normally an urban area is one in which 75% of the population lives by non-agricultural occupations. In the onset of 20th century i.e. in 1901, only 1 out of every 9 Indians lived in towns or cities. After nine decades the situation has experienced remarkable changes. Today every fourth Indian is a city-dweller. In 1901, the sum total of people living in urban areas was a meagre 26 million. By 1991, the number of people living in urban areas had escalated up to 218 million. This figure far surmounts the total population of Russia, Canada and Australia taken together. More alarming is the fact that 2/3rd of India`s total urban population lives in class I cities i.e. those, with a populace of 100,000 (or one lakh) people. This ever-increasing population is largely incompetent and exerts terrific pressure on the existing brittle civic, social and sanitary services.

At present in India, the ten very profoundly populated urban districts include- Kolkata, Chennai, Greater Mumbai, Hyderabad, Delhi, Chandigarh, Pune, Bangalore, Ahmedabad and Kanpur city. These ten city districts alone account for the country`s 5% total population. The average density of these districts is 6888 persons per sq. km. This figure, if compared with the average density of population, firstly with India (267) and secondly with Arunachal Pradesh (10), sounds confound.

Among the large states- Maharashtra, Gujarat and Tamil Nadu are the most-urbanised states. 38.69% of the total population of Maharashtra now lives in metropolitan centres. Gujarat and Tamil Nadu succeed it, with comparable percentage of 34.49% and 34.15% respectively.

Yet another fact of immense significance is the fast development of "Million plus" cities. Each of such cities has more than one million (i.e. ten lakh) people. In 1981 there were 12 such cities. They were Calcutta, Mumbai, Delhi, Chennai, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad, Pune, Kanpur, Nagpur, Lucknow, and Jaipur. By 1991, their number had risen to 23, with the accessions of Surat, Kochi, Vadodara, Indore, Coimbatore, Patna, Madurai, Bhopal, Visakhapatnam, Ludhiana and Varanasi. While the population of Mumbai metropolitan city is 12.5 million, the population of Varanasi is 1.3 million only.

Over a period of 90 years, the rural population has barely increased three folds-from 213 million to 629 million. During the same time, urban population had amplified by more than eight times-from 26 million to 218 million. Today`s urban population in India is even greater, compared to the total rural population of India, as it was in 1901.

When population in India was expanding very swiftly, the percentage of young population accounted for as much as 44% of the whole population. By 1981 it had declined to 39.5% and in 1991 it was further reduced to 37.25%.

The old population over the last decade has enlarged from 6.2 to 6.76%. This is a hint that due to propagation of education and magnified and bettered health services, the normal longevity has been increasing steadfastly. The average life expectancy has now nearly doubled since 1951 and now has just surpassed 60 years for both males and females.

The age groups of the young and the old are likewise in making extraordinary demands, predominantly in health and medical care. Education of the young also makes an imperative demand on the resources of the economically dynamic population. Further more, both the groups are dependent on the population of the middle-age group. The dependency ratio is measured by dividing the dependent population by the active population and multiplying it by 100. The dependency ratio in India in 1981 was 83, as compared to 48.8 in Japan. By 1991 the situation in India bettered somewhat, because the dependency ratio had declined to 78%. This ratio can further be reduced, as the birth rate would be brought down over a couple of decades. One should now supply more resources for the old, whose percentage in the total population is sure to increase with balanced growth in life expectancy.