Editorial of the Day: Reimagining the Urban-Rural Dichotomy (The Hindu)

Context: The article highlights that the conventional approach of dividing areas into rural and urban categories (rural-urban dichotomy) is inadequate for understanding and tackling problems such as poverty, malnutrition, education, healthcare, environmental management, and overall development. It emphasizes on the intermediate settlement that exists between the rural and urban areas, where the functions overlap and where there is coexistence via shared geography, culture, economy, and history. Therefore, the article paves way for policymakers to adopt a more nuanced approach that recognizes the interactions and interdependencies between different types of settlements for promoting sustainable development.

Reimagining the Urban-Rural Dichotomy Background

Understanding Rural-Urban Dichotomy:

• Rural-urban dichotomy is the classification of areas into two distinct categories: rural and urban.
• It is based on the assumption that a clear and distinct division exists between rural and urban areas, which are seen as two distinct and separate entities in terms of social, economic, and cultural characteristics.

What is rural-Urban Continuum and how is it different from the Rural-Urban dichotomy?

Significance of Rural-Urban Continuum in Policy-Making and Governance:

Decoding the Editorial

The article discusses how effective policy formulation can be with a nuanced approach that takes into consideration the interconnectedness of the rural and urban areas that would eventually lead to sustainable development.

It analyses the 2021 World Bank Policy Research Working Paper, ‘Economic and social development along the urban-rural continuum-New opportunities to inform policy’. The Key takeaways are:

1. The traditional dichotomy of rural and urban areas is inadequate to understand and address issues related to poverty, education, health, and environment.
2. A continuum-based approach is needed to understand the diverse settlement patterns along the rural-urban gradient.
3. Policies designed along the continuum can help promote sustainable development, regional development, and infrastructure planning.
4. Adopting geographically nuanced perspectives in development can help address increasing spatial inequality and promote more effective development outcomes.
5. Policies designed along the continuum can help integrate policies across different development sectors.
6. Adopting a continuum-based approach can help address issues related to natural resource management by promoting sustainable land use practices and protecting ecosystems.

India’s best Example of Rural-Urban Continuum: Kerala

Kerala, a state in southern India, is often cited as an example of successful rural-urban continuum development with a thriving agricultural sector, a strong knowledge-based economy, and a high quality of life for its residents. This is because of:

• Land reform: Kerala underwent a series of land reforms in the 1950s and 1960s, which redistributed land from large landowners to small farmers. This helped create a more equitable distribution of land, which in turn led to the development of a strong agricultural sector.
• Education: Kerala has high levels of literacy and education, which has led to a skilled workforce and the development of a strong knowledge-based economy.
• Healthcare: Kerala has a strong public healthcare system, which has led to better health outcomes and a healthier workforce.
• Decentralization: Kerala has a strong tradition of local self-governance, with a decentralized system of governance that empowers local communities to make decisions about their own development.
• Social welfare: Kerala has implemented a range of social welfare programs, including a comprehensive public distribution system that provides food and other essentials to the poor.
• Infrastructure: Kerala has invested heavily in infrastructure, including roads, bridges, and ports, which has helped connect rural and urban areas and promote economic development.

Current Trends in Rural-Urban Continuum

Reasons for narrowing dichotomy:

• Globalisation:
  • Over the past few decades, technology and economic globalisation have increased mobility of resources and people, and enhanced inter- and intra-country connectivity.
  • The extension of transport and communication systems, improved access to energy, increased affordability private and public transport as well as penetration of economic and other networks into remote areas promote a rural-urban continuum.
• Melting of Physical Barriers: The barriers due to physical distance are melting as increasing rural-urban linkages have given rise to diffused network regions.
• Strong production-labour market linkages: Rural hinterlands are connected to multiple urban centres. The movement of goods, people, information and finance between sites of production and consumption has strengthened linkages between production and labour markets.
• Emergence of Mixed Economy Zones: As the pull factors grow, push factors driving populations out from both rural areas and urban areas are also intensifying. In the process, a mixed economy zone of primary and secondary-tertiary sectors has evolved.

The Real Challenge: Changing Ecosystem

The rural-urban continuum areas also witness changing ecosystems.

• Agriculturally productive lands are being given for other uses.
• Food security zones are being reconfigured.
• Areas for pollutant filtering are declining. There is an increase in waste dump, enhanced disaster risk, and elevated vulnerability.
• The access of local people to water, food, fuel, fodder and fibre from ecosystems is reducing.
• At the same time, intermediary market institutions are emerging to provide these goods, which have significant implications for the local people.
• There is also an escalation of market value of land, which further marginalizes them.

Systems Approach: A Possible solution

• The key challenge so far for decision-making has been the lack of rural-urban partnership. To build this, the author suggests a systems approach– where the city and the surroundings form a city region for which a perspective plan is prepared integrating rural and urban plans within a common frame. By this, the city and the rural areas will finally move towards a post-urban world where the rural-dichotomy will no longer exist.

Beyond the Editorial

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