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The Indian village, founded on the agricultural economy and craftsmanship, self-sufficient at least at its origins, is a spontaneous germination of a sedentary lifestyle and has kept some traditional characteristics almost unchanged over the millennia. Socially, the village (grama) preserved, until the colonial era, its community organization expressed in the Panchayat, the village council, and its caste composition implicit in the professional division of labor in the economy. Traditionally each village is represented by a gramini, a village chief, and in turn each village is headed by a territorial organization that includes several villages, governed by superior hierarchies. The relationship between villages and territorial units is linked to environmental conditions. The village has a more or less vast cultivated surrounding according to the goodness of the soil or the possibility of irrigation; its size also varies according to these factors. Before colonialism, the territorial plot founded on villages and rural centers was headed, however, in a political rather than economic sense, to the princely cities, seats of power, for which they were also conceived from the urban point of view (regular plan with nodal center represented by the palace of the prince and the temple, Hindu or Muslim), as in the wonderful examples of Jaipur, Agra, Madurai, etc. L’ zamindari (tax contractors) and of that absentee regime which has been one of the factors of the economic decline of India since the beginning of the century. XIX. Handicrafts, as well as agriculture, have also deteriorated, while the establishment of a modern commercial circuit has enhanced the best-favored centers from the point of view of communications, as well as the most profitable productive activities.

Thus was determined that hierarchy of small and large centers, which had already started after the penetration of Islamism, which form the territorial network of India, which belongs to a few large urban centers, enhanced by the railway connections of the nineteenth century. Among these focal centers, the first to emerge were the port cities, Kolcata and Mumbai were the first major bases of colonial India, along with Chennai; Delhi, which became important under the Turkish-Muslim rule, was instead strengthened for its function as a “hinge” of continental connections, between the Indus valley and that of the Ganges. These cities, to a greater extent than the others, underwent those economic incentives that also made them the destination of migration from the countryside, which was not very strong before the last twenty years. The migratory phenomenon, however, cannot be considered as a positive factor, because it was determined by the decline of rural life and was absorbed in a parasitic sense by the cities, unable to stimulate the countryside economically. Calcutta has had the greatest developments, which after the division between India and Pakistan was the refuge of many refugees, as well as Delhi and Bombay. These, like all large Indian cities, they have a large peripheral fringe where the urbanized masses are stacked temporarily, in often dramatic conditions; their absorption is slow, difficult, linked as it is to the country’s economic developments. Delhi, whose urban agglomeration counted, according to the 2011 census, about 16 million residents, is a “tertiary” city due to its administrative role, also revealed by its urban structures, in which New Delhi stands out as the seat of the government (this is properly the capital) and aristocratic neighborhood, where the new, airy colonial-era neighborhoods are juxtaposed with the old Muslim nucleus.

According to 3rjewelry, Delhi is the western node in the territorial plot of the Ganges plain, on the opposite side, in the Bengali delta, is Calcutta, the capital of West Bengal, river port and industrial city that has germinated around itself a series of other centers with which it forms the largest conurbation or city-region in India (14 million residents). Of an English style in its monumental part, it is for the rest a very large, squalid agglomeration, which houses many industrial plants on the outskirts (the oldest are those related to the processing of jute, the most recent ones connected to the exploitation of the nearby iron mines and coal); Calcutta, however, also welcomes many tertiary and commercial activities aroused by its port, the outlet of the Gangetic plain already valued by the British. The Ganges plain is home to numerous other large cities, some with industrial functions such as for the rest it is a very large, squalid agglomeration, which houses many industrial establishments on the outskirts (the oldest are those related to the processing of jute, the more recent ones connected to the exploitation of the nearby iron and coal mines); Calcutta, however, also welcomes many tertiary and commercial activities aroused by its port, the outlet of the Gangetic plain already valued by the British. The Ganges plain is home to numerous other large cities, some with industrial functions such as for the rest it is a very large, squalid agglomeration, which houses many industrial establishments on the outskirts (the oldest are those related to the processing of jute, the more recent ones connected to the exploitation of the nearby iron and coal mines); Calcutta, however, also welcomes many tertiary and commercial activities aroused by its port, the outlet of the Gangetic plain already valued by the British. The Ganges plain is home to numerous other large cities, some with industrial functions such as outlet of the Gangetic plain already valued by the British. The Ganges plain is home to numerous other large cities, some with industrial functions such as outlet of the Gangetic plain already valued by the British. The Ganges plain is home to numerous other large cities, some with industrial functions such as Kanpur (center of the textile industry) and Lucknow (Lakhnau), the capital of Uttar Pradesh; but this is a city of ancient origin, as well as others in the plain such as Agra, linked to Islamic affirmation, Varanasi (Benares), the greatest religious center of Hinduism, and Allahabad, a holy Buddhist city; Patna, on the other hand, is a communications hub valued in modern times. In north-western India the urban population is not very high, but there are ancient and historic cities enlivened by different activities: Jaipur, the capital of Rajasthan, Ajmer, Udaipur, belonging to the region of the Arāvalli; Jodhpur, at the southeastern edge of the Thar Desert. In the densely populated Punjab there are many commercial and industrial centers (Amritsar, Ludhiana, Jalandahar (Jullundur) etc.); Srīnagar, the highest center of Kashmir, has grown considerably thanks to its multiple functions. In Gujarat the former capital Ahmadabad it is a commercial metropolis with important textile and food industries.

In the Deccan, Bombay, the capital of Maharashtra, continues to be the major urban center; grown as a fundamental port in colonial times (it was “the gateway to India”), today it is a city rich in processing and manufacturing industries and is the seat of cultural and financial activities. It is well connected with railways to the Ganges plain, Rajasthan and the Central Highlands, where there are historic cities, old princely capitals such as Indore (Indaur), Bhopal, Jabalpur, enhanced by modern railway connections. These have particularly accentuated the hierarchical position of Nagpur, to the S of the Satpura, of Pune (Poona), an industrial city with satellite functions to nearby Bombay, and Hyderabad, the capital of Andhra Pradesh, a historic city linked to Islam (it is the former Golconda) of which it is still the largest center in India today, although it is also home to industries and commercial activities that affect the entire interior of the peninsula. Further to the S big city is Bangalore, the capital of the state of Karnataka. In the eastern Deccan the urban network gravitates to Chennai, the capital of Tamil Nadu and a very active port city favored by the British, also equipped as an industrial center (steel and mechanical industry). Other important centers of the Deccan are located at the mouths of the valleys on the coastal plain, such as Vijayawada and Rājahmundry. In the interior of the southernmost part of the peninsula is Madurai, the religious center of Hinduism, while on the coast of Malabar Kozhikode and Cochin are port outlets for a rich agricultural region. However, despite the fact that there are hundreds of cities with over one hundred thousand residents and, despite the trend towards concentration in large metropolises, it is the agglomerations of a few hundred thousand residents that record the highest growth rates, outlining a tendency towards rebalancing. of the country’s urban network.