ABSTRACT
The national government and development-cum-banking agencies at the global level have paid scant attention to cultural and institutional factors determining the process of rurbanisation. The focus on rurbanisation would help in making the bottom section of the urban hierarchy visible and intelligible, and mainstream the problems of the vulnerable and marginalised. The urbanisation process in India since Independence has favoured metropolitan and larger cities, with small and medium towns tending to stagnate. There is an urgent need to build up an alternate macro-economic framework for understanding the economic geography in the country by recognising the process of rurbanisation. The demographic and economic growth rates in a few of the small and medium towns are very impressive, making a mark on the national map. It would be important to rescue urban studies from the paradigm of metropolis-based urbanisation, a paradigm which envisions urban processes in the developing world responding only passively to compulsions of global capital.
