Need for a unified urbanisation plan

India’s 2027 Census, happening after 16 years, will classify a settlement as urban if it is either notified by a State as a statutory town or meets three census-town criteria: a population of at least 5,000, a density of at least 400 persons per sq km, and at least 75% of male workers engaged in non-agricultural work. Everything else will be counted as rural. This preserves comparability across Census years, but it also means the Census will measure urban India with a yardstick that our own economic and fiscal institutions have begun to move beyond.