Primacy in Gujarat

Introduction

Any phenomena arranged in a logical order as per importance is termed as hierarchy. As the hierarchy of the urban settlements in a region is in process of evolution the rank size relationship seeks to bring about order, regularity and harmony and tries to perpetuate itself through time. Although the rank size relationship need not necessarily prevail among the urban settlements of a region, its prevalence is rather desirable because the algometric Law is implicit in the rank size rule. Further, the prevalence of symmetry in different parts of any system in an aesthetic virtue.

It is observed generally that in a nation, there is less cities of more than a million as compared to those a lakh population size.

Objective

Try to establish primacy in the state of Gujarat in India.

Data Source

The data used in the project is secondary rather than primary.  Main sources of secondary data are as follows:

Ø  Town directory of India; states and Union Territories, 2001.

Ø  Census of India (2001): Administrative Atlas, Gujarat, Directorate of Census Operations, Pg. 11-14.

Study Area

Gujarat is a state in India. Its capital is Gandhinagar, while its largest city is Ahmadabad. Geographical extent of the state is 20°6' N to 24°42' N latitude & 68°10'E to 74°28'E longitude (Map 1).

Gujarat is located in western India and is bound by Rajasthan in the north, Madhya Pradesh in the east, Maharashtra in the south and by Arabian Sea in the West. Gujarat also shares a common border with Pakistan at the north-western fringe.

The state of Gujarat has been divided into 25 districts and into 226 taluks for administrative purposes.

Map 1 Study Area: Gujarat------.

Law of Primacy

Living in a third world city today has come to mean living in a very large city of more than 1 million inhabitants; more than 1/3 of urban dwellers now live in such cities          (this however is still lower than the situation in the U.s. where about ½ of the population lives in metropolitan areas of more than 1 million. Much of the growth of large cities or megacities relates to the rank size relationship of cities.

Intense urbanization focused or a single primate city provides the fuel that enables that city to grow into megacity. Many 3^rd that world countries contain a single primate city that is disproportionately large. A simple rule of thumb is that this city is significantly greater than twice the size of the next largest city.

Not all third world countries however are built around primate cities. In India, the four largest cities are primate within their respective regional spheres. There is more to primate cities than their population size. Primary also indicates a disproportionate sphere of economic activity, cultural dominance and political control. Primate cities tend to over whelm their countries, becoming the only destination of choice for ambition people and acting as the primary fulcrum of growth and development. Primate cities also contain the major cultural activities from movies to publishing houses to premier universities. Moreover many primate cities operate as the country’s capital with the major of the primate city being a major political force in his or her own right.

Theoretical Base and Concept

Certain geographers examined the size distribution of settlement and described in the graphical form the relationship between the number and size of settlements. It is a well known fact that in any country or region there are always a few larger settlements (cities) and a larger number of smaller settlements (towns and cities0. In other words, the number of settlements in any region is inversely proportional to the size of settlements. A relationship which is observed on the several occasions is called an empirical regularity. The rank size rule is one such empirical regularity.

The rank size rule was first observed by Auerback in 1913 but was proposed and popularized by G.K. Zipf a sociologist in his book “Human Behavior and Principle of Least Effort” in 1945. In the special case of a slope equal to one the rank-size rule is labeled “Zipf’s law”, named after the Harvard linguistic professor George Kingsley Zipf.

It is theory describing numerical distribution of settlement which recognizes an empirical regularity. Zipf further postulated that the relationship between size and number of settlements could be expressed in the following mathematical form;

Pr = P₁ / r^q

Where,

Pr  = Population of the r^th ranking city

P₁  = Population of the 1^st ranking city

r  = Rank of the city

q = Exponent

The value of q is often assumed to be unity, representing equality of the forces of unification and diversification. Under this condition an integrated and stable system of settlements is supposed to exist. The exponent q in the rank size equation cannot, however, assume negative values for in that case, the second ranking city will have a population greater than first. When the values of q range between zero and one, the decline in population with rank are gradual; values greater than unity for q indicate a very rapid decline in size of settlements with their rank. The former indicates the dominant role of forces of diversification, while the latter exists when the forces of unification are stronger than the forces of diversification.

Thus, the second ranking city of a country has one of the half the population of the largest city, the third ranking city, one third of the largest and so on down the scale. In other words, it says that if all cities in a country are arranged in order of decreasing population size, then the size relationship between the towns of cities of each rank is extremely regular with fewer larger cities/ towns and many small cities/ towns.

Forces of Diversification and Unification

He postulates that size and number of settlements in any nation are governed by two sets of forces;


1- Forces of unification
2- Forces of diversification

The balance between the two forces results in regularity of settlement size and number. Diversification creates a large number of small places each located near the resources, minimizing the transport costs of the materials to the people in the process. Unification leads to the population being concentrated in few large places with the raw material being transported to the people. However, it is not clear how the conflict between these forces is resolved into the precise form of the rank size rule.

Minimizing cost and maximizing efficiency can also explain rank size regularity. Very large cities are much costly to a society than smaller ones because proportionally ore infrastructure must be provided and maintained, creating a diseconomies of scale. Yet certain functions like stock exchanges and merchant banking are performed more efficiently in very large cities could be minimized and efficiency increased if the urban population was contained in a few larger cities which are less costly to society. This is the situation that rank size rule depicts, few larger cities and many small ones.

Method and Technique

As stated before, the relationship between a city’s population size and its regional or national rank gives rise to the rank size rule. The arithmetical formulae used for the calculation are as follows:

1. Put ranking of all the urban areas in the state in descending order.
2. Pi = P₁ – R_i ^-1

Where,

Pi = the predicted population of the urban area to be calculated.

P₁ = population of the 1^st largest urban area.

R_i ^-1 = rank of the urban to be calculated.

For instance, if one wishes to calculate the Expected Population (EP) of say the 3^rd largest urban area in a region or country where the population of the largest city is 1 million, on would proceed as follows:

Pi (Expected Population)    = 10, 000, 00 * 3 ^-1

                                                                        = 10, 000, 00 * 1/3

                                                            = 10, 000, 00/3 = 330000

3. After that  calculate the difference between the Actual Population and Expected population as

= AP (actual population) – EP (expected population)

4. Percentage Difference of the Actual Population (AP)

 = (Difference of Actual Population/ Actual Population) * 100

The degree of correspondence between expected and actual population lines determines the extent to which particular region or country follows the rank size rule.

Results and Analysis

The growth of population of urban areas in the decade 1991 – 2001 is as high as 33.5 % compared to population growth rate of 16.78 %in rural areas. As a result in 2001 37.67 % of Gujarat‟s population resides in urban areas.

Map 2 Spatial Distribution of towns in Gujarat, 1991

As per the provisional figures available, the district of Ahmadabad is the most urbanized district in the state where 80.09 % of the population resides in urban areas, while the district of The Dangs is a fully rural area having no urban population at all. The spatial distribution of towns of all classes in 1991 has been shown in Map 2. Most of the towns are located along the coastal areas. The numbers of towns in 1991 were 199. Density of towns is high in Gujarat. In Gujarat the relationship between size and number of settlement has shown a unique pattern. There are large number of towns with small population and small number of towns with large population. The primacy has been shown with the applicability of rank size rule in Gujarat. After giving the rank to every town, the relationship has been shown in the graphical form in Figure 2.

                                                                                                          Figure 2 : Rank Size Rule in Gujarat, 1991

In 1991, Ahmadabad was the primate city of Gujarat with population 2925344 followed by Surat (1505872) and Vadodara (1061598 ). The figure 2 shows the theoretical rank size rule where rank of the town size is plotted on the horizontal axis and the rank of the towns shown on the vertical axis. The population of the town has been expected on the basis of the population of the first largest town and rank of the town. The map 3 is showing the spatial distribution of towns on the basis of difference between actual and expected population. The difference between the actual and expected population if more in medium and small towns. Primacy is more in big towns then the medium and small towns.

Map 2 Spatial Distribution of towns in Gujarat, 1991

Whereas in 2001, the number of towns has increased to 243. The spatial distribution of towns is shown in Map 4. The density of towns has increased in 1991- 2001 decade. The forces of unification and diversification are responsible for the increase in towns.

Map 4: Spatial Distribution of towns in Gujarat, 2001.

The rank size relationship is shown in figure 4. The curve is gentle slope. The deviation of the actual population curve from the expected population curve shows the degree of primacy in towns of Gujarat. if the deviation is more than the degree of primacy is less and vice and versa. The gap between the actual and predicted population curve shows the difference both the negative and positive. When the actual population is less than the expected population the n the difference would be negative.

Figure 4 : Rank size Rule in Gujarat, 2001

The map 5 is also showing the difference between the actual and predicted population in each towns of Gujarat state. In 2001, the trend is similar to the 1991. Thin medium towns the difference is higher than the small towns. Medium towns are unevenly distributed over the space. This map enables one to identify the factors responsible for the the increase in the population size of the towns. The state of Gujarat has a very wide urban base. Unlike other states, the problem of over dependency on one city does not exist. The largest city, Ahmedabad, which is de-facto state capital, accounts for over 23 percent of urban population. About half of the urban population of the State lives in seven municipal corporation areas. The seven municipal corporations --Ahmedabad, Surat, Vadodara, Rajkot, Bhavnagar, Jamnagar and Junagadh (hereinafter referred to as “corporation cities”) - accommodate more than half of the state‟s urban population, indicating their primacy. Gujarat now has three million-plus cities - Ahmedabad, Surat, and Vadodara. The process of urbanisation is expected to intensify over the next two decades. The city of Ahmedabad is likely to grow into a mega-city with the inclusion of Gandhinagar, Sanand, Kalol and many other urban areas into its fold. Similar trends are anticipated for the other corporation cities.

Map 5 : Difference between Actual and expected population.

The number of large cities is increasing over the decades. In 1991, Gujarat had 21 large cities (Class I cities with a population of more than 100,000); 27 medium towns (Class II towns with 50,001-100,000 population); and 177 small towns (Class III-VI towns with a population of less than 50,000). By 2001 the number of Class-I and Class-II towns have gone up to 25 and 38 respectively. There is 81 and 57 number of Class-III and Class-IV towns in Gujarat. Of the total urban population 81 percent urban population resides in just 63 (Class-I and II towns) of the 242 cities and towns of the state.

Conclusion 

To conclude, Gujarat has primacy. Ahmadabad is the primate city in both 1991 and 2001. It is disproportionately large and its population is twice the size of the 2nd largest city. It provides services to the surrounding towns. Primacy is considered as the negative sign of the urbanization as it leads to regional disparity. Decentralization is method of decreasing the pressure on the primate city.