Characteristics of recent urbanisation in India in light of the divergent development paths of metropolises.

India is one of the fastest growing and developing economies as well as societies of the world. An evident consequence of this trend is urbanisation, which poses an immense challenge for the population and political decision-makers of the country, and it is one of the most important social geographical topical research trends concerning India. First, this paper introduces the general urbanisation trends experienced in sovereign India in the 1951-2011 period, in the framework of an analysis of statistical data recorded in censuses, indicating the volume and trends of urbanisation. This step is followed by the demonstration of the structural features and diverse development paths of the million-plus agglomerations (i.e. agglomerations with at least a million inhabitants), connected to one of its main characteristics depicted by this introductory summary: metropolisation. This also allows the demonstration of the differences between the statistical and functional interpretation of metropolitan areas. Using the quantitative categories defined during the analysis, the authors classify the metropolises of India in terms of types of urbanisation through cluster analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]