DOES A HIGHER LEVEL OF INFRASTRUCTURE INCREASE POPULATION IN LARGE AGGLOMERATIONS? EVIDENCE FROM INDIA

The present paper investigates the impact of infrastructure on the urban population concentration of large cities (population > 0.1 million) in India. It also assesses the status of large cities according to the availability of infrastructure and the quality of public services using data from the 2001 and 2011 Census periods. The results of Borda ranking show that cities (e.g. Shimla, Mysore, Kochi, Tumkur, Mangalore, and Thiruvananthapuram) provide greater infrastructure. Ordinary least squares regression based on factor scores estimated from principal component factor analysis show that although overall climatic condition encourages population agglomeration, spatial interaction and infrastructure have a negative impact on it. Therefore, our analysis suggests that improvement of infrastructure may not increase population agglomeration (measured by size, density, and growth rate of city population) in large cities, but will substantially improve the potential contribution of the cities to national economic growth in India by improving the ease of living and facilitating business activities.