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This article provides information about the “How urbanisation is not a new phenomena but a ongoing process?”:
Urbanisation is an important driving force for commuting because urban areas offer many economic opportunities to rural people. Urban labour markets offer opportunities to switch jobs rapidly, diversify incomes, and become upwardly mobile with a very low asset base and skills although there is a lot of variation in the rate of urbanisation around the world. The pattern of economic force, not the rate of economic force, acts as a determining factor in the increasing rate of urbanisation.
Image Courtesy : everestuncensored.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/Unplanned-urbanization.jpg
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Economic growth based on the expansion of manufacturing industry, a trade mark of current globalisation, tends to be associated with higher rates of urbanisation while growth based on the expansion of agriculture is associated with the reverse. Though it is too early to say with certainty how agreements through WTO will affect urbanisation, it is predicted that if the economic growth pattern is shifting towards manufacturing, there is likely to be a higher rate of urbanisation than there would be with agriculture-based growth.
It is likely therefore those countries such as China whose comparative advantage lies mainly in labour intensive manufactured produces will see an acceleration of rural-urban migration, both temporary and long term. The driving force will be the expansion of labour- intensive exports, which will boost the demand for labour in urban areas, and widen wage gaps between rural and urban areas.
South Asia on the other hand is likely to have a greater emphasis on agricultural produce and export of skilled services such as IT, both of which may not create such a great demand for labour in urbanised areas. At the same time, cheap imports—a result of liberalisation measures and low import tariffs — can threaten local agricultural production systems with the result that illiterate people with a limited skills base might migrate to urban areas in search of work; There is also evidence that in India people move away from; farming sector due to macroeconomic reforms where reduction of subsidies and removal of inter-district movements of grains have put smaller fanners out of business. In such cases, the option before them is to migrate to places where there are better economic opportunities.
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Pharmaceutical corporations in the United States of America under the auspicious of Human Genome Diversity Programme are patenting the indigenous people themselves. They monopolise the use of seed, medicines and traditional knowledge systems and human genomes.
Even the life supporting systems of humanity such as land, water, wildlife, aquatic life, mineral resources became commodities in the present globalisation process at the cost of the lives and livelihoods of vast majorities around the world. This may result in environmental devastation, social displacement, wiping out of cultural and biological diversity. Also, the centralised management of natural resources imposed by trade and investment agreements does not have space for intergenerational and intra-generational sustainability.
Globalisation affects different categories of countries differently. While growth and expansion is visible in fully participating countries, moderate and fluctuating growth is seen in some countries attempting to fit into the new globalised framework and marginalisation and deterioration are experienced by many countries unable to get out of acute problems such as commodity prices and debt.
The uneven and unequal nature of the present globalisation process is manifested in the fast growing gap between world’s rich and poor people and between developed and developing countries and in the large differences among nations in the distribution of gains and losses. Polarisation among countries has also been accompanied by increasing income inequality within countries. In India, average incomes rose more rapidly in urban areas than in rural areas between 1993 and 2000, implying the widening gaps between rural and urban areas.