An appraisal of urbanization status of villages in a particular block of West Bengal: An exploration through construction of a generalized Urbanization Index Mookherjee Subikash1, Pattanayek Sanjoy Kumar1, Mondal Debasish2 1Research Scholar, Department of Economics, Vidyasagar University, West Bengal, India 2Professor of Economics, Vidyasagar University, West Bengal, India JEL Classification Codes: C51, H54, O18 Online published on 13 February, 2018. Abstract Growing urbanization is a significant phenomenon of socio-economic development in developing countries. Urbanization means intensive economic activities by a large number of people in a relatively small plot of land, where secondary and tertiary sectors play a dominant role and where certain amenities are bound to be available. In India, the Census Authority usually looks after and provides data regarding the nature of a few urbane characteristics for the village units and thereby classifies a place as Census Town, which is considered as the lowest unit of urbanization. Census also provides data about availability of basic amenities for the common citizens living in a place, but these data are not considered so far to judge urbanization. This paper intervenes at this juncture and focuses on construction of a Generalized Urbanization Index for all the village units of a particular block, which will be comprised of both the census criteria for being classified as a census town and the amenities available to that place. Cleary the index, thus constructed, will provide us an exhaustive idea of urbanization of a rural place and statistical techniques become crucial in determining the relative weights of different parameters related with urbanization. Top Keywords Amenities Index, Census Town, Equal Weights, Principal Component Analysis, Urbanization. Top |