Understanding India’s Urban Future

India is expected to add 416 million people to its cities by 2050—the largest projected increase in the world. Yet scholars of this rapid urbanization have overwhelmingly focused on large ‘megacities’ like Delhi and Mumbai, even though over 90% of India’s cities have less than 100,000 residents. Thachil’s project will examine governance and development challenges in India’s vast constellation of small cities. This multi-faceted data collection effort will yield novel insights about electoral politics, state-society relations, and the causes and consequences of weak state capacity in these numerous yet understudied urban spaces.