Evolution of Zipf's Law for Indian Urban Agglomerations vis-\`{a}-vis Chinese Urban Agglomerations

TL;DR

This paper analyzes the evolution of Zipf's law in Indian urban agglomerations from 1981 to 2011, developing a method to track power law changes over time and contrasting findings with China's urban growth patterns.

Contribution

It introduces a novel methodology to monitor the power law coefficient's evolution in growing countries and empirically tests Gibrat's law in the context of Indian urbanization.

Findings

Power law tail is prominent in Indian urban distributions.

The evolution of the power law coefficient differs from China's case.

Gibrat's law is empirically supported in India.

Abstract

We investigate into the rank-size distributions of urban agglomerations for India between 1981 to 2011. The incidence of a power law tail is prominent. A relevant question persists regarding the evolution of the power tail coefficient. We have developed a methodology to meaningfully track the power law coefficient over time, when a country experience population growth. A relevant dynamic law, Gibrat's law, is empirically tested in this connection. We argue that these empirical findings for India goes in contrast with the findings in case of China, another country with population growth but monolithic political system.