New Delhi, July 14 -- Economic forces are usually more fluid than neat administrative definitions. The way we estimate urban population is a stellar example. Official statistics have for long undercounted India's urbanization. A settlement becomes urban only when a state government notifies it as so, or when it crosses a census threshold of population size and non-farm employment.

Neither test moves as fast as people do. Businesses invest, migrants arrive, homes get built, people take up urban livelihoods, villages begin to resemble towns. However, these settlements remain rural in government records.

Look at India from the skies and a different picture emerges. Satellite imagery does not care about administrative definitions. My collea...