Do negative externalities have any impact on population agglomerations? Evidence from Urban India

India’s current haphazard unplanned urbanization has brought in its wake myriad problems like increase in number of vehicles, energy consumption, air pollution, noise pollution, violence, traffic congestion, traffic injuries and fatalities etc. In this perspective, the present paper tries to analyze and evaluate the trends and patterns of the different forms of urban negative externalities. It also measures the impact of negative externalities on city population agglomeration in India. In the absence of reliable city level data, the paper focuses only on 42 class I (population one lakh or more) cities in India and bases the analysis on four types of urban negative externalities i.e., number of registered motor vehicles, air pollution, road accidents, and crimes. The trends and patterns analysis suggests that urban India is currently witnessing a higher increase in the number and density of registered vehicles, air pollution, road accidents and also crimes. The OLS regression results show that negative externalities such as city wise air pollution, number of registered motor vehicles (measured by tractors and trucks density), and city-wise number of crimes have a negative effect on city population agglomerations. However, number of accidents, car density and total number of buses show a positive effect on city population agglomerations. Finally, this paper seeks to highlight the role of eco friendly public transport systems funded by the government in curbing urban negative externalities in India