Breaking down the question
The command word is elaborate — to unfold and develop a concept rather than merely define it. The concept in question is urbanism as a way of life, Louis Wirth's classic formulation, and the qualifier in India asks the candidate to test that Western model against Indian urban reality.
A strong answer will first state what Wirth meant — that the city produces a distinctive mode of social life flowing from its size, density and heterogeneity — and then examine how far this holds in Indian cities, where kinship, caste and community persist within the urban fabric.
The note on the growth of urban settlements in India supplies the empirical backdrop.
How to approach it
Open with Wirth's definition and his three demographic variables. Draw out the consequences he predicted — secondary relations, anonymity, segmentation of roles and a weakening of primary bonds. Then turn to the Indian case, showing how caste, kinship and regional ties survive and reshape urbanism, so that the Indian city is not a straightforward replica of the Chicago model.
Conclude that urbanism in India is a qualified and hybrid way of life — modern in form yet interwoven with traditional solidarities.
Model answer
Urbanism as a way of life is Louis Wirth's thesis that the city is not merely a place but a distinctive form of social organisation. Wirth derived it from three variables — large size, high density and social heterogeneity — which together generate a characteristic urban personality and social structure.
Wirth's model. As size and density rise, individuals can no longer know one another personally. Relations become secondary, segmental and impersonal; roles are specialised; and social control shifts from custom to formal institutions. The result is anonymity, tolerance of difference, and a measure of individual freedom alongside isolation and normlessness.
The Indian experience. Indian cities complicate this picture. Studies show that migrants carry kinship, caste and linguistic ties into the city, clustering in neighbourhoods and sustaining primary networks that cushion urban life. M. S. A. Rao and others describe urban villages and caste associations that reproduce community within the metropolis, so that impersonality coexists with dense particular loyalties.
A hybrid urbanism. Indian urbanism therefore blends Wirthian features — occupational specialisation, secondary institutions, spatial anonymity — with the persistence of family, caste and region. The rural-urban continuum rather than a sharp dichotomy better captures a society where the city modernises without fully dissolving traditional bonds.
Urbanism in India is thus best understood as a layered way of life: genuinely urban in its economy and institutions, yet continuously mediated by the community ties that migrants bring with them.
Examiner's perspective
Weak answers simply reproduce Wirth's three variables as if India were Chicago, ignoring the in India clause that carries most of the marks. The examiner is testing whether the candidate can hold a Western concept up to Indian evidence and register the difference.
High marks reward the move from Wirth's model to its Indian qualification — the survival of caste and kinship, the urban village, the continuum thesis — and a conclusion that names Indian urbanism as hybrid rather than uniform. Citing Rao or Desai signals command of Indian urban sociology within the ten-mark limit.