Given the several perspectives on economic liberalisation it would be useful to empirically examine the prospect of urban growth in future years. Taking into consideration the changes in the system of urban governance, land management practices as well as attempts at commercialisation of infrastructure and basic services in the 1990s, this paper analyses the trend and types of employment for males and females, in urban and rural areas at the national level using available secondary data, ISSUES concerning employment generation for different sections of population have always been important in India in the national agenda. Despite the absence of a clear and unidirectional relationship between unemployment and poverty, increase in unemployment at the macro-level is viewed with alarm and is taken to worsen the conditions of the poor. Importantly, there are apprehensions among planners, administrators and academics that the strategy of economic liberalisation and structural adjustment would result in increase in unemployment in the 1990s, particularly in rural areas A high rate of unemployment in rural areas is expected to accelerate migration to urban areas, increasing pressure on limited infrastructure. It is, therefore, understandable that reduction in unemployment should figure as one of the objectives of the Ninth Plan.
