Urban discourse in India as an object of study is of recent origin, despite India being one of the earliest urban civilizations known to mankind. The urban question in India’s early decades of development planning after independence typically started with a stopper: “but the urban environment is not important, it is in the villages that India must succeed or die… investments of time, capital or planning in the cities only aggravates things by attracting more innocent from their villages” (Benninger, 1971, p.12). While it is true even today that the majority of India’s population live in rural areas, it is, however, unreasonable to accept the “polemical discourse” of the after independence development planning that forces upon the country a policy of urban neglect. Urban development policies formulated “reluctantly”, based on these arguments, are, as we argue in this chapter, often counterproductive to not only the urban poor but also the rural poor (Ibid.).