25 Abstract India contributes more than 17 per cent of world’s total population and rank second in terms of human population globally. India, though predominantly rural, its urban mass shares 11 per cent of the world’s urban population,which is projected to rise to 15 per cent by 2050.The urban population growth rate in India is much higher than the rural growth rate and as a result, transforming rapidly to be an urbanized nation by 2050. This urban growth is inevitable and accompanied by increase in per capita income as well as country’s GDP but produce enormous stress on the eco-system. Due to rapid and uncontrolled urbanization, the environment is being degraded causing problems like land degradation, worsening of water quality, water scarcity, waste disposal, increase in industrial corridors, air pollution and slum areas in the periphery of cities. This paper present a detailed analysis of urban growth in India, which is based on secondary data collected from different sources.The distribution of urban areas, large and million plus populated cities along with polluted clusters across the state / UTs in the country has been depicted. The effect on urbanization has been studied in two key areas; economy and environment. The urbanization has shown a positive impact on the GDP of the country up to a certain level. Environmental sustainability of different states has been assessed in respect to urbanization. Rapid transformation of rural India to urban base is also causing sectoral changes in the employment pattern and gradually shifting avenues towards informal sector. The urbanization is essential for country’s economic development, but instead of smart and rapid transformation emphasis should be given on sustainable urbanization which would be free from slum-life of industrial city. Keywords: Urbanization, Economic Development, EPI, ESI, Smart City, Environmental Sustainability, Socio-economic Indicator Introduction Along with the world India is an integral part of the urban transformation, and is gradually shifting from its rural-base to urban. As per the Census of India 2011 out of 1.21 billion of total population of the country, 377 million lives in urban areas. This is accounted to 31.15 per cent of total population of India, however, there are wide variation of urban population among the states in the country. The decennial Rural to Urban India: A Sustainable or Smart Transformation? S.N. Nandy * ISSN 0975-8577 Volume 13, No 2, April-September 2018 pp. 25-36 Journal of Economic Policy & Research * HARSAC, CCS Haryana Agricultural University Campus, Hisar and can be reached at nandy.sn@ gmail.com