Urbanization In North East India

Contributed articles.

This volume explores the dynamics of urbanisation in Northeast India. It discusses the impact of the process of urbanisation on the environment, infrastructure and socio-economic conditions of the region. The chapters in the book: Examine various challenges and opportunities of urbanisation, such as frontier urbanism, urban congestion, smart cities, vernacular architecture, urban water and waste management, cross-border migration and ethnicity. Draw attention to critical issues that have massively disturbed the urban landscape including deterioration of water quality, seismic activity and air pollution. Give alternatives that could present possible solutions to the problems afflicting this region. Drawing on case studies rooted in extensive fieldwork, this book will be indispensable to researchers and students of urban studies, human geography, development economics, cultural studies and South Asian studies. It will also be of interest to policy-makers, government representatives and town planners.

Towns are the focal points of trade and administration. Administrative compulsions, economic and commercial necessities influence the location and development of towns. Strategic requirements also determine the setting up of new and small towns. New towns in North East India are over grown villages; trading centres with some rural development administrative outfits which become urban settlements. Most of the urban centres do not enjoy modern sanitation facilities, portable and safer water supply. Urban centre in North East India numbering 195 (1991) are like slum like situation with no civic amenities, education, health care, and modern sanitation facilities. There is hardly any agricultural surplus to sustain the urban life and social development. Social and economic compulsions lead people to migrate in urban centres where bulk of people live in dire poverty. These small towns do not have much scope and potentiality for genuine growth. They grow when Government administrative machinery expands. For their growth as vibrating life centres. North East India’s economy must be expanded with Agricultural surplus to sustain urban development. Appropriate steps must be taken to streamline the management structure by abolishing the system of multiplicity of authorities for urban planning and its execution.

Urban Mobility Development in Northeast India theoretically and empirically explores the interrelationship between and among city, transportation, economic growth and environment to contribute towards engendering green urbanization for green growth. In a time of aggravating environmental crisis, the book recognizes the duality of contrasting impact of city and transport to economic development and environmental degradation. To serve as a guide for policy research, the book accessibly presents a contextual study blending qualitative as well as quantitative methodology in the context of a highland as well as a frontier capital city of the Northeastern Indian state of Nagaland, Kohima, towards creating a sustainable city with an inclusive and green mobility. The book underscores that management of urbanization and urban mobility challenges should go beyond supply side management and demand side management by democratizing policy making as well as considering efficiency, equity, welfare and practicality concerns and suchlike rationales. By traversing from abstraction to everyday life, from global context to frontier context and from macro level to micro level, the book makes significant theoretical as well as empirical contribution. The book will be of use to students, researchers, policy practitioners as well as general readers interested in Urban Studies, Transport Economics, Growth Economics, Development Studies, Environmental Studies and Asian Studies, especially in relation to highland and frontier regions in developing economies in general and Northeastern Region of India in particular.

Papers presented at a seminar, held in 1996, organized by North East India Council for Social Science Research, Shillong.

Revised version of papers presented at the workshop: Problems, Prospects and Patterns of Urbanization in Manipur, held in 2005 organized by the Ereima Gender Empowerment & Resource Centre.