Chittranjan : A study in urban sociology

--Planned industrialization in Independent India under the successive Five Year Plans has engrafted many new towns on rural com-
munities. Chittaranjan is one of the earliest such urban centres where the locomotive workshop I forms the nucleus of the people
living in this town. Although Chittaranjan has a very significant place in the industrial map of India, it is interesting to study the way of life of' the people who man this workshop and their reactions to the conditions in which they live.
Mohammad Mohsin considers this polyetnnic, multi-lingual town as a land-mark in the history of Indian urbanism ; and sets out to study human relations in the workshop community which has changed its ecological base from land to the system of the machine. Painstaking research and observation, including 500 interviews conducted at the loco. town, form the basis of this sustained piece of' analysis which brings to the fore some very 'significant issues like the concentration of power in
the managerial stratum of the community, the imposition of the status hierarchy of' the plant on the community and the role of the plant as a determinant of community norms. In discussing these aspects Dr. Mohsin brings to light several pitfalls in planning which have affected the happiness of' the very people for whom it was meant.