Urbanisation in the Eastern Himalayas

Urbanisation is still at a nascent stage in the Eastern Himalayan region of Bhutan, Arunachal Pradesh, Sikkim and the hills of Darjeeling in West Bengal. In the Indian portion of the Eastern Himalayas the history of the growth of towns does not go back beyond the late 19th century-while urban centres emerged in Bhutan only in the 1960s. Most of the hill urban centres that have subsequently emerged are small-with population even less than a 1000 in some cases.

The problem of urban development is a complicated process in the Himalayas as the entire human habitation is largely controlled by the natural environment. The unstable nature of terrain, heavy rain, soil erosion and mass wasting create many problems in the physical distribution of the towns and sometimes further complicates the situation in the long run. Problems are accentuated by the uneven distribution, unbalanced growth and disparity in the size of these small towns.

The number of studies relating to urbanisation in the Eastern Himalayas is negligible. The book includes articles by scholars from different disciplines like Anthropology, Sociology, Geography, History, Political Science, Economics and fills up the gap in this area.