Urban growth and rural stagnation

The Indian coalfield around Jharia in Dhanbad District, Bihar, provides a striking example of urban growth and rural stagnation. An urban agglomeration of mining towns with a population of about half a million is surrounded by a backward countryside with a population of about one million people whose work in sub sistence agriculture shows no impact of the mining belt except for the negative one that some of the people prefer temporary work in the mines to the less rewarding task of converting barren land into rice terraces.

The structure of the rural mar kets, the limited adoption of innovations, the credit network and the failure of state aid to agricultural development all reflect a basic pattern of stagnation. The urban sector, however, shows signs of chao tic growth. The entrepreneurs are mostly outsiders who invest their profits in other parts of India. Even in the small scale iron processing industry people who come from within the district have not made a mark. The economic linkages between the urban belt and its immediate hinterland are thus conspicuous by their absence.

This is the second volume of the report on the Dhanbad Research Project of the South Asia Interdisciplinary Regional Research Programme of Heidel berg University. The first volume Zamindars, Mines and Peasants, edited by D. Rother mund and D.C. Wadhwa was published in 1978 The third volume Social Stratification and Political Structure edited by J.P. Neelson will be published in 1981.