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Frontier urbanism
Settlement evolution and transformation along the KalimpongāLhasa trans-frontier trade route1
Shrawan Kumar Acharya
Introduction
Frontier and borderland areas are often ignored in urbanism discourse, assuming they are marginal rural locations, removed from the urban influences. However, the Census of India in 2011 (Government of India 2011a) indicated that this impression is very simplistic and does not capture the urban reality of frontier areas like the Northeastern states of India. Though a majority of the Northeastern states have urban population lower than the countryās average of 31 percent, states like Mizoram and Manipur have about 51 percent and 31 percent urban population, respectively. Urban population in other sister states ranged from the lowest of 14 percent in Assam to 20 percent in Meghalaya, 23 percent in Arunachal Pradesh, 25 percent in Sikkim, 26 percent in Tripura and 29 percent in Nagaland. Regional variation indicates that the hill states are more urbanised than the lowland states like Assam. Northeast is also urbanising rapidly with decadal (2001ā2011) urban growth rates ranging from 13 percent in Sikkim to 27 percent in Meghalaya. Meghalaya, Manipur, Mizoram and Arunachal Pradesh have growth rates higher than the national average of 17 percent. Therefore, the narrative of low urbanisation needs to be revisited. What is of significance in the Northeast is that unlike other parts of India, urbanisation is predominantly driven by the growth of small and medium towns outside the boundaries of designated large urban local bodies. The built forms, consumption behavior and lifestyles outside the formal boundaries of towns and cities of the Northeast are also more urbane, requiring new perspective to understand the urban transformations in the region. This chapter intends to understand the processes that have determined the nature and pattern of frontier urbanism, along with the contemporary challenges associated with the rapid transformations along the old Indo-Tibetan trade route located on the Darjeeling-Sikkim border. In absence of robust secondary data, the chapter attempts to understand urban processes in the frontier region through a case-based exploratory study grounded on ethnographic and multidisciplinary approaches.
Literature and conceptual framework
Urbanism as a way of life was first discussed by Louis Wirth (1938), along with the idea of a ruralāurban continuum as a cultural construct in understanding transforming societies. Though the term was first used in urban sociology, today it is being used more by urban planners and geographers in their quest to understand place making, identity and cultural imaginaries (Barnett 2011). Urbanism has also been used to understand the role of urbanisation in the historical development of human society and the centrality of urban society in human progress (Soja 2000; Jacobs 1969). Based on these theoretical constructs, urbanism in the present chapter is being explored to understand the emergence and place making process in a small urbanising settlement called Pedongin the Darjeeling-Sikkim Himalayas, along with the factors that determine and shape the interaction of the inhabitants with the built environment and institutions, and thereby the evolution of urban communities and construction of their identity (Kong 2000). Many scholars have used the concept of frontier urbanism as representations of remoteness, conflict and contestation in urban areas (Pullan 2011; Jailley 2005; Kotek 1999). In the present study, the idea of remoteness due to distance from large and dynamic urban centers and peripheral marginal location along the international border has been adopted as against the idea of contestation within a single large metropolis. Many a times, scholars (Denis et al. 2012) have used the idea of subaltern urbanisation to explain the growth of small towns and settlements, while the present study is of the opinion that frontier urbanism cannot be explained by subaltern processes as understood in contemporary literature. In fact, what is subaltern in other areas is the mainstream in case of the Northeast India, and has to be given primacy in development discourse of the region.
Darjeeling-Sikkim urbanisation history
Before the arrival of the British, the region was sparsely inhabited, characterised by a subsistence economic space. The modern urban centers emerged only after the British arrival in the 1820s in Darjeeling. The predominant factors that led the British interest in establishing urban settlements in the initial period were driven by various considerations, of which health and strategic location were important. Later the establishment of schools, trans-frontier and local trade, infrastructure development, investment in enclave economy like plantations, tourism, missionary activities and administration drove the growth. As a result, besides Darjeeling, other urban centers like Kurseong and Kalimpong in the hills and Siliguri in the foothills came into existence. The colonial policy also encouraged and promoted weekly markets locally called āhatsā and fairs to promote exchange economy which resulted in the growth of many contemporary urban centers in the region. Even today, all the large urban centersāincluding Darjeeling and Kalimpongāhave weekly market days reminding the importance of traditional exchange function. The post-independence period saw further consolidation of urban process in Darjeeling due to its incorporation into the larger developmental, spatial and functional economy of India despite cessation of trade with China after 1950s. The major factors that have been instrumental in influencing urban processes in Darjeeling especially after the 1980s has been the political unrest and associated changes in the state intervention and ...
