Urbanization in Arunachal Pradesh: Trends and Patterns 1961-2000

An overview of the process of urbanization in the State of Arunachal Pradesh during the last two decades brings out the inadequacy of the existing institutional structure in managing urban centers in the “borderless” world of today. These institutions are noted to have least capacity to deal with the demands and pressures that are being generated as a result of the present focus of globalization. Managing these processes was considered to be an exclusive responsibility of the government and state owned and state led institutions, just a few decades back. Now, under a decentralized system of planning, it is viewed as a joint responsibility of stakeholders like industrial and business enterprises, public and private organizations and resident associations, etc. These tasks include providing the infrastructural services and other civic amenities etc. for the urban dwellers. Cities and towns are a product of complex forces that include market dynamics, over which town and city managers have only a limited control. Consequently the extent to which an individual city or town can accelerate or retard its economic, social, or for that matter, demographic growth, depend largely on internal dynamics and external factors boosting the dynamics.The new perspective, thus, urges the government at different levels in the hierarchy to function in collaboration with the other stakeholders, if they want to make an impact on the pace, pattern and trend of urbanization.