Urbanizing delta: the sociospatial transformation of Indian Sundarbans

The Sundarbans has received tremendous attention from both the academic and policy communities around the world because of climate change, increased vulnerability, and outmigration. In spite of its high vulnerability, urbanization is taking place in the Indian Sundarbans area at a much faster rate, which has still not received much scholarly attention. This article tries to understand the pattern and processes of urbanization and examines the level of urbanization and growth rate of urban population in the Indian Sundarbans from the year 1991–2011. The study also investigates factors leading to the process of urbanization and reveals an increase in the densification of urban areas, using land use land cover maps. The secondary data has mostly been used for analysis in this article. The community development block level analysis has been considered to understand the level of urbanization. The study reveals that the level of urbanization in the Indian Sundarbans is relatively low (7.08%) compared to the national level (31.16%) as well as the state level (31.89%), but the growth rate of urban population over the last decade is unexpectedly high. In the Indian Sundarbans, the decadal (2001–2011) urban population growth rate is 384.43 per cent, which is 12 times higher than the national growth rate (31.80%). The article, built on arguments deducted from an analysis of secondary data and land use land cover maps, is more focused on understanding the process of urbanization.