Off Track Development: Where is it?

In context of the roads providing ample scope of development fits well with the changes being observed along the road in most of the states. In fact people would like to associate with various class of roads in order to be seen as living in progressive regions. Its natural to see cities and town growing along the major nodes. But all may not be lucky enough. The settlements have been coming closer to the roads, whether its rural village road or national highways. But given this scenario what would be scope of development beyond the road influence areas. May be the services would be poor

and people would not like to stay there for long.

Some how we have just connected the roads but not connected the economies of the human settlements, the understanding of the settlement growth as given by the popular theories like Christaller or Losch the linkages are not comparable. The pattern across the developed and undeveloped regions varies and there is little explanation for the resource-economy based development path. The governments would be wise enough to provide the connectivity leading to exchange of economies but most of the time its one-way traffic between the settlements. The larger the settlements the greater would be dependency on the hinterland, but would there be scope for returning the benefits to the hinterland. Ideally some value added good

s and services should flow back, but restricted by the economic and social backwardness of the hinterlands.

Beyond the influence zone of the roads, the settlements suffers from the consequential backwardness and keeps on stagnating till the large urban conglomerations are formed to erase the settlements identity. Those settlements far off from the development track often stagnates or becomes uncompetitive resulting shifting of the population further aggravating the problem.

Whether the technological progress in Geomatics - GIS or remote sensing can be used for assessing or addressing these issues? Specific Growth Centers or Poles to boost the regional development calls for serious spatial analysis, which we are missing from the econo- centric planning approach to national, state and district plans. Can we start revisiting some old regional development concepts?