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Read this article to learn about Region and various types of region in India!
What is a Region?
Another important social unit is the regional area. A region is a large area where there are a good many resemblances among the inhabitants. Lundberg defines region “as an area within which the people and the different constituent communities are conspicuously more inter-dependent than they are with people of other areas.28 a region may or may not coincide with state or national boundaries.
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It usually combines rural and urban communities into one unit. As we have seen above rural and urban communities are not something standing apart in isolation or antagonistic to each other. These two types of communities and human environment tend to coalesce.
Just as the city and country dwellers are being brought nearer to one another with improved means of communication and transport, the environments of the city and country are tending to become common possession of all those who inhabit certain large areas. These areas, the home of city and country alike, are the regions.
Regionalism:
The community feeling within a region is called regionalism. There is a difference between regionalism and sectionalism. The former implies an integral relationship with a larger whole, while the latter suggests segregation, separation and isolation. Sectionalism is a narrow loyalty to local interests and historic sentiment.
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Regionalism gives man a feeling of oneness with his fellows and with the earth they share. It involves a cultural wholeness. The people of a region have attitudes that look towards a large unit of stimulation, relationship and growth. It includes unity in economic and social functioning. As an economic and a social unit, a region requires broad based leadership, lest it should sink into sectionalism.
A fundamental aim of regionalism is the closer integration of the rural civilization and urban civilization. The aim of the regionalist is the “development of an integrated large community within which city and country each has its place and makes its contribution.”He seeks to bring about the elimination of isolation and of cultural backwardness in rural life and eradicate the impersonality and ethnocentrism of city life.
Each region is a locality having a “specific geographic character, certain common properties of soil, climate, vegetation, agriculture and technical exploitation.” This is the geographical requirement of a region. Besides, a region in so far as it is an integrated area of social life exhibits “a balanced state of dynamic equilibrium, between its various parts.” It means that technical or social changes introduced into any part of the region will directly or indirectly bring about changes in the entire region. Region is a community large enough to encompass a variety of interests and activities, urban and rural, industrial and agricultural, to ensure balance. Region must be a balanced and integrated community.
Type of Regions:
Odum and Moore have distinguished between five kinds of regions:
(i) A physical region is one which is demarcated by geographical factors. A large river valley surrounded by mountains is a well-known type of physical region.
(ii) A metropolitan region is a large city with its suburbs and all the surrounding area whose trading activities are carried on in the city.
(iii) A sectional region is one in which a particular set of folkways prevail.
(iv) An administrative region is governed by political boundaries determined by convenience or by accident or by political planning.
(v) Then there is the group-of-states region which usually possesses physical similarity, homogeneity and cultural uniformities.
Regions in India:
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Under the State’s Reorganisation Act, 1956 India was divided into four different zones:
(i) Northern Zone including Jammu and Kashmir, Punjab, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh and Delhi.
(ii) Western Zone including Maharashtra and Gujarat.
(iii) Southern Zone including Madras, Mysore and Kerala.
(iv) Eastern Zone including Assam, Bihar, Orissa and West Bengal.
These zones have been created to discuss economic and other matters of mutual interest. It is, however, difficult to find any community life among the various parts of a zone. Each state within a zone has its own language, its own traditions and its own social problems.
In this country there are variations of geographic factors, industrial and agricultural techniques, consumption habits and standards and nationality differences which are great difficulties in furthering the development of integrated regions which demand a more complete unification of interests.
The feud between Karnataka and Tamil Nadu over the sharing of Cauvery water and the dispute between Punjab and Haryana over the construction of SYL canal amply prove the absence of community feeling among the States comprising a region. Further, the growth of regional political parties has let to political bargaining and instability likely to cost the nation in terms of development, unity and integrity.