The Geography of Padra Town (An Old & Rare Book)

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I have very great pleasure in writing this short foreword to Mrs. Janaki and Miss Sayed's monograph on the Geography of Padra Town. It is the first monograph in the Baroda Univer sity Geographical Series. We have a number of regional geographies dealing with continents and separate countries of the world. But there are very few books written in this country dealing with geographies of urban areas or small towns. Mrs. Janaki is, therefore, to be congratulated for writing this very exhaustive and full geographical survey of a small town of Padra not far from Baroda. As the writer says "The aim of geographical research is to combine, relate, compare and interpret a great mass of facts which bear upon the very interesting subject man and his home. It brings the sciences of Man with the sciences of Nature-Man and Nature, Man in Nature not Nature alone nor Man alone-these are the true subjects of geography." The authors have admirably done their job bearing in mind this wide concept of geography. They have dealt with all the aspects of the lives of people living in the town of Padra. The authors give us a socio-economic picture of the town. They discuss its population and demo graphic problems. The monograph deals with ethnological and anthropological aspects of its population. It deals with the physical features including climate. They have traced also historically the development of this town from old available records. The monograph contains. excellent maps and illustrations. It is a very welcome addition to the existing scanty geographical material dealing with different regions of our country and especially small towns and containing a mine of information on all aspects of the life in this small town.

There are many schemes in the Five Year Plans of India for village uplift and rural re construction-an outcome of the firm belief that India is a land of villages. There are also plans underway for reconstructing and re-modelling the great cities. While both these are essential in building a new India, it is equally urgent that the needs of the small town must be attended to. These over-crowded village-towns of India pose problems of unhygienic living, unemployment and poverty as they have neither the facilities of the village nor those of the city. If planning is meant for the betterment of the people, these towns must receive the attention of planners. It is with this in mind that a small town survey was undertaken. The survey is also interesting from the point of view of methodology. Urban studies have been undertaken by scholars of Economics, Sociology and Geography in India and elsewhere. Geographers abroad have studied towns minutely from different angles. The problems of these towns are great and varied. Their studies however have been based on a vast amount of data available for the region as a whole and the city in particular. Geographers in India, with the limited data at their disposal, have studied the historical evolution, population growth, functional classification of towns and the land use pattern within the town. Some have studied the urban field of the town demarcating this elusive boundary by different methods. More often however Urban Geography has tended to be studies of functional zones to emphasise the urban land use pattern. In India particularly this method has been used to the extent of finding zones where they do not exist.

Most of our towns have had an unplanned growth from a self-sufficient village to an over grown village-town and thence to a city. There was no separation of work places from residence in the ancient villages and towns. Industrial units were small so that they covered perhaps a street or a few shops in a street. Manufacturing and selling were undertaken by the same unit. The present land use pattern in towns is a superstructure on this old pattern so that functional zoning becomes almost impossible. Functional zoning in India is perhaps possible in the planned extensions of towns, in areas which are semi-developed or in some parts of the great cities. Further, few Geographers in India have studied the effect of caste hierarchy and caste func tion on the morphology of a town. The ancient crafts were based on caste and there was a clear cut distribution of castes in the towns and villages of India. This is a feature which does not exist in the West where social studies of towns have been based on income groups. While a study of income groups and their distribution in the Indian towns would be useful, the powerful effect on the morphology of the town, of caste-functions and the segregation of castes in different areas in the early stages of town development require to be analysed. An attempt has been made to explore the possibilities of caste-function zoning in this monograph. Such features are often overshadowed by other social structures and industrial patterns in the large towns, but they are partly visible in the small towns of India. More studies of this kind would perhaps yield enough material to make a regional classification and deduce laws regarding urban zoning in India. The urban field has also been studied carefully to emphasise the need for regional planning. The regional basis of the town is again more clearly visible in small towns whereas in the large towns it is lost in a maze of commercial and industrial influences.

The choice fell on Padra because it is one of the typical small towns of Gujarat and its easy accessibility from Baroda permitted intensive field work. Part of the material for this monograph was originally collected by Z. A. Sayed for her dissertation in part fulfilment of the M.A. degree. The material and data have however been completely revised, re-written and re-arranged to bring out certain aspects of urban geography. Chapters III, V, VI, and VII are new and have been added after further field work. Much of the material has been collected through personal enquiry, observation and work in the field and from the records of the Mamlatdar, Municipal and Octroi offices and other local institutions. The history of the town (Chapters I and V) is shrouded in legend except for a few refer ences in the Gazetteers and Histories of Gujarat. Archaeological remains however gave some clue and the history of the region enabled us to undetstand the stages in the development of the town. The data on population (Chapter II) was complete in the Census Reports although the Census of 1951 did not cover information regarding caste and community. This had to be taken from the National Registers of 1951 Census. The distribution of caste and community in the town area had to be contrived out of a streetwise observation in the town. Map XV therefore could not be based on actual statistics.

Recorded evidence of the industry and commerce of the town was not available. The data had to be obtained from wholesale merchants or mills. Information regarding export and import, available in the octroi office, was incomplete. A large part of the trade of Padra is in the hands of agents and middle men or small dealers, some of whom are not residents of Padra. Records of this trade were not available. Chapter III is entirely based on wholesale dealing of commodities which forms only a part of Padra's trade. The Socio-economic survey (Chapter IV) presented some problems. Most of the people at first would not respond to queries. In some cases they hesitated to give correct figures of income. The figures of expenditure were often exaggerated. Many people did not maintain an account. Errors and inaccuracies were reduced to the minimum by devoting more time to each sample and putting several supplementary questions. A questionaire was prepared and detailed information was collected from each family. The morphology of the town (Chapter V) has been completed by actual survey and from a knowledge of the history of the town and region. Many changes have taken place during the course of centuries. Original functions have been superimposed by new functions. The extensions of the town have changed the original pattern. Streets and houses have grown un planned, giving the town a very intricate morphology. Mapping of the functional zones and areas has not been attempted as such clear cut divisions of the town do not exist. Several maps have been drawn to show the location of the different functional units as these were more in keeping with the multi-functional nature of every part of the town. A sample survey of Zanda Bazaar, the core of the town, the area which has undergone several changes and is still adjusting to new changes, has been carried out to emphasise the multifunctional character of the town. An attempt has been made to attribute this character to the old caste and occupation structure.

**Contents and Sample Pages**