Kathmandu:

The book — Rural Urban Relation with Particular Reference to Nepal by Prof Dr Pushkar K Pradhan is an attempt to cater to the needs of development practitioners, researchers and students interested in rural-urban relation analyses.

It provides theoretical concepts and practical aspects of spatial issues related to development of agrarian rural areas with proper intervention at the urban areas. The book focuses on settlement issues of development.

The author, a professor of Geography at Tribhuvan University and an expert in rural and regional development planning, holds that proper focus on management of rural settlement systems in the hilly regions of Nepal and launching urban-based and urban-driven development activities help develop vastly rural areas of Nepal.

He has provided a case of Rural Urban Partnership Programme (RUPP) launched by UNDP and the Ministry of Local Development as example to show how urban-based and urban-driven development model fits into Nepal’s development efforts.

Chapters 1-4 deal with concepts and issues in rural urban linkage, changing relationship between town and countryside, theoretical frameworks of rural urban relations and typology of rural urban relations, respectively. These give an overview of what towns and villages are, what should be the criteria to categorise them, how rural market centres have developed as towns and how human settlements have evolved over time.

This section is particularly important to development students who require basic understanding of spatial and settlement issues of developmen. Chapters 5-6 deal with methods of rural-urban relationship analysis and role of small economic enterprises in rural-urban relations. The-se two chapters help readers get some knowledge on technicalities of relations between the rural and urban settlem-ents and this in turn would come to use in designing proper development programmes by any practitioner.

Chapters 7-9 are related to planning and policy formulation in rural and urban linkage development issues. These chapters would prove to be much useful for development planners, policy makers and development practitioners alike.

A proper analysis of problems related to rural urban relations, towards the end of the book, has, on one hand, reflected the author’s expertise on the subject and on the other given issues for consideration by development workers while designing any development activity.

Prof Pradhan should have included more case studies depicting rural urban relations and also programmes launched by several agencies to the effect.

The book is intended for development practitioners in general and students in particular and therefore it would be of less use to other amateur readers.