Rural urbanization - In pursuit of alternative governance frameworks for new urban formations
Funding period: 1 April 2025 – 1 August 2025
Type of funding:
International Fellowship
Saurav Chakraborty is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Geography, Faculty of Natural and Mathematical Sciences, Presidency University, Kolkata. In 2023, he received his PhD in geography from Vidyasagar University in Midnapore, India.
His doctoral research, supported by UGC-India, examined the opportunities and problems associated with rural urbanization in West Bengal, India. From a methodological standpoint, it combined GIS and remote sensing with quantitative and qualitative techniques to enhance our comprehension of the emergence of census towns (CTs) in West Bengal, India.
Presently, Saurav is collaborating with the University of Leeds and CRCI, New Delhi as a CO-PI on a project funded by the British Academy named “Reframing the Urban via Southern Spatial Religiosities: Mapping Sufi Geographies in the Indian National Capital Region”.
He has interdisciplinary research interests at the intersection of urban geography, development studies, and environmental studies. He has also focused on studying the socio-ecological issues of large cities across the globe. The state of large cities and the potential for making them sustainable in the near future have significantly shaped his understanding of urban geography. His work explores urban sustainability and rapid urbanization in rural areas, especially in the Global South, focusing on India. He aims to bridge the gap between research on large cities and rural urbanization, fostering a dialogue to deepen understanding of urban challenges. He finds it fascinating to approach urban sustainability by considering both environmental and social aspects of urbanization.
As a USF International Fellow, he will be working with Dr Alexander Follmann at the Institute of Geography & Global South Studies Center (GSSC), University of Cologne, Germany. At the GSSC, Saurav aims to tackle urgent governance issues in CTs using three case studies from West Bengal, each offering a unique perspective on the challenges.
The implementation of the Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, the availability of basic sanitation infrastructure (such as solid waste management and drainage), and the associated tax burden are the three main, interrelated issues that his research highlights as making it more difficult to govern CTs. Significantly, he is aiming to suggest that an integrated framework for rural-urban governance is necessary to effectively address the current challenges faced by settlements located in the rural-urban transitional regions in India (such as CTs) and beyond.
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