Small Town Ramtek A Traditional Sustainable Community in India

Abstract

S : The traditional settlements all over world are observed to have been developed near the natural resources like water bodies and/or the forest resource looking into availability of food and fodder. With time it grew in terms of population, economic activities etc. bringing changes in its settlements. The population increase gave rise of demand for the resources thus encouraging for the search of options for food, fodder,clothing and shelter. Ramtek is situated at the foothills of Ramgiri the last range of Satpuda mountain located at 45 kms on the North East of Nagpur in the vidarbha region of Maharashtra state of India. It hasseen the history of hundreds of years since the early settlement of Jainas on the North Western foot ofRamgiri hills. With time it observed the settlements by different communities like hindus and muslims. Today, it is observed to be one of the major religious centre in Vidarbha for Hindus, Jainas, Muslims and Buddhists with sufficient percentage of other communities. All these Communities have developed their own areas. With time they have got connected to each other and what we observe today is the small town connecting all the earlier traditional community settlements. If we look backward to use of resources theearly settlers might be using the resources from the local but with time and developments the footprint of the human resource has gradually increased. As per census 2011 Ramtek shows the population 22,310 souls. Moreover it has seen the developments in the form of residential areas, education centers, Industries,commercial areas etc. With these developments there is observed the change in the way of living, types of materials, construction techniques, water supply and drainage system, sewerage system. With this pace of physical growth can we expect the town Ramtek to be sustainable for the longer time? Whether this switchover is transforming the sustainable traditional community into unsustainable one? These are thet ypes of questions which needs to be thought by the architects, planners and sociologists....... This is an attempt to search the answer for the same by taking the example of Ramtek from Vidarbha region of the Maharashtra state of India.