2008 Volume 60 Issue 6 Pages 501-515
Geography may be one of the better tools to help us in understanding Indian complexities and, of course, its potential is yet to be convincingly recognized by opinion leaders and policy makers. Geography in India has relatively a brief history, about 80 years only. Sixty-two university departments pursue geography teaching and research in this country, and five professional journals of geography have been relatively consistent in serving the research community in geography. Agricultural and land use studies, urban geography, population geography, and settlement geography were the topics of interest in human geography in the early period. Studies on agriculture, urban centers, population and social issues are the dominant fields now; GIS and remote sensing are the current tools with greater popularity. During the 1970s and 1980s, quantitative methods were widely adopted, making use of secondary data available from different government agencies. The application of statistical methods initiated some kind of search and urge for theory-building in geography in India. By the 1990s, computer applications and remote sensing became popular tools for geographers. Around this time, there were a few scholars who were advocating social responsibility in the subject, and so studies on gender issues, social conflicts, inequalities and disparities, and many other issues of human problems get some priority now.
