ABSTRACT
The development of planned towns and corresponding land-use change is a wide-ranging phenomenon and extensively studied. Agricultural land acquisition for such development and associated chaos is also being widely studied, but long-term effects on the natives, who were living there even before the development of the planned town, remained uncovered. To feel the gap, here an attempt has been taken to study the natives of New Town, Kolkata. This chapter discusses in-depth discourse on the consequences of agricultural land being transformed into a planned town. New Town, Kolkata is a planned town, developed during the 1990s on a low-lying agricultural land to meet the growing needs of Kolkata. Consequently, natives, including land losers are affected most. Study reveals that the natives lost their means of livelihood. At the same time, they also had to adjust to the well-furnished, costly surrounding environment. However, they do not also have enough eligibility to compete with the newcomers in New Town.
