(a) Critically examine the significance of Behavioural Approach in the development of human geography. 10 (b) "While scarcity of…

(a) The Behavioural Approach shifted human geography from objective spatial laws to the cognitive and decision-making processes that mediate between environment and action. Its significance lies in making perception, bounded rationality, and mental maps central: Pred’s behavioural matrix, Wolpert’s spatial choice theory, Lynch and Gould’s mental maps, and Hägerstrand’s time-geography showed that people act on perceived, not absolute, space. This enriched regional, urban and migration geography by explaining why similar places are chosen differently. It also made geography more interdisciplinary, linking psychology, sociology and planning. Yet it is limited: subjective data are hard to quantify, individualistic focus can ignore class, caste, gender and institutional constraints, and its policy applicability is uneven. In India, indigenous theoretical development remained limited, but behavioural ideas were applied in migration, urban settlement and consumer behaviour studies. Its legacy survives in humanistic geography, GIS-based cognitive mapping, behavioural economics and agent-based urban simulation. Thus it was a corrective, not a final paradigm.

(b) The statement is broadly valid. Water stress is experienced at the household, farm and city scale—drought in Marathwada, groundwater decline in Punjab and Haryana, salinity in coastal Andhra, and supply failures in Delhi and Chennai. Yet many drivers are global: climate change alters monsoon intensity and snowmelt; global trade creates virtual-water footprints as water-intensive crops move across borders; energy demand, industrial supply chains and urban consumption raise withdrawals beyond local catchments. Transboundary rivers add geopolitical dimensions. In India, groundwater over-exploitation, driven by pump-set subsidies and market-oriented agriculture, is a local manifestation of global price signals and export demand. However, global causes do not erase local responsibility: irrigation inefficiency, urban leakage, caste-based access and poor governance intensify scarcity. Hence the claim is correct in diagnosis but incomplete in remedy: Jal Jeevan Mission, aquifer mapping and crop-water planning must address global linkages while strengthening local water governance.

(c) The claim of CBD decline is partly true but overstated. Traditional Central Business Districts have lost some monopoly because metropolitan economies, especially in global cities, have become polycentric. Suburban office parks, edge cities and IT corridors—BKC and Andheri in Mumbai, Gurugram and Noida in Delhi, Whitefield in Bengaluru, Gachibowli in Hyderabad—draw firms seeking land, transport access and talent. Retail has shifted to malls, e-commerce has reduced footfall, and hybrid work has lowered office demand. Yet CBDs remain economic cores for high-value services, finance, headquarters, legal and institutional functions, where face-to-face coordination and agglomeration still matter. Mumbai’s Fort–Nariman Point and Delhi’s Connaught Place still host finance, government and legal institutions, even though BKC now commands higher office rents. The real change is not disappearance but redistribution: CBDs are now one node in a network of sub-centres, linked by metro rail and expressways. Thus the claim should be read as a decline of exclusive centrality, not of economic significance.

(d) Gender-sensitive regional development is necessary because growth without gender equity reproduces regional inequality. Women’s access to land, credit, transport, health, education and digital services varies sharply by state and district; NITI Aayog’s SDG India Index shows wide inter-state gaps on Goal 5 (gender equality). A gender-blind regional plan may build roads, industrial parks or urban centres that men use more easily, while women bear unpaid care work, safety risks and limited mobility. In rural regions, MGNREGA (now succeeded by the VB-G RAM G Act, 2025), Ujjwala, Sukanya Samriddhi and Beti Bachao Beti Padhao can raise women’s income, health and security, but their impact depends on local implementation, land rights and participation in Panchayati Raj. In urban regions, safe public transport, childcare, skill training and flexible work matter. Thus gender-sensitive development means sex-disaggregated data, women’s representation in planning and local institutions, and region-specific interventions that convert women’s labour and agency into regional productivity, not merely welfare.

(e) Rostow’s model is a linear, stage-based theory of economic growth. Its framework assumes that societies move through successive stages as capital accumulation, technological adoption, institutional change and rising investment create self-sustaining growth. The key mechanism is a shift from subsistence to industrial production, with leading sectors generating demand, employment and further investment. The stages are: (1) traditional society, limited technology and low productivity; (2) preconditions for take-off, where education, transport, finance and entrepreneurial attitudes develop; (3) take-off, when investment rises from 5–10 per cent to over 10 per cent of national income and leading sectors expand rapidly; (4) drive to maturity, with industrialisation spreading and the economy less dependent on any single sector; and (5) age of high mass consumption, where services, consumer goods and welfare dominate. Rostow saw growth as secular and cumulative. Though influential, the model is Eurocentric and underplays inequality, dependency and structural constraints, as seen in India’s uneven regional growth.