As a branch, Geography of Health has made significant strides in the period underreview. It has progressed from studies in ecological associations of diseases and attemptsat disease mapping, to investigations into a wider perspective of health and health carewith a focus on human welfare. Cultural and the structural approaches to address theproblems of health and place are dimensions that distinguishes this field of enquire fromits past. However, many, if not all studies stop at a cartographic representation of diseasesshowing inter-state or inter-district variation in the prevalence pattern and hardly movebeyond the level of description.
Social Wellbeing and Transformation
Studies pertaining to health dominate in this field while issues concerning housingand social pathology remain neglected. Most studies continue to rely on cartographicrepresentation of facts without placing the issues in a proper theoretical context. Recentimpacts of globalization, liberalization and economic restructuring which are bound to have immense effects on the process of social transformation and social well-being find rare mention by Indian geographers.
Political Geography
Political geography in India has been a neglected field of inquiry in the past, and
continues to be marginalized even at present. This is in spite of tremendous potential ofthe sub discipline in contributing to varied political problems directly linked to
geographical backgrounds and territorial identification as well as external space-relations.
Unfortunately barring a few notable exceptions, much of the interest is centred on
electoral geography. The field needs to shed its conventional mould and concentrate on
issues of urgent national importance such as political implications of social and cultural
pluralism and related issues of conflict as well as integration, problems of nation
building, federalism and above all the political geography of underdevelopment.
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