Vernacular Urbanism and Market Transformation: A Case Study of Gram Sevak Training Centre (GTC) in Pasighat, Arunachal Pradesh

Corresponding Author: Dibyajyoti Das
Assistant Professor, Department of Anthropology, Rajiv Gandhi University, Rono Hills, Doimukh, Itanagar.
Email: dibyajyoti.das@rgu.ac.in

KEYWORDS Vernacular urbanism; Informal economy; Frontier towns; Northeast India; Youth entrepreneurship

ABSTRACT
Background: Frontier towns in Northeast India remain marginal within Indian urban anthropology despite their complex historical layering and rapidly expanding informal economies. The locality, popularly known as “Las Vegas” in Pasighat, Arunachal Pradesh, formerly the Gram Sevak Training Centre (GTC), presents a critical site for examining how vernacular urbanism emerges at the intersection of indigenous land regimes, wartime infrastructures, postcolonial development, and post-pandemic economic shifts. Historically, the area has undergone a transition from precolonial Adi agricultural land to a U.S.-linked wartime logistics zone during the China-Burma-India (CBI) theatre and Hump airlift (1942-1945), then evolved into a post-independence agricultural training complex, and ultimately became a vibrant informal commercial hub.
Methods: This study draws on 48 days of ethnographic fieldwork conducted between December 2024 and February 2025. Methods included participant observation, semi-structured interviews with eighteen informants, oral histories, visual documentation, and nine in-depth case studies. The researcher’s insider positionality enabled access to sensitive narratives concerning land contestation, informal governance, nocturnal economies, and youth entrepreneurship. Data were analysed through thematic coding and narrative analysis. 
Results: Findings show that the contemporary marketplace emerged through pandemic-induced return migration, youth-led informal entrepreneurship, kinship-based labour systems, improvised spatial practices, and unlicensed food and alcohol trade. Operating as a 24-hour commercial zone, the area is sustained by students, travellers along NH-515, and nearby institutional populations. The organic naming of the locality as “Las Vegas,” along with vernacular expressions such as Pesikore Among (land of business) and Yupbom Dobom Simape Pesikore Iko Among (land of business whilst not sleeping), articulates local aspirations for visibility, modernity, and uninterrupted economic activity amid overlapping claims between state-owned GTC land and reclaimed tribal land.
Discussion: The case of Las Vegas (GTC) exemplifies a form of frontier vernacular urbanism, where historical memory, mobility, informal governance, and youth agency converge to create urban space beyond formal planning. The study contributes to Northeast Indian urban anthropology by foregrounding small-town, frontier pathways of city-making shaped by informality, resilience, and cultural imagination.

Kanggong Kabit Moyong¹ and Dibyajyoti Das²*

¹PG Student, Department of Anthropology, Rajiv Gandhi University, Rono Hills, Doimukh, Itanagar
²Assistant Professor, Department of Anthropology, Rajiv Gandhi University, Rono Hills, Doimukh, Itanagar

DOI-DS: 01.2026-88429917
DOI Link :: https://doi-ds.org/doilink/01.2026-88429917/Frontier_Anthropology/2025/14/A4/KKM

Frontier Anthropology, 2025, 14: 19-29
©Anthropological Society of Manipur

Original Article

Manuscript Timeline
Submitted: August 25, 2025
Accepted: December 10, 2025
Published: January 9, 2026