Bodh Gaya is a place of discursive identities, contesting aspirations and 'outstanding universal value to humanity'. It is a small town of global significance. In this article, I examined Bodh Gaya not just to understand what it is, but also to gauge its future. I started to speak from Bodh Gaya to remind us that small towns are not just questions of scale or size but also 'character'. Their peculiarities should not be undermined or generalised because of their size. Looking at an encounter of 'urban' to a fundamentally 'rural' place, it is considered that a rural-urban transition could possibly take place over time. However, in Bodh Gaya, this urban encounter turned into a 'dilemma' rather than a 'transition'. Here, the rural-urban dilemma refers not only to spatial and social disruption but also marks how planning regimes have produced this dilemma. It also allows us to examine what happens when a small town that is actually not a major urban centre in any way, needs to nevertheless perform as a global centre because of it religious, spiritual and touristic importance. I argue that the town is not witnessing a linear transition from the rural to the urban, but rather experiencing the social and spatial production of a 'rural-urban dilemma', specifically through a planning regime. I build my arguments through a review of spatial planning narratives and interventions in Bodh Gaya, focusing on changing governing narratives and spatial zones of differential infrastructure, associated with different discourses of belonging, residentship and urban futures. In conclusion, I argue that Bodh Gaya cannot delineate its future without addressing this dilemma.
