In the present era of globalisation and world economy, development aims at integrating physical development with the economic, social and political aspects to achieve environmental quality. Sustainability has become the major concern in the development paradigm the world over due to the damage to the biosphere resulting from human activities. Checking environmental degradation and replenishing and restoring nature’s resources for the use of future generations, thus form the main goals of sustainable development. Natural resources are being depleted through over-use and interference and interruption in the natural ecological processes leading to desertification, deforestation, loss of biodiversity and other related issues. At the same time, human development activities have resulted in over-population, urban sprawl and industrial pollution that are causing tremendous harm to the existing environment and causing many irreparable damages. Hence, economic development, social development and environmental protection form an integrated concept that is normally referred to as sustainable development.“Sustainable regional development” is another term that is now being used to introduce the idea of sustainability in the process of regional development. This is aimed at ensuring that the fruits of economic and social development are shared by all. It aims at providing greater opportunities for income generation, economic growth, and social development through judicious use of existing resources, preventing destruction of the ecosystem and protecting the biosphere. Community participation is an essential component of sustainable regional development as it is essential to ensure long term carrying capacity of regions. In this background, the present study is an attempt to give an account of the path of development being followed in one of the regions of India, viz., Gujarat, considering development as economic growth, as distributive social justice and as modernization, and identifying to what extent the development in this region can be considered as sustainable.