Rural settlements

The essentials

Rural settlements are closely related to land; their people are mostly engaged in primary activities like agriculture, animal husbandry and fishing. The type of rural settlement depends on the nature of the terrain, altitude, climate, availability of water, social structure (caste, ethnicity), and security considerations.

Key points

• Clustered (compact or nucleated): houses are close together, with surrounding fields. Found in fertile alluvial plains and in the north-eastern states. Sometimes people live compactly for security or defence, as in the Bundelkhand region of central India and in Nagaland. In Rajasthan, scarcity of water forces people to live near available water sources.
• Semi-clustered (fragmented): result from the tendency of clustering in a restricted area or the segregation of a large compact village. Often, a dominant community occupies the central part, and lower-status groups settle on the outer flanks. Common in the Gujarat plain and some parts of Rajasthan.
• Hamleted: the settlement is fragmented into several units physically separated from each other but sharing a common name. The units are locally called panna, para, palli, nagla, dhani, etc. Common in the middle and lower Ganga plain, Chhattisgarh and the lower valleys of the Himalayas; often a result of social and ethnic factors.
• Dispersed (isolated): isolated huts or hamlets in remote jungles, on small hills, or on slopes with fields and pastures. Found in Meghalaya, Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh and Kerala; extreme dispersion is often due to fragmented terrain and limited land.

Exam tips

Link each type with its cause: fertile plain → clustered; defence → clustered; social segregation → semi-clustered or hamleted; rugged terrain → dispersed.

Common mistakes

Hamleted and dispersed settlements are different: hamlets are groups of houses sharing one village name, while dispersed settlements are scattered individual huts or very small hamlets.