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Class 12 Human Settlements: cheat sheet
CBSE Social Science. India’s villages and towns: clustered, semi-clustered, hamleted and dispersed villages, the Census definition of a town, urbanisation, and towns by age and function.
Key ideas
- Rural settlements live on land-based work; urban ones on manufacturing and services.
- Clustered villages are compact (fertile plains, or water scarcity as in Rajasthan); semi-clustered ones are fragmenting; hamleted villages split into units with local names like para, palli or dhani; dispersed settlements are isolated huts in hills and forests.
- By age, towns are ancient (Patna, Madurai), medieval fort towns (Jaipur, Agra), modern towns built by Europeans (Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata) and post-independence towns.
- By function, towns can be administrative, industrial, transport, commercial, mining, educational or tourist; most big cities become multi-functional.
- Satellite towns such as Gurugram and Ghaziabad grow around a metropolitan city.
- Cities serve their rural hinterlands with goods and services in return for food and raw materials.
Remember
| Census town (all three) | at least 5,000 people; at least 75% of male workers in non-farm work; at least 400 persons per sq km |
| Level of urbanisation | urban population ÷ total population × 100 (India 31.16% in 2011) |
| Density | population ÷ area |
| Urban growth in the 20th century | about eleven-fold |
| Function examples | Chandigarh administrative; Jamshedpur industrial; Kandla transport; Digboi mining; Pilani educational; Ooty tourist |
Watch out
- Calling a place urban when it passes only one or two of the three Census tests.
- Mixing up hamleted (one village in separate units) and dispersed (isolated huts) settlements.
- Saying clustered villages in Rajasthan are due to fertile soil (water scarcity is the reason).
Worked example
Suppose a place has 14,100 people, 62% of its male workers in non-farm work, and 790 persons per sq km. Is it urban by the Census definition? Explain.
Working: check: 5,000 people, 75% male non-farm workers, 400 per sq km
Answer: Not urban: fewer than 75% of male workers are in non-farm work
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