All exercise questions from the NCERT textbook India: People and Economy, Chapter 2, “Human Settlements”, exactly as the English edition prints them, with a full model answer for each. Try your own answer first, then check it against this one.
1 Choose the right answer of the following from the given options
Q. Which one of the following towns is NOT located on a river bank?
(a) Agra (b) Bhopal (c) Patna (d) Kolkata
Answer: (b) Bhopal. Agra stands on the Yamuna, Patna on the Ganga and Kolkata on the Hooghly; Bhopal, by contrast, is known for its lakes and is not a river-bank town like the other three.
Q. Which one of the following is NOT the part of the definition of a town as per the census of India?
(a) Population density of 400 persons per sq km. (b) Presence of municipality, corporation, etc. (c) More than 75% of the population engaged in primary sector. (d) Population size of more than 5,000 persons.
Answer: (c) More than 75% of the population engaged in primary sector. The census’s actual definition requires at least 75 per cent of male workers engaged in non-agriculture pursuits, not “more than 75% of the population” in the “primary sector”: option (c) gets both the base (population, not male workers) and the sector (primary, not non-agriculture) wrong, which is exactly what makes it the one that is NOT part of the real definition.
Q. In which one of the following environments does one expect the presence of dispersed rural settlements?
(a) Alluvial plains of Ganga (b) Arid and semi-arid regions of Rajasthan (c) Lower valleys of Himalayas (d) Forests and hills in north-east
Answer: (d) Forests and hills in north-east. The chapter places dispersed settlements in Meghalaya, Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh and Kerala, fragmented, forested hill terrain matching this option. The alluvial plains of the Ganga and the arid/semi-arid parts of Rajasthan are both, in fact, home to clustered settlements in this chapter (Rajasthan precisely because of water scarcity), and the lower valleys of the Himalayas are home to hamleted settlements, which is exactly what makes those three options convincing distractors.
2 Answer the following questions in about 30 words
Q. What are garrisson towns? What is their function?
Answer: Garrisson (cantonment) towns are towns that emerged as military stations for stationing troops, such as Ambala, Jalandhar, Mhow, Babina and Udhampur. Their function is defence and military administration rather than trade, industry or civil administration.
Q. What are the main factors for the location of villages in desert regions?
Answer: In desert regions such as Rajasthan, scarcity of water is the main factor: villages are located and built compactly around the few available water sources, so that the limited water resources can be utilised to the maximum extent by the whole community.
3 Answer the following questions in about 150 words
Q. Discuss the features of different types of rural settlements. What are the factors responsible for the settlement patterns in different physical environments?
Answer: Rural settlements in India are broadly of four types. Clustered (agglomerated/nucleated) settlements are a compact, closely built-up area of houses, with the living area distinct from the surrounding farms, barns and pastures, often forming a rectangular, radial or linear street pattern; they are found in fertile alluvial plains and the north-eastern states, and are also adopted for security in Bundelkhand and Nagaland, or to make maximum use of scarce water in Rajasthan. Semi-clustered (fragmented) settlements arise either from clustering within a restricted area of a dispersed settlement, or from the fragmentation of a large compact village, with the land-owning, dominant community occupying the central part and lower-strata or menial workers settling on the outer flanks; they are widespread in the Gujarat plain and parts of Rajasthan. Hamleted settlements are fragmented into several physically separated units bearing one common name (locally panna, para, palli, nagla or dhani), a pattern driven by social and ethnic factors, and found in the middle-lower Ganga plain, Chhattisgarh and the lower valleys of the Himalayas. Dispersed (isolated) settlements appear as isolated huts or small hamlets in remote jungles or on small hills, caused by an extremely fragmented terrain and land-resource base, as in Meghalaya, Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh and Kerala. Overall, physical features (terrain, altitude, climate, water availability), cultural and ethnic factors (social structure, caste, religion) and security factors (defence against thefts and robberies) together decide which pattern develops where.
Q. Can one imagine the presence of only one-function town? Why do the cities become multi-functional?
Answer: It is difficult to imagine a town performing only one function, because even a town classified under a single dominant category (administrative, industrial, commercial, mining, transport, garrisson, educational, religious/cultural or tourist) in practice carries out several functions at once alongside its specialised role. Cities become multi-functional mainly as they grow: when a specialised city expands into a metropolis, industry, business, administration and transport all become important together, and these functions get so intertwined with one another that the city can no longer be placed in any single functional class. This is why the chapter describes cities as dynamic rather than static in their function.
4 In-text Activity (asked within the chapter)
Q. List the urban agglomerations/cities state-wise and see the state-wise population under this category of cities.
Answer: This is a data activity, done from the Census of India, 2011 tables (censusindia.gov.in). Make a table with three columns: State, Urban agglomeration/city, Population. For example, the largest urban agglomerations of Census 2011 are Greater Mumbai UA (Maharashtra, about 1.84 crore), Delhi UA (Delhi, about 1.63 crore), Kolkata UA (West Bengal, about 1.41 crore), Chennai UA (Tamil Nadu, about 87 lakh), Bengaluru UA (Karnataka, about 85 lakh) and Hyderabad UA (then Andhra Pradesh, now Telangana, about 77 lakh). Then add up the population of these cities for each state. You will notice that a few states such as Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Gujarat and West Bengal hold many of the large cities, which matches the chapter’s point that enlargement of urban centres has played a major role in the growth of India’s urban population.