In India, compact or clustered settlements in rural areas are generally found in _________ .
Answer & explanation
Correct answer: option 2
The correct answer is Option (2) → fertile alluvial plains.
Option (1) remote jungles or in hilly areas. — Incorrect. Isolated huts or hamlets in remote jungles or on small hills form dispersed settlements, not compact ones.
Option (2) fertile alluvial plains. — Correct. A clustered settlement is a compact, closely built-up area of houses, separate from the farms around it. Villages live off the land, so the nature of the terrain decides how the houses group: level, fertile alluvial land with water close at hand lets many farming families draw a living from the fields round one site, so their houses gather in one compact block. Such settlements are therefore generally found in fertile alluvial plains, and a compact village of a few hundred houses is common in the northern plains.
Option (3) lower valleys of Himalayas — Incorrect. The lower Himalayan valleys have hamleted settlements, a village split into separate units with a common name.
Option (4) Meghalaya and Himachal Pradesh — Incorrect. These states have mostly dispersed settlements, as broken terrain leaves only small pieces of habitable land.
NCERT (2025-26): “Types of Rural Settlement Types of the settlement are determined by the extent of the built-up area and inter-house distance. In India compact or clustered village of a few hundred houses is a rather universal feature, particularly in the northern plains.…” “Clustered Settlements The clustered rural settlement is a compact or closely built up area of houses. In this type of village the general living area is distinct and separated from the surrounding farms, barns and pastures.… …Such settlements are generally found in fertile alluvial plains and in the northeastern states. Sometimes, people live in compact village for security or defence reasons, such as in the Bundelkhand region of central India and in Nagaland. In Rajasthan, scarcity of water has necessitated compact settlement for maximum utilisation of available water resources.” “Hamleted Settlements Sometimes settlement is fragmented into several units physically separated from each other bearing a common name. These units are locally called panna, para, palli, nagla, dhani, etc. in various parts of the country. This segmentation of a large village is often motivated by social and ethnic factors. Such villages are more frequently found in the middle and lower Ganga plain, Chhattisgarh and lower valleys of the Himalayas.…” |