Dispersed settlement

Also called: Isolated settlement · Topic: Human Settlements and Urbanisation in India · NCERT: Class 12, Ch 2 "Human Settlements"

Meaning

A dispersed settlement (also called an isolated settlement) is a rural settlement made of lone huts, or tiny hamlets of only a few huts, spread far apart in remote jungles or on small hills, with fields or pastures on the slopes nearby. It matters because it shows how land shapes where people live. Its spread-out form also makes roads, water, power and schools costly to bring to each home.

Explanation

How a settlement type is decided

• NCERT uses two measures to tell one settlement type from another:
• Extent of built-up area: how much land is covered by houses.

• Inter-house distance: how far apart the houses are.

• A dispersed settlement has a very small built-up area and a very large distance between houses. This puts it at the opposite end from a clustered village.

How it forms (cause → process → result)

• Extremely broken terrain
• Steep slopes and narrow ridges leave no large piece of flat land.
• So there is no room to build a big, compact village.

• Result: houses stand alone, wherever a small flat spot exists.

• Scattered land resources

• Farmland and water come in small, separate patches.
• Each family builds its home right next to its own patch.

• Result: homes end up spread out, each beside its field or pasture.

• Remoteness

• In thick forests and on hills, people live close to the land they use, such as fields on the slopes, pastures and the forest.
• Result: lone huts or small groups of a few huts.

Its parts

• Isolated hut: a single home standing by itself.
• Small hamlet: a group of only a few huts.
• Farm or pasture on the slopes: the land the family works lies right around the home.
• All of these are rural settlements: most people work in primary activities (farming, herding, fishing, forestry).

Conditions it needs

• Hilly, forested or broken land, not flat, fertile alluvial plains (soil laid down by rivers).
• Small, scattered patches of farmland and water.
• No strong pull to gather in one place. In clustered villages, that pull comes from things like defence or one shared water source.

Where it occurs

• India (NCERT list):
• Meghalaya: forested hills of the north-east.
• Nagaland: hills of the north-east.
• Uttarakhand: Himalayan hills.
• Himachal Pradesh: Himalayan hills.

• Kerala: hill slopes of the Western Ghats.

• The Nagaland double listing:

• NCERT lists Nagaland under clustered settlement, because houses are built close together for defence.
• It also lists Nagaland under dispersed settlement, because huts are spread across the hills.

• Both happen in the same state, for different reasons.

• Where it is NOT expected:

• Ganga plain: villages there are clustered or hamleted.

• Rajasthan desert: villages there are clustered around water sources, or semi-clustered.

• World: in North America and Australia, the most common rural form is the isolated farmstead. This is a single farm with one or a few houses and farm buildings that is not part of any village [3].

Don't confuse with

• Clustered settlement (agglomerated or nucleated): a compact block of houses kept separate from the fields around it. It forms on fertile plains, for defence (Bundelkhand, Nagaland) or around scarce water (Rajasthan). Dispersed is the exact opposite: lone huts far apart, caused by broken terrain.
• Hamleted settlement: one village split into separate units (panna, para, palli, nagla, dhani) that all share one village name. It is caused mainly by social and ethnic factors. A dispersed settlement is caused by physical factors (terrain and scattered resources), and its huts do not form named units of one village.
• Semi-clustered settlement (fragmented): it has a compact core, where the land-owning dominant group lives, and spread-out edges, where lower social groups live. It is found in the Gujarat plain and parts of Rajasthan. A dispersed settlement has no compact core at all.
• Linear settlement: houses in a line along a river, road, canal, embankment or coast, as in Kerala's coastal and backwater villages. Kerala appears in both lists, but linear villages follow a line, while dispersed villages are huts scattered on hill slopes.

Prelims Hooks

• Dispersed settlement = isolated settlement. It is one of NCERT's four types: clustered, semi-clustered, hamleted and dispersed.
• States with dispersed settlements: Meghalaya, Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh, Kerala and Nagaland.
• Trap: dispersed settlements are not typical of the Ganga plain or the Rajasthan desert.
• Nagaland appears under both clustered (for defence) and dispersed (because of the hills).
• Main causes: extremely broken terrain and scattered land resources. These are physical factors, not social ones.
• Isolated farmstead = the most common rural form in North America and Australia [3].

Mains Points

• Physical geography shapes settlement form:
• Flat, fertile alluvial plains lead to clustered villages.
• Broken hills and forests (the Himalaya, the north-east, the Western Ghats slopes of Kerala) lead to dispersed villages.

• This is a good GS-I example of how relief (the shape of the land) controls human settlement.

• Cost of service delivery (GS-II/III):

• Spread-out homes raise the cost per household of roads, piped water, electricity and schools.
• So programmes often count the habitation or hamlet, not only the revenue village.

• India has over 5.9 lakh inhabited villages, so settlement shape directly affects how services reach people [2].

• Changing pattern: roads and markets are now pulling villages into linear shapes along highways. In hill states, new roads may slowly draw scattered homes towards the road, which can bring them closer to services.

Related concepts

• Clustered settlement
• Semi-clustered settlement
• Hamleted settlement
• Linear settlement

Read more

• Types of rural settlement and the factors behind them