Functional classification of towns

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

Meaning

Functional classification of towns means grouping towns by their main job, or dominant function. Examples of a main job are governing, making goods, trade, transport, mining, defence, education, religion or tourism. In India, the NCERT lists nine such classes.

It matters because a town's main job explains why it grew in that place, how it is run and what problems it faces. It also shows that big cities stop fitting one class as they grow and become multifunctional (doing many main jobs at once).

Explanation

How a town gets its function

• Every town does many jobs. It has trade, transport, administration and services. Still, many towns are known for one job above the rest.
• Central place: a town that supplies goods and services to the villages and smaller towns around it. Most towns are central places.
• Specialisation: many towns also become known for one special job.
• Cause: something useful is found at a place. It may be a mineral, a port site, a rail junction, a shrine, a university or a cool hill climate.
• Process: this one job brings in workers, and shops and services follow them.
• Result: a town grows around that job and is named by it. Jamshedpur is known for steel and Haridwar for pilgrimage.

Two ways to classify

• Qualitative method (the NCERT method): a town goes into a class because of its best-known job. Jamshedpur is an industrial town and Haridwar is a religious town.
• Quantitative method: the class comes from the share of workers in each sector.
• The Census groups workers by industrial category. Examples are mining and quarrying, manufacturing, wholesale and retail trade, transportation and storage, public administration and defence, education, and accommodation and food services [5].
• A town is classed by the sector that employs an unusually large share of its workers.
• This method is more exact, because it uses data and not reputation.

The nine functional classes

• Administrative town: the seat of a government, so it serves as a higher-level headquarters.
• Industrial town: industry is the main force behind its growth. Raw material, power and transport pull factories to a place, and the factories pull in workers.
• Transport town: grows around a port (where land meets sea trade) or an inland hub (a road or rail junction where many lines meet).
• Commercial town: trade and business are the main jobs.
• Mining town: grows around a mineral deposit, such as coal or oil.
• Garrison (cantonment) town: a military station where troops live.
• Cantonment: an area set apart to house troops, with its own separate local government.
• Most began as British cantonments. Today cantonment boards run them under the Cantonments Act, 2006. The Act aims at more democracy in these boards, a stronger financial base and development work [2].
• A Cantonment Board is a body corporate with perpetual succession. This means it is a legal body that carries on even when its members change [2].

• Cantonments fall into four categories by population [2]:

  Category	Population
  I	above 50,000
  II	above 10,000 up to 50,000
  III	above 2,500 up to 10,000
  IV	up to 2,500

• Educational town: grows around colleges and universities. A campus brings in students and staff, services follow, and a town forms.

• Religious and cultural town: grows around a shrine or a pilgrimage. Many of these are ancient towns.
• Tourist town: lives on visitors who come for scenery, a cool climate or heritage.

Functions change over time: multifunctional cities

• Key idea: a town's functions are dynamic, which means they change over time.
• How a specialised town becomes multifunctional:
• It starts with one job, such as a port or a factory.
• As it grows into a metropolis (a very large city), trade, banking, administration and transport gather around that first job.

• In the end the jobs are so mixed that the city fits no single class.

• Mumbai began as a port. It is now also an industrial, financial and administrative centre.

• Kolkata began as a commercial and port city. It is now also an administrative and industrial city. Chennai follows the same pattern.
• Some towns fit more than one class even without becoming metros. Varanasi is both an educational and a religious-cultural town. Prayagraj is an educational town and also an ancient religious town.

Where it occurs

• Administrative: Chandigarh (UT, capital of Punjab and Haryana), New Delhi (NCT of Delhi), Bhopal (MP), Shillong (Meghalaya), Guwahati (Assam), Imphal (Manipur), Srinagar (J&K), Gandhinagar (Gujarat), Jaipur (Rajasthan), Chennai (Tamil Nadu).

• Chandigarh and Gandhinagar are planned capitals built after Independence. Older capitals such as Jaipur and Chennai later took on trade and industry as well.

• Industrial: Mumbai (Maharashtra), Salem and Coimbatore (Tamil Nadu), Modinagar (UP), Jamshedpur (Jharkhand), Hugli (West Bengal), Bhilai (Chhattisgarh).

• Jamshedpur and Bhilai grew around steel plants. Hugli grew on jute mills along the Hugli river. Coimbatore grew on cotton textiles. Modinagar grew around one industrial group's factories.

• Transport:

• Ports: Kandla (Gujarat, on the Gulf of Kachchh), Kochi and Kozhikode (Kerala), Visakhapatnam (Andhra Pradesh, on the east coast facing the Bay of Bengal).

• Inland hubs: Agra (UP), Dhulia/Dhule (Maharashtra), Pt. Deendayal Upadhyay Nagar/Mughalsarai (UP, which links north India with the east), and Itarsi and Katni (MP, rail junctions in central India).

• Commercial: Kolkata (West Bengal), Saharanpur (UP), Satna (MP).

• Mining:
• Coal: Raniganj (West Bengal) and Jharia (Jharkhand) in the Damodar valley coalfields. Singrauli (MP) is a coal and thermal power belt on the MP–UP border.

• Oil: Digboi (upper Assam) is India's oldest oilfield town. Ankaleshwar is in the Gujarat (Cambay) basin.

• Garrison: Ambala (Haryana), Jalandhar (Punjab), Mhow (MP), Babina (UP), Udhampur (J&K).

• India has 62 cantonments in 19 states, counting NCT of Delhi [3]. The Directorate General of Defence Estates (Ministry of Defence) oversees them [4].

• Educational: Roorkee (Uttarakhand), Varanasi (UP), Aligarh (UP), Pilani (Rajasthan), Prayagraj (UP).

• Religious and cultural: Varanasi and Mathura (UP), Amritsar (Punjab), Madurai (Tamil Nadu), Puri (Odisha), Ajmer and Pushkar (Rajasthan), Tirupati (Andhra Pradesh), Kurukshetra (Haryana), Haridwar (Uttarakhand), Ujjain (MP).

• River links: Varanasi is on the Ganga. Prayagraj is at the Ganga–Yamuna confluence (the point where two rivers meet). Madurai is on the Vaigai and grew around the Meenakshi temple. Ujjain is on the Shipra.

• Tourist: Nainital and Mussoorie (Uttarakhand), Shimla (Himachal Pradesh), Pachmarhi (MP, in the Satpura range), Mount Abu (Rajasthan, in the Aravallis), Udhagamandalam/Ooty (Tamil Nadu, in the Nilgiris), and Jodhpur and Jaisalmer (Rajasthan, in the Thar Desert, known for forts and heritage).

• The hill stations were set up by the British as summer retreats from the hot plains. This makes them colonial-era towns.

Don't confuse with

• Central place vs specialised town: a central place serves the area around it with goods and services, and most towns do this. A specialised town is known for one particular job, such as steel or pilgrimage.
• Qualitative vs quantitative classification: the qualitative (NCERT) method uses a town's best-known job. The quantitative method uses the share of workers in each Census industrial category [5].
• Garrison town vs tourist (hill) town: Mhow, Babina and Udhampur are garrison towns, even though some sound like hill resorts. Shimla, Mussoorie and Mount Abu are tourist towns.
• Specialised town vs multifunctional city: a specialised town has one main job. A multifunctional metro such as Mumbai, Kolkata or Chennai has so many mixed jobs that it fits no single class.

Prelims Hooks

• Digboi (Assam) and Ankaleshwar (Gujarat) are oil mining towns. Raniganj, Jharia and Singrauli are coal mining towns.
• Pt. Deendayal Upadhyay Nagar is the new name of Mughalsarai (UP), an inland transport hub. Itarsi and Katni (both MP) are also inland transport hubs. Kozhikode and Kochi (both Kerala) are port towns.
• Satna (MP) and Saharanpur (UP) are commercial towns. Salem and Modinagar are industrial towns.
• Cantonments Act, 2006: cantonments fall into 4 categories by population, and Category I is above 50,000 [2]. India has 62 cantonments in 19 states, counting Delhi [3].
• Khas Yol cantonment (Himachal Pradesh) was de-notified (officially removed from the cantonment list) from 27 April 2023 [6].
• Trap: Varanasi is both an educational and a religious town. Pilani and Roorkee are educational towns. Pushkar and Ajmer are religious towns. Mount Abu is a tourist town. All four Rajasthan towns sit in different classes.

Mains Points

• Functions are dynamic (GS-I):
• Specialised towns that grow into metros, such as Mumbai, Kolkata and Chennai, become multifunctional.
• This makes a single label less useful for big cities.

• Quantitative classification by the share of workers in each sector, using Census industrial categories [5], is a more exact tool.

• Colonial imprint and cantonment reform (GS-I/II):

• British needs for defence, summer retreats and trade shaped many Indian towns. These needs produced cantonments, hill stations (Shimla, Ooty, Mussoorie) and port cities (Kolkata, Chennai, Mumbai).
• Civil populations in cantonments live under cantonment boards, while the towns around them have elected municipalities. This leads to unequal services and rules.

• In 2023 the government decided to excise (cut out) the civil areas of cantonments and merge them with nearby state municipalities. Plans for 58 cantonments were shared with state governments, starting with Khas Yol [6]. The reform depends on agreement from the states.

• Single-function towns are vulnerable (GS-I/III):

• Mining towns (Jharia, Digboi) and one-plant industrial towns (Bhilai, Modinagar) decline when the resource runs out or the plant shuts.
• Planning should spread their economy across more sectors so that jobs do not depend on one source.

Related concepts

• Administrative town
• Industrial town
• Garrison town

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• Functional classification of towns