Rural settlement
Also called: Village · Topic: Human Settlements and Urbanisation in India · NCERT: Class 12, Ch 2 "Human Settlements"
Meaning
A rural settlement is a village. Villages are small and spread far apart. Most people earn their living from the land, through primary work (work that takes things straight from nature), such as farming, herding or fishing. People move around less than people in towns. Social ties are close and personal, because most people know each other.
Example
In the fertile Ganga plain of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, villages are compact clusters of houses with fields all around them. Most families there work in farming. Census 2011 counted 6,40,867 villages in India.
Don't confuse with
- Urban settlement: towns are larger and more compact. Their people do secondary work (making goods) and tertiary work (giving services), not farming, and their social ties are more formal.