rural and urban settlement patterns in india

8/3/2019 Rural and Urban Settlement Patterns in India

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RURAL AND URBAN SETTLEMENT

PATTERN IN INDIA

PRESENTATION BY DIVYA B.T.


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Scattered throughout India are approximately500,000 villages. The Census of India regardsmost settlements of fewer than 5,000 as a village.These settlements range from tiny hamlets ofthatched huts to larger settlements of tile-roofedstone and brick houses.Most villages are small; nearly 80 percenthave fewer than 1,000 inhabitants, according tothe 1991 census. Most are nucleated settlements,while others are more dispersed. It is in villagesthat India's most basic business--agriculture--

takes place. Here, in the face of vicissitudes of allkinds, farmers follow time-tested as well asinnovative methods of growing wheat, rice, lentils,vegetables, fruits, and many other crops in orderto accomplish the challenging task of feedingthemselves and the nation. Here, too, flourish

many of India's most valued cultural forms.

RURAL SETTLEMENTS


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Viewed from a distance, an Indian village may appear deceptively simple. Acluster of mud-plastered walls shaded by a few trees, set among a stretch of green ordun-colored fields, with a few people slowly coming or going, oxcarts creaking, cattle

lowing, and birds singing--all present an image of harmonious simplicity. Indian citydwellers often refer nostalgically to "simple village life." City artists portray colorfullygarbed village women gracefully carrying water pots on their heads, and writersdescribe isolated rural settlements unsullied by the complexities of modern urbancivilization. Social scientists of the past wrote of Indian villages as virtually self-sufficient communities with few ties to the outside world.

In actuality, Indian village life is far from simple.Each village is connected through a varietyof crucial horizontal linkages with othervillages and with urban areas both near andfar. Most villages are characterized by a

multiplicity of economic, caste, kinship,occupational, and even religious groupslinked vertically within each settlement.Factionalism is a typical feature of villagepolitics. In one of the first of the modernanthropological studies of Indian village

life, anthropologist Oscar Lewis called thiscomplexity "rural cosmopolitanism."


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Throughout most of India, village dwellingsare built very close to one another in anucleated settlement, with small lanes forpassage of people and sometimes carts.Village fields surround the settlement andare generally within easy walking distance.

In hilly tracts of central, eastern, and farnorthern India, dwellings are more spreadout, reflecting the nature of the topography.In the wet states of West Bengal andKerala, houses are more dispersed; insome parts of Kerala, they are constructed

in continuous lines, with divisions betweenvillages not obvious to visitors.

In northern and central India,neighborhood boundaries can be vague.The houses of Dalits are generallylocated in separate neighborhoods or onthe outskirts of the nucleated settlement,but there are seldom distinct Dalit

hamlets. By contrast, in the south, wheresocioeconomic contrasts and castepollution observances tend to be strongerthan in the north, Brahman homes maybe set apart from those of non-Brahmans,and Dalit hamlets are set at a little

distance from the homes of other castes.


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The number of castes resident in a single village canvary widely, from one to more than forty.Typically, a village is dominated by one or a veryfew castes that essentially control the village landand on whose patronage members of weakergroups must rely. In the village of about 1,100population near Delhi studied by Lewis in the 1950s,the Jat caste (the largest cultivating caste innorthwestern India) comprised 60 percent of theresidents and owned all of the village land, including

the house sites. In Nimkhera, Madhya Pradesh,Hindu Thakurs and Brahmans, and Muslim Pathansown substantial land, while lower-ranking Weaver(Koli) and Barber (Khawas) caste members andothers own smaller farms. In many areas of the south,Brahmans are major landowners, along with some

other relatively high-ranking castes. Generally, land,prosperity, and power go together.
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Aside from caste-associated occupations,villages often include people who practicenontraditional occupations. For example,Brahmans or Thakurs may be shopkeepers,teachers, truckers, or clerks, in addition to

their caste-associated occupations of priestand farmer. In villages near urban areas,an increasing number of people commuteto the cities to take up jobs, and manymigrate. Some migrants leave their familiesin the village and go to the cities to work for

months at a time. Many from Kerala, as wellas other regions, have temporarily migratedto the Persian Gulf states for employmentand send remittances back to their villagefamilies, to which they will eventually return.

At slack seasons, village life can appearto be sleepy, but usually villages arehumming with activity. The work ethic isstrong, with little time out for relaxation,except for numerous divinely sanctionedfestivals and rite-of-passage celebrations.

Residents are quick to judge each other,and improper work or social habitsreceive strong criticism. Villagers feel asense of village pride and honor, andthe reputation of a village dependsupon the behavior of all of its

residents.Data as of September 1995

If agricultural technology was farmer-friendly, there wouldnot be mass rural migration to the cities. A. RoyChowdhury


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Much of Indias rural population lives in nucleated villages, which most commonlyhave a settlement form described as a shapeless agglomerate.Such settlements, though unplanned, are divided by caste into distinct wards and growoutward from a recognizable core area.The dominant and higher castes tend to live in the core area,while the lower artisan and service castes, as well as Muslim groups, generally occupy

more peripheral localities. When the centrally located castes increase in population, theyeither subdivide their existing, often initially large, residential compounds, add secondand even third stories on their existing houses (a common expedient in Punjab), leapfrogover lower-caste wards to a new area on the village periphery, or, in rare cases whereland is available, found a completely new village.Within the shapeless agglomerated villages, streets are typically narrow, twisting, and

unpaved, often ending in culs-de-sac.

RURAL PLANNING
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There are usually a few open spaces where people gather: adjacent to a temple ormosque, at the main village well, in areas where grain is threshed or where grain andoilseeds are milled, and in front of the homes of the leading families of the village. Insuch spaces, depending on the size of the village, might be found the pancayat(villagecouncil) hall, a few shops, a tea stall, a public radio hooked up to a loudspeaker, a smallpost office, or perhaps a dharmshala(a free guest house for travelers).The village school is usually on the edge of the village in order to provide pupils withadequate playing space.Another common feature along the margin of a village is a grove of mango or other

trees, which provides shade for people and animals and often contains a large well.In southern India, especially Tamil Nadu, and in Gujarat, villages have a more plannedlayout, with streets running north-south and east-west in straight lines. In many tribalareas (or areas that were tribal until relatively recently) the typical village consists ofrows of houses along a single street or perhaps two or three parallel streets.In areas of rugged terrain, where relatively level spaces for building are limited,

settlements often conform in shape to ridge lines.
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Most village houses are small, simple one-story mud (kacha) structures, housing bothpeople and livestock in one or just a few rooms.

Roofs typically are flat and made of mud in dry regions, but in areas with considerableprecipitation they generally are sloped for drainage and made of rice straw, otherthatching material, or clay tiles. The wetter the region, the greater the pitch of the roof. Insome wet regions, especially in tribal areas, bamboo walls are more common than thoseof mud, and houses often stand on piles above ground level. The houses usually are windowless and contain a minimum of furniture, a storage

space for food, water, and implements, a few shelves and pegs for other possessions, aniche in the wall to serve as the household altar, and often a few decorations, such aspictures of gods or film heroes, family photographs, a calendar, or perhaps somememento of a pilgrimage.In one corner of the house or in an exterior court is the earthen hearth on which allmeals are cooked.

Electricity, running water, and toilet facilities generally are absent. Relatively secludedspots on the edge of the village serve the latter need.Within the compound there may be a private well or even a hand pump, an area forbathing, and a walled latrine enclosure, which is periodically cleaned by the villagesweeper.Animal stalls, granaries, and farm equipment are in spaces distinct from those occupied

by people.

RURAL HOUSES


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THE GROWTH OF CITIES

Accelerating urbanization is powerfully affecting thetransformation of Indian society. Slightly more than 26percent of the country's population is urban, and in 1991more than half of urban dwellers lived in 299 urbanagglomerates or cities of more than 100,000 people. By1991 India had twenty-four cities with populations of atleast 1 million. By that year, among cities of the world,Bombay (or Mumbai, in Marathi), in Maharashtra, rankedseventh in the world at 12.6 million, and Calcutta, in WestBengal, ranked eighth at almost 11 million. In the 1990s,India's larger cities have been growing at twice the rate of

smaller towns and villages. Between the 1960s and 1991,the population of the Union Territory of Delhi quadrupled,to 8.4 million, and Madras, in Tamil Nadu, grew to 5.4million. Bangalore, in Karnataka; Hyderabad, in AndhraPradesh; and many other cities are expanding rapidly.About half of these increases are the result of rural-urban

migration, as villagers seek better lives forthemselves in the cities

URBAN SETTLEMENTS

the reasons for migration vary for diversegroups of people. For example, the tribalpopulation across the country has limitedincome-generation opportunities in theirplace of birth. Traditionally, they have verysmall landholdings, which cannot beirrigated, and do not produce adequateamounts of crop to support the

subsistence needs of a family. It has alsobeen noted that areas, where agriculture isnot developed, remain under-industrialisedas well. While in recent years bothgovernment and non-government agencieshave paid a lot of attention towards thedevelopment of common properties(natural resources available within thevillages), they have not been able to createany significant impact on the householdincome of these areas.


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Most Indian cities are very densely populated. New Delhi, forexample, had 6,352 people per square kilometer in 1991.Congestion, noise, traffic jams, air pollution, and majorshortages of key necessities characterize urban life. Everymajor city of India faces the same proliferating problems of

grossly inadequate housing, transportation, sewerage,electric power, water supplies, schools, and hospitals. Slumsand jumbles of pavement dwellers' lean-tos constantlymultiply. An increasing number of trucks, buses, cars, three-wheel autorickshaws, motorcy-cles, and motorscooters, allspewing uncontrolled fumes, surge in sometimes haphazardpatterns over city streets jammed with jaywalkingpedestrians, cattle, and goats. Accident rates are high(India's fatality rate from road accidents, the most commoncause of accidental death, is said to be twenty times higherthan United States rates), and it is a daily occurrence for acity dweller to witness a crash or the running down of apedestrian. In 1984 the citizens of Bhopal suffered thenightmare of India's largest industrial accident, whenpoisonous gas leaking from a Union Carbide plant killed andinjured thousands of city dwellers. Less spectacularly, on adaily basis, uncontrolled pollutants from factories all over

India damage the urban environments in which millions live.

Between 1951 and 2000, while thetotal urban population in Indiaincreased just 4.6 times, thenumber of vehicles bounded up158 times!


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URBAN INEQUITIES

Major socioeconomic differences aremuch on display in cities.

The fine homes--often a walled compoundwith a garden, servants' quarters, andgarage--and gleaming automobiles of thesuper wealthy stand in stark contrast to theburlap-covered huts of the barefoot poor.Shops filled with elegant silk saris and air-conditioned restaurants cater to theprivileged, while ragged dust-coveredchildren with outstretched hands waitoutside in hopes of receiving a few coins.The wealthy and the middle class employservants and workers of various kinds, butjajmani-like ties are essentially lacking,and the rich and the poor live much moreseparate lives than in villages.At the same time, casual interaction andphysical contact among people of all

castes is constant, on public streets and inbuses, trains, and movie theaters.

As would-be urbanites stream into thecities, they often seek out people from their

village, caste, or region who have gonebefore them and receive enough hospitalityto tide them over until they can settle inthemselves.They find accommodation wherever theycan, even if only on a quiet corner of asidewalk, or inside a concrete sewer pipewaiting to be laid. Some are fortunateenough to find shelter in decrepittenements or in open areas where theycan throw up flimsy structures of mud, tinsheeting, or burlap. In such SLUMSETTLEMENTS, a single outhouse maybe shared by literally thousands of people,or, more usually, there are no sanitaryfacilities at all. Ditches are awash in rawsewage, and byways are strewn with the

refuse of people and animals with nowhereelse to go.


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Despite the exterior appearance of chaos, slum life is highly structured, with manyeconomic, religious, caste, and political interests expressed in daily activity. Living

conditions are extremely difficult, and slum dwellers fear the constant threat of havingtheir homes bulldozed in municipal "slum clearance" efforts.In many sections of Indian cities, scavenging pigs, often owned by Sweepers, alongwith stray dogs, help to recycle fecal material. Piles of less noxious vegetal and papergarbage are sorted through by the poorest people, who seek usable or salable bits ofthings.

Cattle and goats, owned by entrepreneurial folk, graze on these piles, turning otherwiseuseless garbage into valuable milk, dung (used for cooking fuel), and meat.


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Finding employment in the urban setting can be extremely challenging, and,whenever possible, networks of relatives and friends are used to help seek jobs. Millionsof Indians are unemployed or underemployed. Ingenuity and tenacity are the hallmarks

of urban workers, who carry out a remarkable multitude of tasks and sell an incrediblevariety of foods, trinkets, and services, all under difficult conditions. Many of the urbanpoor are migrant laborers carrying headloads of bricks and earth up rickety bambooscaffolding at construction sites, while their small children play about at the edge ofexcavations or huddle on mounds of gravel in the blazing sun. A woman is payed lessfor a day's work than a man earns as women are seen as physically weaker by some

employers and thus not deserving of equal wages with men.

I di ' j i i h l b


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India's major cities have long beenheadquarters for the country's highestsocioeconomic groups, people withtransnational and internationalconnections whose choices are taking

India into new realms of economicdevelopment and social change. Amongthese well-placed people, intercastemarriages raise few eyebrows, as long asmarital unions link people of similar upper-or upper-middle-class backgrounds. Such

marriages, sometimes even acrossreligious lines, help knit India's mostpowerful people together.

Increasingly conspicuous in India's citiesare the growing ranks of the middle class.In carefully laundered clothes, they emergefrom modest and semiprosperous homesto ride buses and motorscooters to their

jobs in offices, hospitals, courts, andcommercial establishments. Their well-tended children are educated in properlyorganized schools. Family groups go outtogether to places of worship, socialevents, snack shops, and to bazaarsbustling with consumers eager to buy thenecessities of a comfortable life.Even in Calcutta, notorious for slums andstreet dwellers, the dominant image is ofoffice workers in pressed white garmentsriding crowded buses--or Calcutta's world-

class subway line--to their jobs as officeworkers and professionals


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For nearly everyone within thehighly challenging urbanenvironment, ties to family andkin remain crucial to prosperity.

Even in the harshest urbanconditions, families showremarkable resilience.Neighborhoods, too, take onimportance, and neighbors fromvarious backgrounds develop

cooperative ties with oneanother. Neighborhoodsolidarity is expressed at suchannual Hindu festivals asGanesh's Birthday (GaneshChaturthi) in Bombay andDurga Puja in Calcutta, whenneighborhood associationscreate elaborate images of thedeities and take them out ingrand processions.

Data as of September 1995


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FUTURE TRENDS

By the twenty-first century, India's population will be more than 1 billion.Approximately one-third of this enormous population will live in urban areas,which means adding the population of another Calcutta, Bombay, or Madras toIndia's already overburdened cities each year into the foreseeable future. In rural

areas, pressures on land and other resources will continue to intensify.Tolerance for inequity is diminishing among the less privileged, even as inequity isincreasing in both rural and urban areas. As competition for scarce resources andbenefits grows, some political leaders have been encouraging the populace toblame these problems on religious differences.Prosperity is available to many, and access to education and an expanding range

of consumer goods is possible for an ever-increasing number of people. At the same time, the sheer numbers of the poor and less privileged areincreasing as they are left behind, inadequately educated, and forced bycircumstance to labor under insecure conditions.Class and gender justice, widely sought by a significant number of people,remains an elusive goal.


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India is part of a much wider community of nations facing these and otherproblems, so it will not be alone in seeking solutions. In this endeavor, the greatstructural principles of hierarchy and interdependence that have held Indian

society together over the millennia will be brought to the fore.Creating manageable order from complexity, bringing together widely disparategroups in structured efforts to benefit the wider society,encouraging harmony among people with divergent interests,knowing that close family and friends can rely on each other in times of stress,allocating different tasks to those with different skills,

and striving to do what is morally right in the eyes of the divine and the humancommunity--these are some of the great strengths upon which Indian society can rely asit meets the challenges of the future.


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THANKYOU

PRESENTATION BY DIVYA B T

rural and urban settlement patterns in india

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