Geography Quiz: Settlements and Urbanisation in India

The correct answer is D, the presence of a municipality or a notified town area committee. A place that has a municipal corporation, a municipality, a cantonment board or a notified town area committee is a statutory town, and it is urban whatever its population; it is therefore not a census town at all. A census town is a place with no such body that satisfies three tests together, which are exactly the other three options: A, a population of at least five thousand; B, at least seventy-five per cent of the male main working population in non-agricultural work; and C, a density of at least four hundred persons per square kilometre. All three must be met at once, so a large but farming village remains rural. The distinction between a statutory town and a census town is the single most tested point in this chapter.

The correct answer is C, which names a compact pattern. The Ganga-Yamuna Doab is a level alluvial plain with deep fertile soil, assured water from wells, canals and a high water table, and a long history of dense farming settlement, so its villages are compact or nucleated: the houses stand packed together in one block with narrow lanes, and the fields lie all around. A, scattered, is wrong because a scattered or dispersed pattern belongs to hilly and forested country such as Meghalaya, Uttarakhand and the hills of Kerala, where terrain and small patches of cultivable land keep farmsteads apart. B, random, is wrong because it describes no recognised pattern of Indian rural settlement. D, semi sprinkled, is wrong because a semi-clustered or fragmented pattern is typical of the Gujarat plain and parts of Rajasthan, where one compact core is joined by a few clusters set some distance away.

The correct answer is A, Class I. The Census of India groups towns into six classes by population: Class I of one hundred thousand and above, Class II of fifty thousand to ninety-nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine, Class III of twenty thousand to forty-nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine, Class IV of ten thousand to nineteen thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine, Class V of five thousand to nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine, and Class VI of less than five thousand. So B, C and D are all wrong for a town of a lakh, and each belongs to a smaller band as listed. A further step beyond Class I is worth remembering: a city of a million or more is called a metropolitan city, and one of five million or more a megacity.

The correct answer is B, dry point settlements. Where water is abundant and flooding is a danger, people avoid the low wet land and build on the levee, the terrace or any patch of higher dry ground, and such a site is called a dry point. A, wet point settlements, is the exact opposite and is wrong here: in a dry region people cluster around the single dependable source of water, a well, a tank or a spring, and that site is the wet point. C, linear settlements, is wrong because that term describes the shape of a settlement strung along a road, a canal or a river bank, not the reason for its site. D, planned settlements, is wrong because those are laid out by government for canal colonists, refugees or industrial workers, and their site is chosen administratively rather than by the water table.

The correct answer is B, only statement B is true. Statement B is sound: for the poor and for people of the lower castes, the new jobs in colonial cities were a way out of the control of upper-caste landowners in the village and of the daily humiliation they suffered there, and this pull is part of every account of colonial urbanisation. The first statement is false because of the word only: it was not only the rich who left the villages for work in the growing cities, and in fact the poor and the landless formed the bulk of the migration to mills, docks, railways and construction sites. So option A, which calls the first statement true, is wrong, and option C, which calls both false, is wrong because the second statement is true. Option D, which calls both true, is wrong for the same reason as A.

The correct answer is B, Patrick Geddes. The Scottish geographer and town planner Patrick Geddes coined the word conurbation in 1915 for a great urban mass formed when separate towns grow outward until their built-up areas merge, as in Greater London or the Ruhr. A, Jean Gottmann, is the main trap: he gave the term megalopolis in 1957 for an even larger super-metropolitan belt, such as the chain from Boston to Washington. C, Ebenezer Howard, is wrong because his contribution was the garden city idea, a planned town ringed by a green belt, which influenced the planning of New Delhi and of several Indian townships. D, Lewis Mumford, is wrong because he wrote on the history and culture of cities rather than giving this term; he did, however, popularise Geddes's ideas.

The correct answer is C, the 74th Amendment Act. The Seventy-fourth Constitutional Amendment Act of 1992 inserted Part IXA into the Constitution with Articles 243P to 243ZG, gave municipalities a fixed term of five years with elections conducted by a State Election Commission, provided for reservation of seats, and added the Twelfth Schedule listing eighteen subjects for urban local bodies. B, the 73rd Amendment Act, is the standing trap: it is the twin Act of the same year, but it deals with panchayats, Part IX, Articles 243 to 243O and the Eleventh Schedule with twenty-nine subjects. A, the 72nd Amendment Act, is wrong because it concerned the representation of the Scheduled Tribes in the Tripura Legislative Assembly. D, the 76th Amendment Act, is wrong because it placed the Tamil Nadu reservation Act in the Ninth Schedule.

The correct answer is D, all three factors. Migration is studied through push factors in the place of origin and pull factors in the place of destination, and all three items listed belong to that study. The availability of work opportunities is the single largest reason for rural to urban migration in India, counted in the Census under the head of work or employment. The hope of a better standard of living, through schooling, health care and services, is a related pull that moves whole families. Marriage is the largest single reason for migration in India by number, because most women move to their husband's residence after marriage, and the Census records it as a separate category. Since each of the three is relevant, A, which leaves out marriage, B, which leaves out work opportunities, and C, which leaves out the standard of living, are each incomplete and therefore wrong.

The correct answer is C, Goa. At the Census of 2011 about sixty-two per cent of Goa's population lived in urban areas, the highest share among the states, followed by Mizoram at about fifty-two per cent and Tamil Nadu at about forty-eight per cent. A, Maharashtra, is the commonest trap, because it had the largest urban population in absolute numbers, more than fifty million, but its urban share was about forty-five per cent, which is lower than Goa's. B, Tamil Nadu, is wrong for the same kind of reason: it is highly urbanised but stands below Goa and Mizoram in share. D, Kerala, is wrong on the figures, at about forty-eight per cent, although its settlement is so continuous that the line between rural and urban is blurred there. Among the union territories Delhi stood highest, at about ninety-seven per cent.

The correct answer is B, a continuous urban spread made up of a town and its adjoining outgrowths. An urban agglomeration is the built-up whole rather than the municipal unit: it is a town together with its outgrowths, or two or more physically contiguous towns with their outgrowths, where an outgrowth is a clearly identifiable area such as a railway colony, a university campus, a port area or a military camp that lies outside the statutory limits but adjoins the town. A is wrong because a population of a million makes a city metropolitan, which is a size class and not an agglomeration. C is wrong because a group of villages under one panchayat is a rural unit with no bearing on this definition. D is wrong because selection under the Smart Cities Mission is a programme decision and has nothing to do with the census definition.

The correct answer is B, the Meghalaya hills. A dispersed or isolated pattern, in which a farmstead or two or three houses stand far from the next, is found where the terrain is broken and the patches of cultivable land are small and scattered, as in Meghalaya, Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh and the hills of Kerala. A, the Punjab plain, is wrong because a level, fertile and well-watered plain supports the compact or nucleated village, with houses packed into a single block. C, the lower Ganga plain, is wrong because it is the classic region of the hamleted village, broken into units called para or palli under one village name. D, the Gujarat plain, is wrong because it is the usual example of the semi-clustered or fragmented pattern, where one compact core has a few separate clusters nearby.

The correct answer is B, industrial towns. Each of the three grew around a factory: Jamshedpur around the steel works set up by the Tata enterprise, Bhilai around the public sector steel plant built with Soviet collaboration, and Modinagar around the industries of the Modi group, so industry is their dominant function. A, transport towns, is wrong because that class is made up of ports and railway junctions such as Kandla, Kochi and Mughalsarai, which exist to move goods and people. C, garrison towns, is wrong because those are the cantonments such as Ambala, Jalandhar and Mhow, laid out around a military station. D, religious towns, is wrong because those are the pilgrim centres such as Varanasi, Tirupati, Ajmer and Amritsar, whose economy rests on the shrine and on the pilgrims it draws.