Salient Features of Indian Villages

When man was ignorant of the art of agriculture he was compelled to wander in search of food and could not settle down in any one place. As an acquired skill and knowledge in agriculture, he became proficient in procuring all his needs from the same tract of land. When some families lived as neighbors in the same area shared in each other’s joys and sorrows and joined hands in the struggle against the physical elements, and communities. Various factors like topographic, economic, and social have been active in the growth of the village community. India is mainly a country of villages.

Salient Features of Indian Villages

In India, about 83 percent of the people live in villages. Villages play an important part in Indian life. India can rightly be called a land of villages. There are 575721 villages in the country. The salient features of Indian villages are the following:

1. Faith in Religion: The people in the village are usually God-fearing and they believe mysterious powers of gods and goddesses. They worship a large number of gods and believe they are the cause of their joys and sorrows. They have firm faith in rebirth, destiny, and luck.
2. Self-Sufficiency: Each village used to be a self-sufficient unit before the British rule in India. This self-sufficiency was destroyed by the introduction of a market economy during the days of British rule. 
3. Neighborly Relations: Another significant feature of village life is that stress is laid on neighborly relations. The people are simple and honest. Life in the village is not very fast. Their wants are few and simple. They have a sense of unity. They personally know each other. They have common customs and festivals.
4. Joint Family: Joint family system is breaking down in the cities but in villages, it still retains its hold. The agricultural occupation requires the cooperation of all the members of the family. The men folk work in the fields while the women look after the household chores.
5. Simplicity: The people in the village live a very simple life. They lead a peaceful life away from the hustle and bustle of city life. They live in the lap of nature. Their needs are few and simple.
6. Fellow Feelings: They work in the spirit of fellow feeling and that of give and take. They willingly come forward to help one another. They share their joys and sorrows. Fellow feelings have become a part of their nature. They are cooperative and helpful to one another.
7. Conservatism: the villagers are generally very conservative. They do not like to adopt new ways and hate radical changes. They are attached to their old customs and traditions. They love old ways and are least eager to follow the advice of social reformers in matters of marriage and other social customs. So Charles Metcalf wrote, “They seem to last where nothing else lasts. Dynasties tumble down; revolutions succeed Revolution, Hindu, Pathan, Mughal, Marathas, and Sikh. English all the masters change in turn but the village communities remain the same.”
8. Poverty and Illiteracy: The most glaring and depressive feature of Indian villages is the poverty and illiteracy of the Indian village people. They are generally poor with a very low income. They are indebted heavily and have to pay high rates of interest to village mahajan. They take coarse food. Their holdings are small and uneconomical. The opportunities for education are meager. Illiteracy is a great stumbling block in the way of any improvement. They waste their hard-earned money on the observance of too many festivals and religious rites.
9. Group Feelings: In the life of the villagers, group feelings occupy an important place. They respect the judgment and obey the order of their elders and the panchayat has control over the individuals. People are afraid of being publicly criticized or condemned.

Reference

Rural Sociology by Dr. G. Das

Factors in the Growth of Village Community

Literally speaking a village implies a settlement of people which originated many thousand years ago, during the early periods of human society. It contained a few hundred people who lived together in the surroundings of nature and whose main occupation was agriculture. Agriculture is not only their main occupation it is rather their way of life. It is a way of life in the sense that its mode of production and what it tempers is reflected in every form of village activity. It has been said that “The village is the name commonly used to designate settlement of ancient agriculturists”. When we talk of rural society we mean the aggregation of villages in the country.

Factors in the Growth of Village Community

Historically following factors have contributed to the growth of the village community:

A. Topographical Factors:

1. Land: It has always been an important topographical factor. It is difficult to carry on agriculture on land which is rocky and uneven. If the land is unfertilized and sandy, villages cannot easily develop there. That is why there are very few villages in the desert Sahara; where we find villages every two or three miles in the plains of the Ganges and the Yamuna.
2. Water: Water is in dire need of agriculturists for cultivation. If water is scarce, not much use can be made of even the most fertile land. In the desert water is scarce, and villages are scattered far and wide.
3. Climate: A temperate climate is the most favorable for the growth of agriculture. Better soil varieties and conditions have been responsible for the growth of village communities in the plains of Northern and Central India and also in other parts of the country.

B. Economic Factors

1. Condition of Agriculture: It is fact that if agriculture yields a fair amount of produce, the village community will be prosperous.
2. Economy: If the village has the facility of getting money in times of need, it will be a favorable condition for the growth of the village community. Cottage industries play a very important factor in the economic growth of the community.

C. Social Factors: 

These are the factors of peace, security, cooperation, intelligence, and love and thus the conditions of soil, climate, moisture, availability of water, condition of agriculture, and economy, and the conditions of peace and security play an important part in the growth of the village community.

Reference

Rural Sociology by Dr. G. Das

Criteria to Classify Village

Eminent sociologists have put forward many criteria to classify village communities. Some of these are:

(A) According to one criterion the village aggregates have been classified according to the types which evolved during the period of the transition from man’s nomadic existence to settled village life. Thus villages have been divided into three groups: 

• The Migratory agricultural villages where the people live in fixed abodes only for a few months;
• The semi-permanent agricultural villages where the population resides for a few years and then migrates due to the exhaustion of the soil; and
• The permanent agricultural villages where the settled human aggregates live for generations and even centuries.

(B) According to the second criterion villages have been classified into grouped (or nucleated) villages and dispersed villages. In grouped villages, the farmers dwell in the village proper in a cluster. They work on the fields which lie outside the village site. Since they dwell together in a single habitat, they develop a compact life. In the case of the non-nucleated dispersed village type, the farmers live separately on their respective farms. Their habitats are thus dispersed, and their social life assumes a different form.

(C) Village arrogates have been also classified according to a third criterion, that of social differentiation, stratification, mobility, and land, ownership.

Thus criterion group village aggregates into six broad types viz.

• That composed of peasant's joint owns;
• That composed of peasant joint tenants;
• That composed of farmers who are mostly individual owners, but also include some tenants and laborers;
• That composed of individual farmer tenants;
• That composed of employees of a great private landowner; and
• That is composed of laborers and employees of the state, the church, the city, or the public landowner.

Reference

Rural Sociology by Dr. G. Das

Settlement Pattern of Rural People

The settlement pattern of rural people is based on two aspects and fundamental types. These are grouped or cluster-dwelling forms. There exist different combinations of patterns of settlement exist between them.

According to Karve there are three types of villages: 

1. Tightly Nucleated villages.
2. Villages on two sides of a road.
3. Clustered villages.

According to Tyagi the villages are of the following categories:

1. Shapeless cluster.
2. Linear cluster.
3. Square of the rectangular cluster.
4. Villages formed of isolated homesteads.

According to A.R.Desai, ‘In the history of different people lives in different parts of the world and different types of villages emerged with the rise and spread of agriculture’. This was mainly due to differences in the geographical environments in which those people lived. Further, the early village of a people also underwent changes in time due to its subsequent technical, economic, and social evolution as well as due to the impact of other societies on it.                                

This history of the village, in time and space, reveals such diverse village types as the Saxon village, the German Mark, the Russian Mir, the self-sufficient Indian Gram, the village of feudal Europe which was an integral part of the manor; and finally the modern village, which is an integral part of national and world economic systems, with its variants such as the U.S.A. village, the typical West European village, the village of the backward modern countries of Asia, the village of the Soviet Union based on collectivized agricultural economy and others.

Hence the student of rural society should study the village, the basic unit of rural society as it originated and underwent a constant state of development and change due to the action of its own developing internal forces as also due to its interaction with other societies.’

Pattern of Settlement 

The patterns of settlement identified are as given below:       

1. Isolated Farmstead: In this form, the individual lives on his farm with his farmland surrounding him. “His neighbor may be a few miles from him depending on the size of their respective farms. Adjacent to his dwelling he keeps his livestock, bar, farm equipment, harvested produce, and other parts commodities.”
2. Village: This pattern of settlement comprises dwellings of rural people “concentrated together with their farmland outlying their cluster dwelling of the village. The number of dwellings will vary and will indicate the size of the village. Examples, of the village pattern of settlement due to be found in most of the countries of the East, where such predominates.” 
3. Line Village: In such a type of village houses are located along a road, a waterway, or an artery of transportation, each with adjoining strips of farmland belonging in shape extending away from the road. Residences are thus close and easily accessible to one another and at the same time are located on their respective farms. This pattern of human settlement may be witnessed along canals in “Thailand, in certain parts of Canada along the St. Lawrance River, in French Canadian settlement in Maine and Louisiana in the U.S.A. and is characteristic of the French land tenure pattern, many villages in France and Germany are also of this type.”
4. Round Village or Circular Pattern: In this type “houses are arranged in a circle enclosing a central area with the houses and yard at the apex of the triangular plot. In this way, houses are closer together without creating a corresponding greater length in the tract of farmland.” Such a pattern can easily be seen in some villages in Israel where irrigated land is very limited.”
5. Cross-Roads and Market Center Settlements: This pattern of settlement is common in various places trough out the world. It is “based on economic factors of location for simply and distribution of goods, this settlement provides needed products and commodities, such as prepared foodstuffs, refreshments services such as petrol station, repair shop, etc. market center settlement, therefore, are predominantly is habited by Merchants who handle agricultural products, bankers, shopkeepers and other.” In such centers, farmers usually do not reside unless their farmland is adjacent. Generally, it consists of shops along the line of the road.    
6. Hamlets: Small villages located away from villages or on the fringes of larger villages are called hamlets and they do not possess adequate supplies usually and services that may be more available in the larger village.
7. Other Patterns: In addition to these other types of settlements exist to serve a specific function. For, instance, in India at points of religious pilgrimage or a church is usually built along with dwelling places for those who visit and worship. Similarly, there are historical and other places of tourist interest around which settlements have come to exist.

Reference

Rural Sociology by Dr. G. Das

Origin and Development of Village

A village is the most ancient form of human life togetherness. According to Desai “The village is the unit of the rural society. It is the theater wherein the quantum of rural life unfolds itself and functions.’ 

He further adds that “Like every social phenomenon the village is a certain stage in the evolution of the life of man, its further growth and development in subsequent periods of human history, the varied structural changes it experienced during thousands of years of its existence, the rapid and basic transformation it has undergone during the last hundred and fifty years since the Industrial Revolution all these constitute a very fascinating and challenging study.”

Rise of Villages

Historically, the rise of the village is linked with the rise of the agricultural economy. The emergence of the village revealed that man passed from the nomadic mode of collective life to the life of settled individuals, basically due to the ‘improvement of tools of production which made agriculture easy and hence settled life on a fixed territorial zone possible and necessary”.

It has been one of the most complex problems of social research to find out “How humanity, in different parts of the world, passed from the nomadic hunting and food gathering stage to that based on roving hoe agriculture and thereafter on settled plow agriculture carried on by means of draft animals.”

The invention of the plough and its use led man to develop stable agriculture, the basic source of assured food supply, and man’s nomadic mode of life disappeared. No longer had men roamed in herds from place to place in search of means of subsistence on the contrary they settled on a definite territory and organized villages based on the agricultural economy. There emerged the agrarian communities with villages as their fixed habitation and agriculture as their main occupation and these developments marked a landmark in the history of mankind, inaugurating a higher phase of social existence. Agriculture assured the community, for the first time, a relatively stable food supply in contrast to previous stages of social life. While food supply derived from such sources as hunting, fishing, fruit gathering, and migratory hoe agriculture had always been insufficient and precarious, grain and other types of food products derived from plough agriculture could be counted upon and also be stored for use in periods of emergencies, thereby assuring relative food security for the future.

The development in the field of agriculture brought the struggle for existence to a relatively low level. Consequently at a certain stage of the development of the agricultural economy, due to the greater productivity of agriculture, a section of the community could be liberated from the necessity of participating in food production and could therefore concentrate on the secondary industrial or ideological activity. This gave momentum to the growth of technology, art, sciences, and philosophy, it also brought about, though slowly, the significant transition in the social organization of humanity, from an organization funded on kinship and clan to that based on territorial ties. With the development of agriculture at a certain level, mankind took a leap from optimistic collectivist clan society to territory civil society with its distinct multi-class social structure and the resultant institution of the state.”

This is how Civilization began with the development of agriculture and the village which is the first settled form of

 ‘collective human habitation and the product of the growth of agricultural economy’ pared the way for the rural society, and  from the surplus of its food resources, nourished the town which subsequently came into existence.’

Reference

Rural sociology by Dr. G. Das