Explanation: Clustered Settlements:

• The clustered rural settlement is a compact or closely built up area of houses. In this type of village, the general living area is distinct and separated from the surrounding farms, barns and pastures.
• The closely built-up area and its intervening streets present some recognisable pattern or geometric shape, such as rectangular, radial, linear, etc. Such settlements are generally found in fertile alluvial plains and in the north-eastern states.
• Sometimes, people live in compact village for security or defence reasons, such as in the Bundelkhand region of central India and in Nagaland. In Rajasthan, scarcity of water has necessitated compact settlement for maximum utilisation of available water resources.

Semi-Clustered Settlements:

• Semi-clustered or fragmented settlements may result from tendency of clustering in a restricted area of dispersed settlement. More often such a pattern may also result from segregation or fragmentation of a large compact village.

Hamleted Settlements:

• Sometimes settlement is fragmented into several units physically separated from each other bearing a common name. These units are locally called panna, para, palli, nagla, dhani, etc. in various parts of the country.

Dispersed Settlements:

• Dispersed or isolated settlement pattern in India appears in the form of isolated huts or hamlets of few huts in remote jungles, or on small hills with farms or pasture on the slopes. Extreme dispersion of settlement is often caused by extremely fragmented nature of the terrain and land resource base of habitable areas.

Source: Majid Hussain