Human Geography

Roadways and railways.

(Other acceptable pairs: airways and waterways; ropeways and pipelines.)

The types of settlement are:

1. Rural settlement – settlements in villages, where people are mainly engaged in primary activities like farming, fishing and animal rearing.
2. Urban settlement – settlements in towns and cities, where people are mainly engaged in secondary and tertiary activities like industry, trade and services.

Raising the age of marriage and expanding female education and employment.

Two measures to change subsistence farming into commercial farming are:

1. Use of improved seeds, chemical fertilizers and irrigation to raise production beyond family needs.
2. Development of markets, transportation and storage facilities so that the surplus can be sold.

Effects brought by the uneven distribution of the population

Nepal's population is distributed very unevenly — the Terai plains hold the bulk of the people while the mountains and hills remain thinly populated. This imbalance produces several effects:

1. Pressure on land and resources in dense areas: In the Terai and urban centres, heavy population density leads to fragmentation of agricultural land, landlessness, squatting on public land, and over-exploitation of soil, water and forests.
2. Underuse of resources in sparse areas: The mountains and remote hills have abundant natural resources (forests, pasture, minerals, water) but too few people to use them, so these resources remain unutilised or wasted.
3. Unbalanced development: Densely populated areas attract more infrastructure — roads, schools, hospitals, markets — while sparse areas remain deprived, widening the gap between developed and backward regions.
4. Migration and its consequences: People move from hills and mountains to the Terai and cities, causing brain drain, an imbalance in the labour force, and problems of slums, unemployment and crime in destination areas.
5. Environmental degradation: Concentration of population in a few areas causes deforestation, soil erosion, pollution, and increased risk of floods and landslides, while sparse areas face neglect of environmental management.
6. Difficulty in planning and service delivery: Uneven distribution makes it hard for the government to provide equal basic services and to plan balanced infrastructure and budget allocation.

Five measures to overcome these effects

1. Balanced regional development: Equally distribute infrastructure like roads, electricity, schools, health posts and industries across all regions so that people are not forced to migrate to a few crowded areas.
2. Promotion of employment and income opportunities in backward areas: Develop agriculture, tourism, hydropower, herbs and cottage industries in hills and mountains to create local jobs and reduce out-migration.
3. Planned and managed urbanisation: Develop new planned towns and satellite cities, and manage existing cities with proper housing, water supply, sanitation and transport to reduce congestion.
4. Awareness and education programmes: Educate people about the benefits of small family size, family planning, and the advantages of staying in their own regions through local employment.
5. Encouragement of resettlement and decentralisation: Promote planned resettlement in sparsely populated areas with facilities and incentives, and decentralise administrative and economic activities away from the crowded Kathmandu valley and Terai centres.