♤ Socio-economic and historical factors

o Among the socio-economic and historical factors of distribution of population, important ones are evolution of settled agriculture and agricultural development; pattern of human settlement; development of transport network, industrialisation and urbanisation.

o It is observed that the regions falling in the river plains and coastal areas of India have remained the regions of larger population concentration. Even though the uses of natural resources like land and water in these regions have shown the sign of degradation, the concentration of population remains high because of an early history of human settlement and development of transport network.

o On the other hand, the urban regions of Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Bangalore, Pune, Ahmedabad, Chennai and Jaipur have high concentration of population due to industrial development and urbanisation drawing a large numbers of rural-urban migrants.

We can conclude that in any region the density and distribution is influenced by more than one factor. Take for example of North-Eastern region of India. Here several factors are responsible for low density of population. These factors are high rainfall, rough terrain, dense forests and poor quality of soil and many socio- economic and historical factors.