HIERARCHICAL PATTERNS OF RURAL CENTRAL PLACES IN THE PAINGANGA VALLEY Dr

The Painganga Valley of the Vidarbha region of Maharashtra State (India) is selected as study for the present investigation. The investigation is an attempt to hierarchical patterns of rural central places in the Painganga Valley (20°30" N to 19°0" N latitude and 76°0" E to 79°0" E longitude). Administratively the region consists of 28 tahsils and 2208 villages and 183 rural central places with rural area of 16,610 Sq.Km. i.e. 7 per cent of the total area of the Maharashtra State. The Painganga Valley region of Vidarbha, constituting a part of Deccan Plateau of India. The elevation already established by it ranges from 200 M 600 M. The soil of the region Vidarbha in the Painganga Valley is generally sound black. The average rainfall in the Valley is 999 mm. Rural service centre is defined as “A place, which supplies the economic, administrative and social needs of the people of service area as well as of the people of a place itself, through public and private institutions, establishments and organizations. According to empirical studies growth centre or service centres cater to the provisions of services such as education, health, transport, communication, trade, finance and other services. The rural central-places are important nodal centres on communication lines enjoying centrality in a given area or a region with respect to a variety of functions or services for its contiguous surrounding areas. Here the quantitative analysis of spatial pattern of the rural central places and their services in the different tahsils in the Painganga valley the region of Vidarbha is under analysis. HYPOTHESIS—This chapter les to analyses the correlation among the basis of population size of service centres and the services, function performed by them in the region under study. The average population size of rural settlements and their centrality score of services/functions, performed by rural settlements mainly depend on their population size and vice versa. METHODOLOGY—Several methods have been devised for measuring power of rural service centres. Although two centres have the same type of centralities still they can be distinguished from each other in two types namely, a) The Relative Centrality Index (R.C.I.) Pc1 (Pt1 . Rc /Pt R.C.I . = x 100 Pc (Pt . Rc /Pt) Where Pc 1 = Commercial population of the centre place, Pt1 = Total population of the centre, Rc = Regional commercial population, Rt = Total regional population, Pc = Summation of Pc1, Pc2, Pc3, etc., Pt = Summation of Pt1, Pt2, Pt3, etc. On the basis of the data from different sources (Appendices No. 1), service categories were obtained and due values have been given to different services, and ultimately to determine the centrality of rural settlements in the study region. b) The Absolute Centrality Index (A.C.I.) has been calculated with the following formula. Pb A.C. I . = 10,000 Where, Pb = Basic population of the place / commercial population of the centre. A.C. I. of a place can be calculated by dividing the total basic population by 10,000 in order. c) Size Index (S.I.) Size-Index is calculated by the following formula Pt1 x 100 S.I . = Pt Pt1 = Total population of the centre, Pt = Summation of Pt 1 , Pt 2 , Pt 3 etc. EXPOSITION—The Painganga valley has 184 rural service centres, which are not equally significant in the total areal functional organization. These differences regarding the importance of rural service centres generate ultimately, the concept of hierarchy of rural service centres. With the above procedure of centrality indices hierarchical class system exists in the region. The class system is often shown with the help of a distributional graph or scatter diagram with A.C. I. and S.I. values of the basic parameters. Hierarchical orders of central places can be determined only by centrality indices. All the centres, therefore, have to be arranged in a hierarchical order i.e. in a descending order from the smallest to the largest. With a practicable class limit with almost equal or reasonable HIERARCHICAL PATTERNS OF RURAL CENTRAL PLACES IN THE PAINGANGA VALLEY