NCERT Solutions for Class 6th Social Science Chapter 1 (Introduction)Introduction — Let's Explore
Book page 2 Updated on2026-09-19
Q1.
Observe the picture above. What do you notice?
What the picture above shows:
Behind everything, a rocky hill with a bare grey peak, its lower slopes thickly covered with green trees, and a second, lower hill beside it.
In front of the hills, a wide, still sheet of water — a lake — with the hills and the trees reflected in it.
Trees and bushes all along the near bank; beyond the far bank, small green fields on the hill foot.
On the bank at the right, one small house with rough stone walls and a red tiled roof, some sheets spread over part of the roof, and a little flag on a pole beside it.
In the foreground, a narrow metalled road running past, with dry grass on both sides.
A pale, cloudy sky above.
The photograph on page 2 of the Introduction — described here; see the textbook for the picture itself.
Answer
The photograph shows a rural landscape. Look at it in two layers — what nature has made and what people have made.
Made by nature
Made by people
A rocky hill with two peaks, covered with green forest
A tarred (metalled) road curving through the foreground
A wide lake at the foot of the hill
A small house with a sloping tiled roof beside the lake
Trees, grass and bushes; a cloudy sky (it looks like the monsoon or just after it)
A saffron flag near the house, and cleared patches that look like small fields
You also notice what is missing — no shops, no traffic, no tall buildings, no crowd. Only one or two houses can be seen. So very few people live here, and they live close to the forest and the water.
Why this picture opens the book: Social Science studies the place where nature and human beings meet. The hill and the lake belong to geography; the house and the flag to culture; the road to governance and the economy. A single photograph already contains all five themes of this textbook.
Q2.
Where does the water in the lake come from?
Answer
Almost all of it comes from rain — chiefly the south-west monsoon between June and September.
Rain falls on the forested hill slopes behind the lake.
The water runs down the slopes as tiny streams and rivulets, because water always flows from a higher place to a lower one.
At the foot of the hill the land is low, so the water collects there and forms the lake. The area whose rainwater drains into it is called its catchment.
Some water also seeps in from underground springs, which is why such lakes do not dry up immediately after the rains.
Why the forest matters: the trees and grass on the slope hold the soil. Without them the rain would wash mud into the lake and slowly fill it up. Forest, hill and lake work as one system — damage one and the others suffer.
Did you know? Many Indian lakes of exactly this kind are not natural at all. Villagers dammed a small valley to store the monsoon rain for the dry months — the kere of Karnataka, the eri of Tamil Nadu, the talab and bawdi of Rajasthan and Bundelkhand. Some are more than a thousand years old and are still in use.
Q3.
Who made the road and why?
Answer
Who: a road like this is built by the government, not by one family. In a village it is usually the Gram Panchayat, the Zila Parishad, the State Public Works Department (PWD), or the Central scheme Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana (PMGSY), which was started in 2000 to give every village an all-weather road. Local people are often employed to build it under schemes such as MGNREGA.
Why: a road is a lifeline. It lets the people of the house —
carry their grain, milk or fish to the market and bring back salt, oil and cloth;
send children to a school and reach a hospital or a Primary Health Centre quickly;
reach the Panchayat office, the bank and the ration shop;
and it lets visitors, pilgrims and tourists come to the lake and the hill.
The Social Science point: the road proves that this lonely-looking place is connected to the rest of the country. Somebody planned it, somebody paid for it out of taxes, and somebody decided it was needed here rather than somewhere else. Those decisions are exactly what the theme on Governance and Democracy is about.
Q4.
What could be the activities of people living in the small house? What could be their history? Their future?
Answer
We cannot know for certain from one photograph — but we can make sensible guesses based on evidence, which is how a social scientist begins.
Question
What the picture suggests
Their activities
Farming the cleared patches, fishing in the lake, keeping cows or goats, collecting firewood, honey, mahua or tendu leaves from the forest, and perhaps working as guides or selling tea to visitors. Some family members may work in a nearby town.
Their history
Their family has probably lived near this hill for many generations. Their ancestors may have settled here because the lake gave water all year. They will have their own songs, festivals, a village deity — the flag suggests a small shrine — and stories about the hill.
Their future
The new road may bring electricity, a mobile signal, a school bus and more visitors. Children may study further and take up new kinds of work. But if the forest is cut or the lake polluted, life here could become harder instead.
Sample answer: “The family probably farms a small field and fishes in the lake. Their grandparents may have settled here long ago because of the water. In future, the road may bring a school and jobs closer, but they will also need to protect the lake and the forest they depend on.”
Why the book asks it this way: notice that one small house has led us to economics (their work), history (their past) and geography (why they live here). That mixing of fields is what the book later calls multidisciplinarity.
Q5.
Now, looking at the picture on the facing page, what questions come to your mind? Write them down.
What the picture on the facing page shows:
A row of tall office towers of glass and steel, blue-green in colour, many storeys high; one of them is shaped like a leaning wedge.
Company signboards fixed high on the buildings.
Street lights on tall curved poles, and blue road signboards with white arrows, along the road in front.
A line of young trees planted between the road and the buildings.
A car on the road at the bottom edge of the picture.
A bright, almost white sky above.
The photograph on page 3 of the Introduction — described here; see the textbook for the picture itself.
Answer
The facing page shows the exact opposite scene — a modern city business district: tall glass-and-steel office towers, a wide divided road with lane markings, street lights, cars, and neatly planted shrubs on the median. Good questions to write down:
Which city is this, and where did this land's earlier fields or villages go?
What work is done inside these offices? Who built them, and with whose money?
Where do the thousands of people who work here live, and how do they travel every day?
Where do the city's water and electricity come from, and where does its waste go?
Why is there no lake or forest in the picture? What happens to rainwater falling on so much concrete?
Who keeps the roads, lights and drains working, and who pays for them?
Is life here better than in the village of the first picture — better in what way, and worse in what way?
Why compare the two pictures: both are India, on the same day. One shows people living with nature, the other shows people living inside something entirely built by humans. Comparing them is the fastest way to see that a society is not one thing but many — and that is why Social Science needs history, geography, economics and political science together.
Q6.
How do you propose to find answers to the questions related to these two images?
Answer
By using the same tools a social scientist uses. Plan it as a small project:
Method
What it can tell you
Careful observation (a field visit)
What crops grow, how many houses there are, how busy the road is, how clean the lake is
Asking people — interviews with elders, farmers, shopkeepers, the Panchayat secretary
The history of the settlement, why the road came, how life has changed
Maps and photographs, including old photographs and satellite images
Where the place is, what it looked like 20 or 50 years ago
Written and printed sources — books, newspapers, district gazetteers, Census reports, government websites
Population, rainfall, literacy, schemes such as PMGSY
Comparing sources
Whether two people or two books say the same thing — and what to believe if they do not
Tip: write your questions down before you start, keep a notebook of what each person tells you, and always note who told you and when. A social scientist's answer is only as good as the source behind it.