NCERT Solutions Exploring Society: India and Beyond Chapter 10 Chapter opening — The Big Questions
Book page 149 Updated on2026-09-05
Q1.
What is the meaning of ‘governance’?
Answer
Governance is the whole work of running a society by rules. The chapter defines it in one sentence on page 150:
“The process of taking decisions, organising the society’s life with different sets of rules, and ensuring that they are followed, is called governance.”
So governance has three parts, and all three must be there:
Part of governance
What it means
An everyday example
1. Taking decisions
Deciding what should be done about a problem or a need
Deciding that a village needs a new water pipeline
2. Organising life with sets of rules
Making rules so that people know what to do, and so that things are shared fairly
Traffic rules, school rules, examination rules, rules an employer and employees agree to
3. Ensuring they are followed
Seeing that the rules are actually obeyed, and acting when they are not
A traffic police officer at the signal; a court punishing a cyber criminal
The chapter is careful to separate three words that students often mix up.
Word
The book’s own definition
Kind of thing
Governance
The process of taking decisions, organising society by rules, and ensuring they are followed
A process — an activity
Government
“The group of individuals or the system that makes the rules and ensures that they are followed”
A group or system — people and institutions
Laws
“Some of the more important rules are called laws”
The rules themselves
Governance is the complete loop: a need, a rule made by representatives, the rule carried out, disputes decided, and citizens asking for changes.
Why society needs this process at all: the chapter’s opening argument is very simple. “When a large number of people live together, there can be disagreements and disorder, and rules become necessary to maintain order and harmony in the society.” You already live under several sets of rules — at home, in school, in the examination hall, on the road, at a workplace. Governance is only the same idea grown to the size of a whole country.
Tip for the exam: if asked for a one-line answer, give the book’s definition word for word and then add the contrast — governance is the process; government is the system that carries it out.
Q2.
Why do we need a government?
Answer
Because rules do not make, apply or defend themselves — somebody has to. A government is “the group of individuals or the system that makes the rules and ensures that they are followed”. Without it, the rules exist only on paper.
The chapter gives four reasons, in the order it introduces them.
Why a government is needed
What the chapter shows
1. To keep order where many people live together
“When a large number of people live together, there can be disagreements and disorder.” Look at the two pictures of Fig. 10.1 on page 151 — the same road with rules, and without them
2. To make and change the rules
The legislature makes new laws and “sometimes it also updates or removes existing laws” — for instance the new laws many governments passed against cybercrime, a crime that did not exist a generation ago
3. To make sure the rules are actually followed
The executive implements them; agencies enforce ‘law and order’ — the cyber police in the chapter’s example — and the courts decide whether someone has broken the law
4. To run the services no single family can run
The ten pictures of Fig. 10.2 on page 152 — roads, railways, defence, public health, disaster rescue and fire services, traffic control, the courts, schools, post and banking
And there is a fifth reason the chapter adds quietly, which matters as much as the others: a government gives people a lawful way to change a rule they think is wrong. “Citizens also have a say in the laws and rules governing the society.” Without a government there is no one to ask, and nothing to change.
Why it is not enough to say ‘to punish wrongdoers’: most of what a government does is not punishment at all. Building a road, running a hospital, delivering a letter, printing currency, teaching in a school and rescuing people after an earthquake are all in Fig. 10.2. Punishment is only the last step of one organ, the judiciary, and only when a law has actually been broken.
Q3.
What is the meaning of ‘democracy’? Why is it important?
Answer
Democracy means ‘rule of the people’. The chapter gives the word’s origin on page 159:
Greek dēmos = ‘people’ + Greek kratos = ‘rule’ or ‘power’ so democracy = the ‘rule of the people’
But the book immediately asks the honest question — “can all people actually rule? It is clearly not possible.” So democracy works in one of two ways:
Direct democracy
Representative democracy
Who decides
Every person, directly
Representatives chosen by the people
The book’s example
The class votes by show of hands between picnic place A and place B; “every student’s opinion was taken to finalise the place”
One class representative goes to the principal; and at the State and national levels, MLAs and MPs elected through elections
Works when
The group is small enough to gather and vote on each question
The group is a State or a country — far too large to gather
India
Used in small bodies and meetings
“Like any modern democracy, therefore, India is a representative democracy”
Why democracy is important — five reasons the chapter supports:
The people who must obey a rule have a say in making it. “Citizens also have a say in the laws and rules governing the society.”
Disagreement is settled by talking, not by force. Members “discuss laws, problems and solutions in the assemblies, and, through dialogue and debate, try to convince each other whenever there are different opinions.”
It includes everybody. India is the world’s largest democracy, with some 970 million voters in 2024, and “in principle, all Indian citizens above the age of 18 have the right to participate in these elections”.
Rules can be changed peacefully. If a law turns out to be unfair, the same assembly can update or remove it — no one has to break the law to change it.
It reaches down to ordinary people.Grassroots democracy “refers to a system that enables and encourages the participation of ordinary citizens — the base of the pyramid”, so that “citizens can have a say in decisions which affect them”.
Why the chapter opens with Rigoberta Menchú Tum: her lines chain five ideas together — “There is no peace without justice; no justice without equality; no equality without development; no democracy without respect to the identity and dignity of cultures and peoples.” Democracy, in other words, is not only counting votes. It also means that people of every language, region and culture are treated with dignity. India, with its enormous diversity, is exactly the place where that test matters.
Careful: democracy is about institutions and processes — elections, assemblies, discussion, courts. Answers should describe how the system works, not praise or blame any party or leader.