NCERT Solutions Exploring Society: India and Beyond Chapter 12 –181Sameer and Anita — In-text Questions

Book page 179 Updated on2026-09-05

Q1.

Oh, really? What’s it like in the city?

Answer

Sameer asks this on page 179, and Anita answers it in the next few lines. Her reply, in the book’s own words, is that the city is “busy and crowded, with tall buildings everywhere. There are so many people rushing around all the time, and it’s noisy compared to the quietness here. Also, people are more independent and often don’t even know their neighbours.”

But she immediately corrects the impression that a city has no community. “There’s still some sense of community in the city. Just the other day, following heavy rains, a house collapsed two streets away. Dozens of people gathered from all over the place to help clear the rubble and make sure no one was trapped inside.”

Put the two halves of the conversation side by side and you have the chapter’s comparison in miniature:

	The city, as Anita describes it	The village, as Sameer describes it
How it feels	Busy, crowded, noisy, tall buildings, people rushing all the time	Quiet; everyone knows everyone else
Neighbours	“People are more independent and often don’t even know their neighbours”	Everyone “pitches in to help each other out”
Working together	Comes out in a crisis — dozens gathered to clear the rubble of a collapsed house	Every day — “we work together in the fields, celebrate festivals together, and even make decisions as a community”
Local government	“Local bodies and elected representatives who represent us and our interests”	The Gram Panchayat and Gram Sabha — “only bigger”, as Sameer puts it about the city
Being heard	Harder — the city is large, so it works through wards and councillors	Easier — “Sometimes, even us kids can get heard”

Why the book uses a conversation instead of a paragraph: Sameer and Anita each know only half the country. Neither one’s life is the ‘normal’ one. By the end of page 181 both have learnt something, and Anita states the moral herself — “It seems more complicated in the city, but the idea is the same — everyone’s voice matters.”

Q2.

Doesn’t the local government help in such cases?

Answer

Yes — and Anita says so at once: “Yes, it does. In fact, we have local bodies and elected representatives who represent us and our interests.” Sameer’s own comment is the sentence to remember: “it sounds like our village Panchayat, only bigger.”

Take the exact case in the conversation — a house that collapsed after heavy rain — and see what the urban local body does at each stage:

Stage	What the urban local body does
At once	Fire services and rescue reach the spot; the disaster or emergency cell is alerted; the area is cordoned off so nobody else is hurt
Within hours	Debris clearance — exactly the “CRM — WATER TANKER, DEBRIS CLEARANCE” service in Fig. 12.4 on page 178; ambulances; drinking water by tanker; temporary shelter and mobile toilets
In the following days	Engineers inspect the neighbouring buildings and mark the unsafe ones; drains are cleared; relief is arranged, often together with the State government
Afterwards	Building rules are enforced more strictly; permissions and repairs are checked; the ward committee reports what still needs doing

But notice what the neighbours did first. “Dozens of people gathered from all over the place to help clear the rubble and make sure no one was trapped inside.” The people were there before any official vehicle could arrive. That is not a failure of the local body — it is what the chapter means by participatory democracy: “for these bodies to be able to perform their functions efficiently, people living in the city must also perform their duties”.

Why Sameer’s comparison is exactly right: a Gram Panchayat and a Municipal Corporation differ in size, staff and budget — not in principle. Both are chosen by the people of the area, both handle the problems of that area, and both can be questioned by the people who elected them. Sameer’s own story on page 181 proves the point from the other side: children noticed “an electricity wire… hanging dangerously low”, reported it, explained to a Gram Sabha member that the electric post should be shifted — “And it was done!” A ward committee in a city is the place where a city child would take the same complaint.

Tip: if you are asked in an exam to compare the village and city systems using this conversation, quote Sameer’s line — “it sounds like our village Panchayat, only bigger” — and then give one clear difference: a Gram Sabha can meet as a whole, a city cannot.

Was this helpful? Report an error