NCERT Solutions Exploring Society: India and Beyond Chapter 12 The chapter in three points — Before we move on …

Book page 181 Updated on2026-09-05

Q1.

In urban areas, decentralised governance works through different urban local bodies, which fulfil various functions affecting the citizens’ lives.

Answer

Three ideas are packed into this one line — ‘decentralised’, ‘different urban local bodies’ and ‘functions affecting the citizens’ lives’. Take them one at a time.

Decentralised. Page 175 explains the word: “instead of operating under a central authority at the top, the local communities have a direct say on how their areas are managed or the issues they face”. A city’s garbage is decided in that city, not in a distant capital.

Different urban local bodies. Page 179 names all three, and population decides which one a place gets:

Body	Population	Example from the chapter
Municipal Corporation	Above 10 lakhs	Greater Mumbai (Fig. 12.1), Greater Chennai (Fig. 12.3), Indore (Fig. 12.4)
Municipal Council	Between 1 and 10 lakhs	Shown in Fig. 12.2 as ‘Municipal Council or City Council’
Nagar Panchayat	Smaller populations	Shown in Fig. 12.2, in brackets

Functions affecting the citizens’ lives. Page 176 lists them — “helping take care of the infrastructure, maintaining the burial ground, garbage collection and disposal, checking the implementation of government schemes, collecting local taxes and fines, and so on”, plus “some role in planning for the area’s economic and social development”. Fig. 12.4 on page 178 shows the same list as photographs, right down to the ambulance and the mobile toilet.

One line for revision: Corporation above 10 lakhs · Council between 1 and 10 lakhs · Nagar Panchayat below that — and every one of them is built on wards.

Q2.

As with the rural context, urban local bodies have elected members who represent the local citizens.

Answer

This is the sentence that makes an urban local body a piece of democracy and not just an office. The people of each ward elect their representative — Fig. 12.2 shows the chain from the bottom up: People of the Ward → Ward Committee → Municipal Corporation or Municipal Council or City Council (Nagar Panchayat). Anita states it in the conversation on page 180: “we have local bodies and elected representatives who represent us and our interests”.

Elected and appointed are not the same thing — this is the point most often got wrong in an exam.

	Elected — chosen by the people	Appointed — posted by the State Government
Who	Ward councillors (corporators); and, from among them, the Mayor of a Corporation or the Chairperson of a Council or Nagar Panchayat	The Municipal Commissioner of a Corporation (a Chief Municipal Officer in a Council), with engineers, health officers, tax staff and sanitation staff under them
How they get there	By winning a municipal election in a ward	By being posted to the job as a government officer
What they do	Decide — pass the budget, approve works, raise the ward’s problems, hold the administration to account	Execute — run the departments, spend the sanctioned money, supervise the daily work
Whom they answer to	The voters of their ward at the next election	The council and the State Government

The rural parallel is exact. A Gram Panchayat has elected members and a Sarpanch, helped by an appointed Panchayat Secretary. A Municipal Corporation has elected councillors and a Mayor, helped by an appointed Municipal Commissioner. Same design, larger scale.

Why both halves are necessary: elected members know what a locality needs but cannot personally lay a pipe or run a fire station; officials have the training and the machinery but are not answerable to the voters. Put them together and you get expertise that stays under the people’s control. That is why the phrase “who represent the local citizens” matters — the officials work for the city, but the councillors speak for it.

Did you know? Under the 74th Constitutional Amendment, a municipality has a fixed term of five years, its elections are conducted by the State Election Commission, and seats are reserved for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes and for women — not less than one-third of the total. So women’s representation is protected in cities exactly as it is in Panchayats.

Q3.

The citizens also have duties to ensure that the local bodies are able to perform their functions efficiently.

Answer

The chapter ends on duties, not on rights — and that is deliberate. Page 177: “for these bodies to be able to perform their functions efficiently, people living in the city must also perform their duties, which means that they must show care and concern for their area (remember, this is a participatory democracy)”.

The two examples the book itself gives show how small the required action is, and how large the result:

What the citizen does	What the local body can then do
“Carefully follow instructions regarding waste segregation”	“Garbage collection becomes easier” — and the waste can actually be composted or recycled instead of dumped
“Notice a water leakage in a street” and report it promptly	“Reporting it promptly will prevent further wastage of precious water”
Pay property tax and water charges on time	The body has the money to build and repair — that is stream 1 of its funding
Use the ward committee, the councillor or the grievance system	The body learns about a fault it could not have seen for itself
Join campaigns and cleanliness drives, look after public property	Public money goes into new work instead of repairing damage

Indore is the proof. Seven years in a row as India’s cleanest city was not won by the Corporation alone — it was won in lakhs of kitchens where the wet waste and the dry waste went into different bins every morning.

Why ‘participatory’ is the key word of the whole chapter: the chapter opened on page 174 by defining good governance as empowering citizens “so they may actively participate in their country’s functioning”. It closes by asking the reader to do exactly that. A local body can be efficient only where citizens are careful — otherwise the same complaint returns week after week, and the same money is spent twice.

Tip for the exam: in any answer about urban local bodies, add one sentence on the citizen’s duty. It is the point the chapter makes three separate times — on pages 174, 177 and 181 — and it is the easiest mark to earn.

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