NCERT Solutions Exploring Society: India and Beyond Chapter 13 Chapter opening — The Big Questions
Book page 183 Updated on2026-09-05
Q1.
What are the different types of activities that people engage in?
Answer
People do hundreds of different things every day, but the chapter sorts every one of them into just two groups — economic activities and non-economic activities. Page 185 says it plainly: “Different types of activities, like the ones discussed above, are divided into two groups or categories: economic activities and non-economic activities.”
Economic activity = work that “involves money or [is] performed in exchange for money or money’s worth” Non-economic activity = work that does “not generate income or wealth but [is] done out of feelings like gratitude, love, care and respect”
One question separates the two branches: does money or money’s worth change hands? Everything else — how hard the work is, how useful it is, how much it is respected — is the same on both sides.
Now look at the same idea as a table, sorted by how the work is done and who gains from it. Every example is from this chapter.
Kind of work
Example from the chapter
Paid or unpaid
Who benefits
Work for a salary
Geeta Aunty, a pilot in the Indian Air Force; Rohan, a software engineer; Kavya’s uncle, a bulldozer technician; Kavya’s aunt at the village post office
Paid — a fixed payment, generally monthly
The worker’s family, and everyone served — the country, the company, the village
Work for a wage
Sahil, the farm labourer tilling a farmer’s land with a tractor
Paid — a daily wage, partly in cash and partly in mangoes (payment in kind)
Sahil’s family, and the orchard owner whose land is tilled
Work for a fee
A lawyer arguing a case; a doctor; Kavya’s aunt’s evening online classes for exam preparation
Paid — a fee for each service or each week
The client, the patient, the student — and the professional
Making and selling goods
Rajesh the carpenter; Anu’s parents’ shop for uniforms and ready-made garments; the school-bag seller; the farmer selling harvest
Paid — profit, the money left after paying for materials
The seller’s family, and every buyer who gets what they need
Household and care work
Cooking food for the family; helping children with schoolwork; youth caring for grandparents; Kabir’s grandfather running errands for the home; Kavya’s aunt finishing “her share of the household chores”
Unpaid — non-economic
The whole family. If this work stopped, nobody could go out to work at all
Voluntary service for the community
Free Geography classes for the neighbourhood kids; the stitching group Anu’s mother helps; Rohan’s weekend computer classes; sevā and langar; Swachh Bharat Abhiyan; Van Mahotsav
Unpaid — non-economic
The neighbourhood, the community, and in the end the whole country
Why one activity can sit in both columns: Kavya’s aunt does exactly the same thing — teaching — twice over. When she takes online classes and charges a weekly fee, it is economic. When Kabir’s grandfather teaches Geography free, it is non-economic. It is the payment that changes, not the teaching. That is why you must always ask about the payment, never about how “important” the work looks.
Q2.
What is their contribution to our everyday lives?
Answer
Between them, these two kinds of activity produce everything you use and everything you rely on. Look at one ordinary school morning and count how many people’s work you have already used before the first bell.
What you did before school
Whose work made it possible
Economic or non-economic
Woke up in a house with a roof and a door
Masons, carpenters like Rajesh, electricians, plumbers
Economic
Drank water, switched on a light
Waterworks staff, linemen, engineers
Economic
Ate breakfast
A farmer who grew the grain, a truck driver who carried it, a shopkeeper who sold it — and whoever cooked it at home
Both — economic up to the shop, non-economic in the kitchen
Wore a clean uniform
A tailor, a shop like Anu’s parents’ — and whoever in the family washed and pressed it
Both
Reached school safely
A bus or auto driver, road-building technicians like Kavya’s uncle, traffic police
Economic
Sat in a clean classroom and learnt
Teachers on a salary, sanitation workers — and, on cleanliness drives, the community itself
Both
What economic activities contribute. They produce the goods and services a society needs, and they give the people who do them an income to live on. They also add value at every step — the chapter’s own point on pages 189–190. Wood worth ₹600 becomes a chair worth ₹1,000 because Rajesh worked on it; a farmer’s wheat becomes flour, then bread, and is worth more at each stage. Kavya’s new highway will cut the journey to the nearest town “from five hours to just two hours” — so the technicians who build it hand a benefit to every traveller for years afterwards.
What non-economic activities contribute. Page 193 sums it up: they “contribute to social welfare, personal wellbeing and enhance the overall quality of life”. In detail:
They keep families running. Cooked food, clean clothes, homework help, care for the sick and the old — the invisible work that makes it possible for anyone else to go out and earn.
They hold a community together. A langar feeds every visitor free; a plantation drive on Van Mahotsav puts trees where the whole locality will one day sit in the shade.
They do jobs no salary would ever cover. No corporation can keep every street clean by itself — the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan works because ordinary citizens do the work themselves.
They give the giver something too. These practices “foster a sense of satisfaction and gratitude for what we have”.
Why the chapter is called “The Value of Work” and not “The Value of Money”: because value and money are not the same size. Money measures only what was exchanged. A mother’s cooking, a grandfather’s free class, a neighbour who cleans the street — none of that appears in any account book, and yet a village where nobody did such things would be a poorer place to live in than a village where everybody did. Money counts some work. Value belongs to all of it.
Tip: if an answer asks about “contribution”, always give both halves — the goods and income that economic activities create, and the wellbeing, care and community strength that non-economic activities create. An answer with only the first half misses the whole point of this chapter.