Q1.
On your way from home to school today, can you recall the various economic activities that people are engaged in? In what ways do you think those people are paid?
Answer
Recall the journey slowly, corner by corner — you will find you pass a dozen economic activities before you reach the school gate. Then match each one to the way that person is paid. The chapter gives you four ways: salary, wage, fee and payment in kind; add profit for anyone who runs their own shop or business.
Sample answer:
| Who I saw | The economic activity | How they are paid |
|---|---|---|
| Milk vendor | Delivering milk packets house to house early in the morning | Profit on each packet sold; the dairy that employs a delivery boy pays him a salary |
| Newspaper boy | Dropping newspapers at each gate | A monthly payment collected from each household — part of it stays with him, part goes to the agency |
| Vegetable seller | Selling vegetables from a cart or a stall | Profit — the difference between the mandi price and the selling price |
| Tea stall owner | Making and selling tea and snacks | Profit; the helper who washes the glasses is paid a daily wage |
| Auto and bus driver | Carrying passengers to work, school and market | The fare from each passenger; a city bus driver draws a monthly salary |
| Tailor | Stitching and altering clothes in a small shop | A charge for each garment, which is a kind of fee for his skill |
| Cobbler | Repairing and polishing shoes at the corner | A fee for each repair, paid in cash on the spot |
| Construction workers | Building a house or repairing the road | A daily wage; the site engineer and the technician who runs the machine draw a monthly salary |
| Sanitation worker | Sweeping the street and collecting the garbage | A salary or a wage from the municipality or its contractor |
| Chemist and doctor at the clinic | Selling medicines; examining patients | Profit on medicines; a consultation fee for the doctor |
| Bank and post office staff | Handling deposits, money orders and letters | A monthly salary — just like Kavya’s aunt at the village post office |
| Farm labourer in the field beside the road | Ploughing, weeding, harvesting | A daily wage, sometimes partly in cash and partly as grain or fruit — payment in kind, like Sahil’s mangoes |
| My school teacher and the school guard | Teaching; keeping the gate safe | A monthly salary from the school |
Why the same job can be paid in different ways: what decides it is how the work is arranged, not what the work is. A driver employed by a transport company draws a salary; a driver who owns his auto earns fares. A tailor in a factory earns a wage; a tailor with his own shop earns a charge per garment. So when you answer, describe the arrangement — “employed by…”, “owns his…”, “works by the day” — and the right payment name follows on its own.
Did you notice? On the same walk you almost certainly passed non-economic activities too — a neighbour sweeping the space in front of her gate, an elder helping a child cross the road, volunteers filling a water pot for birds. They are not on the list above because nobody is paid for them, but the road you walked on would be a worse road without them.