NCERT Solutions Exploring Society: India and Beyond Chapter 13 Value addition — In-text Question
Book page 190 Updated on2026-09-05
Q1.
The wood for the chair costs ₹600. So, what is the remaining ₹400 (₹1,000 – ₹600) for?
Answer
The ₹400 is the money value of Rajesh’s work — “the monetary value of Rajesh’s skill, time and effort, which went into making that chair”. He did not find ₹400; he created it by turning plain wood into a chair somebody wants to sit on. The chapter’s name for this is value addition.
Selling price of the chair = ₹1,000 Cost of the wood he bought = ₹600 Value added by Rajesh = ₹1,000 − ₹600 = ₹400
₹1,000 − ₹600 = ₹400. That gap is not a profit taken from anyone — it is the price of the work that changed a pile of wood into a chair.
Why the buyer is happy to pay it: nobody wants to sit on ₹600 of loose wood. The chair is worth more to the buyer than the wood was, and the whole of that increase came from Rajesh’s hands. This is what page 189 means when it says economic activities “add value at each stage of the process of transforming something into another form”. The same thing happens all around you — cotton becomes thread, thread becomes cloth, cloth becomes the shirt in Anu’s parents’ shop, and each pair of hands along the way adds value.
Careful: the ₹400 is value added, not pure profit that Rajesh keeps. Out of it he must still pay for “special tools and other materials” — nails, glue, polish, the cushion on the seat — and for the wear on his saw and his workshop. What is left after all that is his actual earning. So do not write “Rajesh earns ₹400 profit”; write “Rajesh adds ₹400 of value, which covers his materials and pays for his skill, time and effort”.
Check it yourself: if Rajesh’s tools, nails and polish cost him ₹150 for that chair, how much is left for his skill, time and effort? ₹400 − ₹150 = ₹250. And if he makes 4 such chairs in a week, the value he adds in that week is 4 × ₹400 = ₹1,600.