Q1.
Put a ✓ against those activities/professions that you think create monetary value. Can you add two activities and examples of money related value creation to the empty rows at the end? (1. Baker 2. Tailor 3. Farmers repairing their tractor 4. Doctor 5. Parents cooking dinner for their family 6. Scientist 7. Person taking care of a sick grandparent 8. ____ 9. ____)
Answer
Tick a row only if somebody pays money, or money’s worth, for that work. Here is the completed table, with rows 8 and 9 filled in.
| No. | Activity / Profession | Creates monetary value? | Example of money-related value creation |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Baker | ✓ | Buys flour, sugar and yeast for ₹200 and sells the bread and cakes baked from them for ₹500 — the baking added ₹300 of value |
| 2 | Tailor | ✓ | Charges ₹300 to stitch a kurta from cloth the customer brings — the ₹300 is the price of his skill, exactly like Rajesh’s ₹400 |
| 3 | Farmers repairing their tractor | ✗ (no tick) | They repair their own tractor, so no payment passes between anyone. Note the near-twin: a mechanic repairing that same tractor for a charge would be ✓ |
| 4 | Doctor | ✓ | Charges a consultation fee of ₹400, or draws a monthly salary at a hospital |
| 5 | Parents cooking dinner for their family | ✗ (no tick) | Nobody pays for it — it is done out of love and care. Its value to the family is huge, but it is not monetary value. A cook in a restaurant doing the same cooking for wages would be ✓ |
| 6 | Scientist | ✓ | Draws a salary from a laboratory, a university or an institute such as ISRO or CSIR, and the research may lead to products worth crores |
| 7 | Person taking care of a sick grandparent | ✗ (no tick) | Family care, given out of love and gratitude. A trained nurse hired to do the same nursing for a salary would be ✓ — the work is identical, only the payment differs |
| 8 | Potter (added) | ✓ | Digs clay worth almost nothing, shapes and fires it, and sells a set of matkas for ₹150 each in the weekly market |
| 9 | Bus driver (added) | ✓ | Draws a monthly salary for carrying hundreds of passengers safely to work, school and market every single day |
Other good pairs you could use for rows 8 and 9: a barber (charges for a haircut) · a fisherman (sells the day’s catch) · a weaver (sells handloom saris) · a mason (paid a daily wage on a building site) · a mobile-repair shop owner (charges for each repair) · a courier delivery agent (paid per delivery) · a beautician, an electrician, a plumber, an app developer.
Why rows 3, 5 and 7 do not get a tick — and why that is not an insult: the question asks only about monetary value, and money only appears when there is an exchange between people. The farmer’s repair, the parent’s cooking and the grandchild’s nursing are all done inside the family, for the family. Look at what the chapter itself does with such work — page 191 opens the very next section with the line, “While non-economic activities may not involve money, the value they generate is important in our lives.” No tick in this column is not a low mark for that work. It only means this particular column is measuring rupees, and rupees cannot measure everything.
Think a step further: a family that hires a cook, a nurse and a mechanic pays real money every month for exactly the work that rows 3, 5 and 7 describe. So that work always had a money value — it simply was never billed. Economists across the world have been arguing for decades that unpaid household and care work should be measured and reported, because leaving it out makes it invisible. In most countries, and in India too, the greater share of this unpaid work is done by women; recognising it, and sharing it fairly among everyone in a home, is one practical way of putting this chapter into action.