NCERT Solutions Exploring Society: India and Beyond Chapter 14 Chapter opening — The Big Questions
Book page 195 Updated on2026-09-05
Q1.
How are economic activities classified?
Answer
Economic activities are classified into three economic sectors — the primary sector, the secondary sector and the tertiary sector. Page 196 gives the rule: “Some economic activities share similar characteristics and based on this, they can be grouped together or classified into broader groups called economic sectors. The three main types of economic sectors are primary, secondary and tertiary economic sectors.”
Primary — takes raw material directly from nature Secondary — transforms that raw material into a new product Tertiary — provides the services that support the other two
The three sectors of the Indian economy, with real examples in each. The tertiary sector is drawn across the bottom because its services touch all three.
Why the classification was needed at all. Page 196 explains that long ago “most people were involved in activities such as agriculture, livestock rearing, production of tools, pottery and weaving cloth”. Today people manufacture computers, mobile phones and drones, work in banks, schools and hotels, drive vehicles, make furniture, stitch clothes on machines, create software and repair refrigerators. With so many kinds of work, “classifying all these activities helps us to understand how they function and the links they have with each other”.
Tip: the tertiary sector is also called the service sector, because it produces services and not goods. If you cannot pick up the output and carry it home, it is almost always tertiary.
Q2.
What differentiates these activities to be grouped into sectors?
Answer
The difference is what each activity does with the raw material of nature. That single question — where does the material come from, and what does this activity do to it? — puts every activity in its place.
Sector
What the activity does
The book’s definition
Indian example, step by step
Primary
Takes the raw material directly out of nature. Nothing is made — it is grown, caught, dug out or reared
“Those economic activities in which people are directly dependent on nature to produce goods” (page 196)
A farmer in Vidarbha picks cotton from his field
Secondary
Changes the form of that raw material into a new, more useful product
Activities “in which people are dependent on outputs of the primary sector and transform them to produce goods” (page 199)
A mill in Coimbatore spins the cotton into yarn, weaves cloth and a unit in Tiruppur stitches a T-shirt
Tertiary
Makes no goods at all. It provides a service that the other two sectors cannot do without
Activities “that provide support to people involved in primary and secondary activities” (page 201)
A truck carries the T-shirts, a bank lends money to the unit, a shop sells the shirt to you
Three quick tests you can use in an exam.
Is nature the direct supplier? If the worker deals with soil, water, forest, mine or animal, it is primary. Sowing paddy, tapping rubber in Kerala, extracting iron ore at Bailadila, rearing sheep in Rajasthan.
Has the material changed form? Sugarcane is primary, but the sugar made from it in a Kolhapur mill is secondary. Iron ore is primary, the steel from Bhilai is secondary. The book also puts construction and the supply of water, electricity and gas here.
Is the output a service, not a thing? Then it is tertiary — transport, trade, banking, communication, healthcare, teaching, repairing, storing, insuring, software.
Why the same product appears in all three sectors: because a sector is not a thing, it is a stage of work. Milk is primary when the farmer draws it from the cow, secondary when the dairy turns it into ghee, and tertiary when a truck carries the ghee to a shop. Ask what the person is doing, not what the object is.
Q3.
How are the three sectors interconnected?
Answer
They are links in one chain: the primary sector supplies, the secondary sector transforms, and the tertiary sector moves, finances and sells — and none of them can work without the other two. Page 202 says the three sectors “play an important role in the process of conversion of natural raw materials into finished products for final consumption”.
Follow one glass of milk from a village in Anand district, Gujarat, to your breakfast table.
The AMUL chain of the chapter, sector by sector. Green is primary, orange is secondary, blue is tertiary — and notice how many of the steps are services.
The chapter’s own summary of this chain (pages 204–205). Milking the cows is “a primary sector economic activity because the product (milk) is derived directly from a natural source (cows/livestock)”. Turning it “from one form (liquid) into another — milk powder, ghee, cheese, butter” in the factories is a secondary activity. And “transportation, trading and retail is a tertiary activity”.
Why interdependence, and not just a queue: the arrows do not point one way only. The dairy needs the farmer’s milk, but the farmer also needs the dairy — without it his milk curdles and is worth nothing. The trucks need goods to carry, and the goods need the trucks to be worth carrying. Each sector is at once a customer and a supplier of the other two. Page 207 puts it exactly: nothing “would have been possible, had it not been for all three sectors working together.”