Q1.
Can you think of any primary activities that you may have seen in the past? What are the natural resources used in these activities? Name two of them and discuss your experiences with your classmates.
Answer
This is a “look around you” question, so the best answers come from what you have actually seen — from a train window, on a village visit, at a beach, on the way to school. Write down the activity, then ask what part of nature it takes from. Every primary activity has a natural resource sitting behind it.
Sample answer:
| Primary activity I have seen | Where | Natural resources used | What the worker actually does |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Paddy transplanting | In the fields beside the road to my grandmother’s village | Soil and water (canal or tube-well), and sunlight; the seed itself comes from the earth | Ploughs the wet field, plants the seedlings by hand in rows, floods the field, weeds it and harvests after about four months |
| 2. Fishing from a small boat | At the harbour on the coast, early in the morning | The sea and the fish that live in it — a living natural resource that renews itself if it is not overfished | Sails out before dawn, casts and hauls nets, sorts the catch into baskets of ice and sells it at the landing centre |
Other primary activities you may have seen. The chapter’s own photographs on page 198 show greenhouse farming, mining, fish farming (fishery), forestry and raising livestock. Add to those:
- Grazing goats or sheep on a hillside — the resource is grass, land and the animals themselves.
- A poultry farm collecting eggs — the resource is livestock; the feed comes from grain grown in fields.
- A stone quarry at the edge of a town — the resource is rock and mineral in the earth.
- Tapping toddy or rubber from trees in Kerala, or collecting tendu leaves and honey in the forests of Chhattisgarh and Odisha — the resource is the forest.
- Beekeeping beside a mustard field in Rajasthan — the resource is flowers, bees and land.
Check it yourself: if you can name the exact bit of nature the worker takes from — this soil, this river, this mine, this herd — the activity is primary. If the worker is dealing with something another person already produced, it is not.
Why this matters: nearly half of all working people in India still earn their living in the primary sector, mostly from farming. Everything the secondary and tertiary sectors do begins with what these workers take from nature — which is also why looking after soil, water, forests and fish stocks is not a separate “environment” topic but an economic necessity.