NCERT Solutions Exploring Society: India and Beyond Chapter 14 The chapter in two points — Before we move on…

Book page 208 Updated on2026-09-05

Q1.

In this chapter, we learnt about the three sectors of economic activities.

Answer

The three sectors, side by side, in the book’s own words. If you can fill this table from memory, you have the chapter.

	Primary sector	Secondary sector	Tertiary sector
What it does	People are “directly dependent on nature to produce goods”	People “are dependent on outputs of the primary sector and transform them to produce goods”	Activities “that provide support to people involved in primary and secondary activities”
Definition in the margin	“Extraction of raw materials directly from nature such as farming, fishing, forestry, etc.”	“Processing of raw materials derived from primary sector into products for sale or consumption”	“Provision of services which complement both primary and secondary sectors, such as transportation, banking, and management of business”
Output	Raw material — grain, milk, fish, timber, coal, ore	Manufactured goods, buildings, roads, and utilities such as water, electricity and gas	Services — nothing you can pick up and carry
The book’s pictures (page 197)	Agriculture, mining, fishing, raising livestock, forestry	Construction, manufacturing, water supply, solar power, electricity production	Healthcare, trade and logistics, communication, banking, transportation
Other names	—	Industrial sector	Service sector (page 201)
An Indian example	Tea leaves plucked in Assam	Leaves processed into tea in a factory at Jorhat	Tea packed, railed to Delhi and sold in a shop

One line for revision: the primary sector produces, the secondary sector processes, the tertiary sector serves.

Q2.

The various examples and illustrations helped to understand the difference as well as the interdependence between the three types of economic activities or sectors — primary, secondary and tertiary.

Answer

The chapter proves interdependence twice, with two long examples.

Example	Primary	Secondary	Tertiary
The AMUL dairy cooperative Anand district, Gujarat (pages 202–205)	Farmers rear cows and buffaloes and milk them — “the product (milk) is derived directly from a natural source”	In the factories the milk is “processed and converted from one form (liquid) into another — milk powder, ghee, cheese, butter”	“AMUL uses lorries and trucks, as well as railway, air and shipping services” and “has set up retail stores” — “transportation, trading and retail is a tertiary activity”
Your own textbook Fig. 14.1, page 206	Trees are felled and the logs collected in the forest	Pulp is made into paper at the mill, and the paper is printed and bound into books	Loading, trucking, warehousing and the bookshop that finally sells the book

What the two examples have in common. In both, the chain starts in nature and ends in a home; in both, the secondary stage is the only one that changes the material; and in both, the tertiary stage appears again and again in between. Take out any one sector and the chain simply stops — a cow gives milk that curdles, a factory stands idle for want of milk, or ghee sits in a warehouse in Anand and never reaches Assam.

Why the AMUL story is more than an economics example: it also shows who owns the chain. Before 1946, the farmers held only the primary stage and the middlemen took the profit of the rest. As a cooperative the same farmers took over “the entire operation of milk collection, processing and distribution themselves”. Nothing about the three sectors changed — but the people who kept the earnings did. That is why their income “rose gradually” and why the story is worth telling.

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