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NCERT Solutions Exploring Society: India and Beyond Chapter 1 –25End-of-chapter exercise — Questions and activities

Book page 24 Updated on2026-09-05

Q1.
What, in your opinion, are two important geographical features of India? Why do you think they are important?
Answer

Any two may be chosen, as long as the reason is clear. The two strongest choices are the Himalayas and the Northern Plains with their rivers.

1. The Himalayas — important because:

  • They act as a natural barrier in the north, blocking the freezing winds of Central Asia and giving northern India a far milder winter than other places at the same latitude.
  • They stop the monsoon winds and force them to drop their rain over India.
  • Their snow and glaciers feed the Ganga, Indus and Brahmaputra all year — which is why they are called the ‘Water Tower of Asia’.
  • They are a home of biodiversity and of pilgrimage, prayer and meditation.

2. The Northern (Gangetic) Plains — important because:

  • Their rivers bring down minerals that make the soil extremely fertile, so they feed a very large part of the country.
  • Their flatness allowed a dense network of roads and railways, and the rivers themselves carried travel and trade for millennia.
  • A very large proportion of India's population lives here, and much of India's history was made here.
Sample answer: “In my opinion the two most important geographical features of India are the Himalayas and the Gangetic Plains. The Himalayas shield us from the icy winds of Central Asia and store water as snow, which feeds our great rivers all year. Those rivers then create the Gangetic Plains, whose fertile soil feeds much of India and where most of our people live. One gives us water; the other turns that water into food.”
Q2.
What do you think India might have looked like if the Himalayas did not exist? Write a short note or sketch a drawing to express your imagination.
Answer

Without the Himalayas India would be a much drier, much colder and far less green country. Here is what would change, and why.

What would changeWhy
Freezing wintersNothing would stop the icy winds sweeping down from Central Asia. North India would have bitterly cold winters instead of mild ones.
Far less rainThe monsoon winds would not be blocked and forced to rise, so they would carry their moisture on across Asia instead of raining on India.
No perennial riversThere would be no snowfields and glaciers to melt in summer. The Ganga, Indus and Brahmaputra as we know them would not exist.
No Northern PlainsThe plains are built of silt brought down by those rivers. With no mountains, there would be no silt and no plains — perhaps a shallow sea or dry, stony ground instead.
Different lifeMuch less farming, far fewer people, no dense cities in the north — and much of the country would look like the Thar Desert.
A different historyWith no mountain wall, movement in and out of the subcontinent would have been much easier, and India's culture and history would have taken a very different shape.
Sample answer: “If the Himalayas had never risen, India would be a hard, dry land. Cold winds from the north would sweep straight across the plains every winter, and the monsoon clouds would sail over us without stopping. There would be no Ganga fed by melting snow, and no soft fertile soil carried down and spread out to make the plains. Much of northern India would look like Rajasthan does today — open, sandy and thinly peopled. The mountains we can barely see from the plains are the reason the plains are green at all.”
If you draw instead: show one half of the page as India today (white peaks, blue rivers, green plains) and the other half as India without the Himalayas (open horizon, thin dry rivers, yellow scrubland) — and label the differences.
Q3.
India has been called a ‘mini-continent’. Based on what you’ve read, why do you think this is so?
Answer

Because within one country India contains almost every kind of landform and climate that a whole continent normally has.

What a continent usually hasIndia's own version
High mountain rangesThe Himalayas, with peaks over 8000 m
Great river plainsThe plains of the Indus, Ganga and Brahmaputra
Hot desertsThe Thar
Cold desertsLadakh, below –30°C in winter
Old plateausThe Peninsular and Deccan Plateaus; the Aravallis, 2.5 billion years old
Long coastlinesOver 7500 km, with deltas, estuaries and lagoons
Rainforests and the world's wettest placesThe Western Ghats; the Khasi hills of Meghalaya
Islands, coral reefs and a volcanoLakshadweep, the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Barren Island

To this add a matching human diversity — hundreds of languages, dozens of ways of building a house, and a different festival calendar in every region — and the size to hold it all: India is the seventh-largest country in the world.

Why it happens: India stretches through nearly 30 degrees of latitude, from about 8°N to 37°N, and has both the highest mountains on Earth and warm tropical seas. Such a wide spread of latitude and altitude in one country is bound to produce a continent's worth of climates.
Q4.
Follow one of India’s big rivers from where it starts to where it meets the ocean. What are the different ways in which people might utilise this river along its journey? Discuss in groups in your class.
Answer

Method for the group: pick one river, trace it on the physical map from source to mouth, divide it into three or four stretches, and for each stretch ask — what does the river give people here, and what do they give back to it? A good answer names the stretch, the place and the use.

Sample answer — the Ganga, from Gaumukh to the Bay of Bengal:

StretchWhereHow people use the river
SourceGaumukh, the snout of the Gangotri Glacier, UttarakhandA sacred place of pilgrimage and a well-known trekking destination
Mountain courseDevprayag, Rishikesh, HaridwarHydroelectricity from the fast fall of the water; river rafting and tourism; bathing ghats and temples
Upper plainsKanpur, Prayagraj, VaranasiCanal irrigation for wheat, rice and sugarcane; drinking water; industry; fishing; great fairs and rituals on the ghats
Lower plainsPatna, Farakka, KolkataInland waterway transport of goods; the port of Kolkata; brick-making from river clay; rich alluvial farming
MouthThe Sundarbans delta, West BengalFishing and prawn farming; honey and firewood from the mangroves; tourism; the mangroves protect the coast from cyclones
What the pattern shows: in the mountains the river's speed is useful — it turns turbines. On the plains its water and silt are useful — they irrigate and enrich. At the mouth its sediment and shelter are useful — they build farmland and forest. One river, three different gifts.
Discuss also: what each use costs the river — sewage from cities, industrial waste, plastic, over-fishing and dams that block the flow. A group that ends with “and here is how we could use it better” has answered best.
Q5.
Why is the southern part of India referred to as a peninsular plateau?
Answer

Because it is both a peninsula and a plateau at the same time. The name simply joins the two facts.

peninsula = land surrounded by water on three sides
plateau = raised land with a more or less flat top and often steep sides
southern India = both  →  peninsular plateau

Why it is a peninsula: the southern part of India narrows to a point at Kanyakumari and has sea on three sides —

  • the Arabian Sea on the west,
  • the Bay of Bengal on the east,
  • the Indian Ocean to the south.

Why it is a plateau: it is a triangular block of very old rock that stands well above the coastal plains, with a broadly flat top (the Deccan Plateau) and steep edges — the Western Ghats and the Eastern Ghats. It tilts gently towards the east, which is why the Godavari, Krishna, Kaveri and Mahanadi all flow east into the Bay of Bengal.

Tip: Fig. 1.34 on page 20 shows the idea in one photograph — the hills of the Western Ghats standing high and dropping almost straight into the Arabian Sea.
Q6.
Which UNESCO Heritage Site mentioned in this chapter did you find more interesting? Write a short paragraph to describe what about it is interesting.
Answer

First, the list. The chapter names four UNESCO World Heritage sites:

SiteWhereWhy it is remarkable
The Great Himalayan National ParkHimachal PradeshA wide diversity of flora and fauna, protected by the government together with the village communities living inside the park
Jaisalmer FortRajasthan, in the middle of the TharA living fort in the ‘Golden City’, built of yellow sandstone
The Western GhatsAlong the west coastHome to many rivers and to extraordinary biodiversity — the lion-tailed macaque, the king cobra, insect-eating plants
The SundarbansWest Bengal, in the Ganga–Brahmaputra deltaThe largest mangrove forest in the world; home of the Royal Bengal Tiger
Sample answer (the Sundarbans): “The heritage site I found most interesting is the Sundarbans. It is not a building that people made, but a forest that a river made. Where the Ganga and the Brahmaputra meet the sea, they drop so much silt that the land itself is still being built. Salt water and fresh water mix there with every tide, and mangrove trees grow with their roots in that salty mud. The forest shelters the Royal Bengal Tiger — the only tigers in the world that regularly swim — and it also shelters people, because the thick mangroves break the force of cyclones coming up the Bay of Bengal. I find it interesting that one place can protect a tiger and a village at the same time.”
What a good answer must contain: name the site, say where it is, give two or three specific facts from the chapter, and end with your own reason for choosing it.
Q7.
Look at the two maps of India, physical as well as political, given at the end of this book. Identify the place you are at now. Which physical feature of India would you use to describe its location?
Answer

Method: find your town or district on the political map first, because it shows State boundaries and city names. Then look at exactly the same spot on the physical map and note the colour and the nearest named feature — a mountain range, a river, a plateau, a coast or a desert. Describe your place using that.

If you live in…The physical feature to nameHow to say it
Delhi, Lucknow, PatnaThe Northern (Gangetic) Plains“On the flat, fertile Gangetic Plains, near the Yamuna / Ganga.”
Jodhpur, BikanerThe Thar Desert“In the Thar Desert, west of the Aravalli Hills.”
Shimla, Dehradun, GangtokThe Himalayas“In the Lower Himalayas / Himachal range.”
Hyderabad, Nagpur, BengaluruThe Deccan Plateau“On the Deccan Plateau, between the Western and Eastern Ghats.”
Kochi, Mumbai, PanajiThe western coastal plain“On the narrow west coast, between the Western Ghats and the Arabian Sea.”
Chennai, Visakhapatnam, PuriThe eastern coastal plain“On the wide east coast, on the Bay of Bengal.”
Shillong, Kohima, ItanagarThe hills of the Northeast“In the hills of the Northeast, on the Meghalaya Plateau.”
Sample answer: “I live in Bhopal. On the political map it is in Madhya Pradesh, in the middle of India. On the physical map the same spot is light brown, which the legend shows as raised land, and the Vindhya and Satpura hills are marked just to the south. So I would describe my location as being on the northern edge of the Peninsular Plateau, above the Narmada valley — high ground, well away from any coast.”
Q8.
Food preservation techniques differ from place to place across India. They are adapted to local conditions. Do a class project. Gather different methods of preserving food. Hint: Drying vegetables when they are in season for use during the off-season.
Answer

How to run the project:

  1. Divide the class into groups, one for each region of the chapter — Himalayas, plains, desert, plateau, coast, north-east.
  2. Each student interviews someone at home — a grandparent is best — about how food was stored before refrigerators.
  3. Record, for each method: the food, the method, the reason it works, and the local climate that makes it possible.
  4. Bring the findings together into one class chart, arranged by region. Photographs or small samples make it much better.

Sample answer — a filled-in chart:

RegionMethodExampleWhy it works there
Thar / RajasthanSun-dryingKer–sangri, dried gourd (kaachri), papad, badiFierce dry heat and very low humidity remove water fast
Himalayas / LadakhFreeze-drying in the cold, dry air; smokingDried apricots, dried greens, hard cheese (chhurpi), dried meatLong freezing winters with almost no moisture in the air
Northern PlainsPickling in oil and salt; sun-dryingMango and lemon achaar, dried methi leaves, wadiA hot dry summer between two crop seasons
CoastsSalting and sun-dryingDried fish (Bombay duck, prawns), salted mangoSalt is abundant near the sea; fish must be kept in a humid climate
Plateau / DeccanStoring in grain bins; sun-dryingJowar and bajra stored in mud bins; dried chilliesA dry season long enough to store the whole harvest
NortheastSmoking above the hearth; fermentingSmoked pork and fish, fermented bamboo shoot, axoneVery heavy rain and damp air make sun-drying impossible, so smoke and fermentation are used instead
The common principle: food spoils because microbes need water. Every method above takes the water away (drying), locks it up (salt, sugar), seals the food off from air (oil), or makes it too acidic for spoilage microbes (fermenting) — and each region simply uses whichever of these its own climate makes easiest.
Q9.
Despite having such different regions (mountains, deserts, plains, coasts), India remains one country. How do you think our geography has helped unite people?
Answer

The same geography that makes India varied also ties it together. Four ways in which it does so:

  1. A frame of natural boundaries. Mountains in the north, desert and the Arabian Sea in the west, the Bay of Bengal in the east and the Indian Ocean in the south enclose the whole subcontinent. Living inside one clear frame gave people the sense of belonging to one land.
  2. Rivers as highways. The Ganga, Brahmaputra, Indus and the peninsular rivers have carried people, goods and ideas for millennia. The flat plains then allowed roads and railways to knit the country together. Trade routes joined the Himalayas to the sea ports.
  3. One monsoon for everyone. The same rains reach almost the whole country between June and September. Sowing, harvesting and therefore many festivals follow the same rhythm from Kerala to Assam — a shared calendar of work and celebration.
  4. Shared sacred geography. Rivers and mountains are held sacred everywhere, and pilgrimage routes deliberately cross the country — Kedarnath in the Himalayas, Rameswaram in the far south, Dwarka in the west, Puri in the east. People from every region meet at the same places.
Why difference helps rather than divides: no region has everything. The mountains give water and timber, the plains give grain, the plateau gives minerals, the coasts give fish, salt and trade. Because each region needs what the others produce, exchange between them has always been necessary — and exchange is what builds a shared culture.
Sample answer: “Our geography unites us because it makes us depend on one another. The Himalayas hold the snow that becomes the rivers; the rivers make the plains that grow our food; the plateau gives the minerals and the coasts give the trade. No part of India is complete on its own. Add to this one monsoon that reaches nearly everyone at the same time, and pilgrimage routes that cross the whole country, and it is easy to see why so many different regions have long thought of themselves as one land.”
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