NCERT Solutions Exploring Society: India and Beyond Chapter 11 Barter today · after the Junbeel Mela, book exchange and utensils-for-clothes boxes — LET’S EXPLORE

Book page 236 Updated on2026-09-05

Q1.

The illustrations above show you some of the ways in which people practise barter today. Have you observed similar practices in your locality?

Answer

Yes — barter has not disappeared. It survives wherever people trust each other or where cash is scarce. Look around your own locality for these:

Bartan-wale / old clothes for utensils. A vendor comes door to door and gives steel utensils in return for used clothes — exactly the practice in Fig. 11.7.
Kabaadiwala exchanges. Old newspapers and scrap traded for buckets, mugs or plastic ware rather than cash.
Book and toy swaps in schools and housing societies, like the book exchange club in Fig. 11.6.
Village-level help. A farmer lends his bullocks or tractor for a day's ploughing and receives a share of the harvest or a day's labour back.
Skill for skill. A neighbour teaches your brother mathematics while your mother stitches clothes for her family.
Fairs. The Junbeel Mela in Morigaon district, Assam is the best-known surviving barter fair — hill people bring roots, vegetables, fruit, herbs and spices and exchange them with plains people for rice cakes.

Try This: keep a one-week diary of every exchange you see in your street. Mark each one “money” or “barter”. You will usually find two or three barters hiding among the cash payments.

Q2.

What are the types of experiences people have in this process?

Answer

People report a mix — warm on the human side, awkward on the arithmetic side.

What people like	What people find hard
No cash needed, so it works even when money is short	Deciding the rate — how many old sarees make one bucket?
Useless things at home become useful things	Long bargaining; either side may feel cheated afterwards
It builds friendship and trust between neighbours	The vendor may not come again for months — you cannot buy when you want
Nothing is wasted: cloth is resold, repurposed or recycled	No fixed prices means no way to compare two vendors' offers
At a fair like Junbeel it becomes a social and cultural event	Goods must be carried to the place of exchange

Why it happens: the pleasant experiences come from barter being personal; the difficult ones come from it having no common standard measure of value. Both sides of the experience are visible in a single doorstep exchange.

Sample answer: “In my colony a vendor calls out for old clothes twice a month. My mother gave four old shirts and two sarees and received one steel bucket and two glasses. She said the deal felt fair because the utensils were of good quality, but she also said she had to argue for ten minutes, and that with money she would simply have known the price.”

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