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NCERT Solutions for Class 7th Social Science Chapter 19 The chapter in two points — Before we move on …

Book page 190 Updated on2026-09-19

Q1.
Quality infrastructure is the backbone for all other economic activities taking place in a country. This enables better connectivity, employment opportunities for people and enhances ease of living.
Answer

Explain the point in three parts, exactly as the sentence gives them.

The claimThe chapter’s evidence
Backbone for all other economic activitiesTransport systems “connect places of origin or manufacturing of goods and services to the nearest markets”. Satish’s tomatoes need canals, pumps, roads, cold storage and the internet before they can be sold at all
Better connectivityThe second-largest road network in the world; NH44 running 4,112 km from Srinagar to Kanyakumari; the Golden Quadrilateral joining Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai and Kolkata; metros in 23 cities; 159 airports; 12 major and 217 minor ports along an 11,100 km coastline
Employment opportunitiesIndian Railways alone employed about 1.21 million people in 2024 — engineers, ticket collectors, service staff — besides indirect jobs in catering, vending and taxi services
Ease of livingAmbulances reach hospitals; the Dhola Sadiya Bridge cut travel time by four hours and works even in floods; online classes and digital libraries reach remote areas; e-governance lets a citizen apply for documents without travelling
Why it happens: the word backbone is well chosen. A backbone does not walk, lift or think — but nothing else in the body can work without it. In the same way infrastructure produces no crop and sells no cloth, yet farming, industry, trade, schooling and government all rest on it. That is why the chapter calls it the engine of development.
Q2.
Over time, India has witnessed phenomenal growth in physical infrastructure, and it is the duty of every citizen to preserve and maintain it.
Answer

The sentence has two halves — the growth, and the duty. Both need evidence from the chapter.

1. The growth, in the chapter’s own numbers

SectorWhere India stands
RoadsSecond-largest road network in the world (2024); national highways about 150,000 km (2025)
RailwaysFourth-largest railway system in the world; 69,181 km of track in 2024 (Fig. 7.11); 97 per cent of the network electrified, the highest among the five countries in Fig. 7.8; over 20 million passengers a day
Metros23 cities, over 1,000 km, and soon to be the third-largest network in the world after China and the USA
Air159 airports in 2025; third-highest domestic air traffic in the world; about 376 million passengers in 2024–25
PortsCargo handled up 50 per cent in the past decade
Communication1,160 million wireless subscribers and nearly 900 million internet connections in 2025, at among the world’s cheapest rates

2. The duty — the chapter is equally clear that building is only half the job. Littered roads, stained buildings, writing on monuments, potholes and broken streetlights “reduce ease of living for people” and become “a burden for every citizen”. So a citizen must use infrastructure responsibly and report damage to the authorities. The idea is old: Kautilya’s Arthaśhāstra already fixed penalties for breaking the dam of a reservoir, for trespassing into public parks by breaking the hedge, and for obstructing paths to waterworks and forests.

Why it happens: public infrastructure has no single owner, so it is easy for each person to assume that someone else will look after it. But its repair is paid for out of money collected from everyone — so careless damage by one person is quietly paid for by all. Preservation is therefore not politeness; it is arithmetic.
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