NCERT Solutions Exploring Society: India and Beyond Chapter 9 The chapter in five points — Before we move on ...

Book page 207 Updated on2026-09-05

Q1.

Government plays an important role in running a country. Different types of governments across the world have different answers to the following questions: Who decides “This is the government”? What are the parts of the government and what do they do? Who or what is the government working for? What values and ideals should the government follow?

Answer

These four questions are the chapter's measuring tape. Lay any government against them and you have described it.

Question	Democracy	Monarchy	Theocracy	Dictatorship	Oligarchy
Who decides ‘this is the government'?	The people	Birth; sometimes a claim of divine power	Religious belief and the head of a religious institution	The person or group that holds the power	A few wealthy or influential families
How is it formed?	Elections at fixed intervals	Hereditary succession	Selected by religious leaders (Iran also elects a president and parliament)	Seizure of power; opposition removed	Influence, whatever the formal process
Parts, and what they do	Legislature, executive, judiciary — separate and independent	All three may sit with the monarch (absolute), or with parliament and PM (constitutional)	A supreme religious authority above all three organs	All three effectively under one person or group	Formal organs exist; real decisions taken outside them
Working for whom?	Equality and prosperity for all citizens	Ideally the welfare of all (rājadharma); in practice it depends on the ruler	A society based on the norms of the official religion	The ruler's own goals	The interests of the small group

The fourth question — what values and ideals should a government follow? — is the one the chapter answers for itself: equality, freedom, participation, rights, and the wellbeing of all people.

Q2.

The most popular form of government in the world today is democracy. Democratic governments across the world have variations, including direct democracy and representative democracy.

Answer

More than half the countries of the world have adopted democracy — but ‘democracy' names a family, not a single design.

	Direct democracy	Representative democracy
Who decides	All citizens, personally, on every rule and function	Representatives elected by the citizens
Who governs day to day	The citizens themselves	The elected government, which stays accountable to the people
Practical limit	Very hard to carry out, especially in large countries — the school story shows why	Works at any size; needs regular, fixed-interval elections to stay honest
Example	Some practices in Switzerland	India, and most democracies today

Why the variations exist: a government evolves with a country's own history, culture and aspirations. What stays constant across all of them is the core — equality, freedom and universal adult franchise.

Q3.

There are two types of representative democracy — presidential and parliamentary democracy. India is a parliamentary democracy.

Answer

The difference is one thing only: where the executive sits in relation to the legislature.

	Parliamentary democracy	Presidential democracy
Head of the executive	Prime minister with a council of ministers	President
Elected by	The people elect the legislature; selected members of the legislature become ministers	The people elect the president directly
Is the executive part of the legislature?	Yes — in India the PM and ministers are also members of Parliament	No — the executive works independently of the legislature
Survival in office	Only as long as it has the confidence of the legislature (in India, of the Lok Sabha)	The president does not need the legislature's confidence to keep the post
Countries	India, Australia, United Kingdom	USA, South Korea

India is a parliamentary democracy: we vote for our MP, the party or coalition with a majority in the Lok Sabha forms the government, and the council of ministers stays in office only while it holds that majority's confidence.

Did you know? States within India — Rajasthan, Kerala and the rest — have their own governments, but they are not completely independent; they are still part of the larger Union Government of India.

Q4.

Other types of government include monarchy, theocracy, dictatorship and oligarchy.

Answer

Four other forms, each answering the ‘who decides' question differently.

Form	Defining feature	Sub-types / examples in the chapter
Monarchy	Ruled by a monarch who exercises sovereign power; usually hereditary, typically the eldest son succeeding	Absolute — Saudi Arabia (the king appoints an advisory council but is not bound by it). Constitutional — the United Kingdom, where the king has nominal power and the elected parliament makes the laws
Theocracy	The country is ruled by the rules of religion and by religious leaders	Iran — a Supreme Leader chosen for life by a group of Islamic clerics holds ultimate authority over all three organs, while an elected president and parliament handle everyday governance. Also Afghanistan and Vatican City
Dictatorship	One person or a small group holds absolute power, with no limits from a constitution or law	Adolf Hitler in Germany from 1933 — responsible for the Holocaust and a cause of World War II (1939–1945); Idi Amin in Uganda, under whom many Indian-origin families were forced to flee
Oligarchy	A small, powerful group — usually wealthy families or influential people — makes all the important decisions	Aristocratic families in parts of ancient Greece; the 1889 cartoon (Fig. 9.13) as a warning about modern democracies

Tip: the chapter numbers this section 1. Monarchy, 2. Monarchies today, 2. Theocracy, 3. Dictatorship, 4. Oligarchy — the number 2 appears twice. The Hindi edition prints ‘वर्तमान राजतंत्र' (Monarchies today) without a number, which is the intended reading: there are four other forms, not five.

Q5.

Democracy matters, but there are serious challenges to democracy that citizens need to remain vigilant about.

Answer

Both halves of the sentence are meant to be held together.

Why democracy matters

People can live their everyday lives as they wish — what to speak, what to wear, what beliefs to follow, how to express themselves — until and unless it harms someone else's rights.
People choose the government; the government must protect their rights and provide for their basic needs.
If it does not perform, people can change their representatives through elections — a constant check on what the government does.

The challenges the chapter names

Corruption
Wealth disparity
Excessive control by a few over democratic institutions
Erosion of the judiciary's independence
Manipulation of information channels

Why vigilance is the citizen's job: the ideals of democracy do not defend themselves. Equality, freedom and franchise were won and extended slowly — universal adult suffrage reached the UK in 1928 and the USA by 1965, and Switzerland gave women the vote only in 1971. What was gained gradually can be lost gradually too, which is why the chapter ends by asking what each of us can do to stay watchful.

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