NCERT Solutions Poorvi Chapter 4 –200Waiting for the Rain (Kamakshi Balasubramanian) — Let us explore

Book page 199 Updated on2026-09-05

Q1.

I. Rest is very important for us to function in a proper manner. Even the Earth needs rest. This is known as fallowing. Read the facts given below related to fallowing: • A fallow year refers to leaving the land without sowing for one, or several vegetative cycles. • This is done to allow the land to recover its nutrients and retain moisture. It also helps to avoid spreading of diseases and controlling pests. • The sustainable land management method has been applied for centuries, wherein a field is divided into two halves—one is planted with crops while the other remains unplanted. Then, the process is reversed in the following year.

Answer

These three facts are the scientific version of what the old woman tells Velu under the tree. Set them side by side and the story stops being a folk tale and becomes agriculture.

The book's fact	The old woman's words
A fallow year means leaving the land without sowing for one or more vegetative cycles.	'This is the first season in five, no, six years that I have not sown, nor ploughed.'
It lets the land recover its nutrients and retain moisture.	'When the rains come, it will spring back into activity, fresh and ready for your crop.'
It helps avoid the spread of diseases and controls pests.	'Nature knows a thing or two.'
The method has been applied for centuries.	'The earth has worked for years, centuries, in fact, thousands of years.'

How the two-halves method works, year by year:

Year 1 → Half A: cropped | Half B: fallow
Year 2 → Half A: fallow | Half B: cropped
… and so on, so that every part of the field rests every alternate year.

Why fallowing works, in terms you can explain to someone else: A crop is a withdrawal. It takes nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium out of the soil, and takes water out of it too. Soil replaces these slowly, through weathering, decaying plant matter and the work of microbes and earthworms. If you withdraw every season and never pause, the account empties — yields fall, and the farmer compensates with more fertiliser, which costs more and does not restore soil structure. A fallow season lets the deposits catch up. It also breaks the life cycle of pests and diseases, which need their host crop present in order to survive.

Related practices worth knowing: crop rotation (a legume after a grain, as Ravi does in the grammar exercise — legumes fix nitrogen back into the soil through bacteria in their root nodules); green manure (growing a crop only to plough it back in); and mulching (covering the soil with straw or leaves to hold moisture). India's traditional jhum and other shifting systems were built on the same principle of rest.

Q2.

II. Find out from your Vocational Education teacher about Agriculture as a vocation and other related vocations, such as horticulture, etc.

Answer

Method. Prepare four questions before you meet your teacher, and take notes: (1) What does a person in this vocation actually do in a working day? (2) What must one study to enter it? (3) Where are the jobs — government, private, or self-employment? (4) What is changing in this field right now? Then write up each vocation on a single index card so the class can compare them.

Vocation	What it deals with
Agriculture	growing field crops — cereals, pulses, oilseeds, cotton, sugarcane; soil management, irrigation, seed and pest management
Horticulture	fruits, vegetables, flowers, spices and ornamental plants; nurseries, orchards and greenhouses
Floriculture	growing and marketing flowers, cut flowers and landscaping
Sericulture	rearing silkworms and producing raw silk
Apiculture	beekeeping — honey, wax, and pollination services for orchards
Animal husbandry and dairying	cattle, goats, poultry; milk production and processing
Fisheries and aquaculture	inland and marine fish farming
Agricultural engineering	farm machinery, irrigation systems, post-harvest equipment
Food processing	turning produce into stored and packaged food — milling, canning, cold chains
Agri-business and marketing	mandis, cooperatives, farmer producer organisations, supply chains, export
Forestry	growing and managing forests, nurseries, agroforestry
Soil science and agronomy	testing soil, recommending nutrients, planning crop cycles

Where you can study these: Agricultural universities in every state, the Indian Agricultural Research Institute (IARI) in Delhi, ICAR institutes, polytechnic diploma courses, and Krishi Vigyan Kendras at district level, which run short practical courses for farmers and young people alike.

Worth telling your class: Agriculture today is not only field work. It includes drone spraying, soil-testing kits, weather apps, cold storage, seed technology and food processing — and it employs the largest number of people in India of any sector. The vocation Velu practised has, in two generations, grown a dozen branches.

Q3.

III. India's rich tradition of meteorological knowledge includes indigenous forecasting systems, grounded in ancient wisdom. These provide sophisticated methods for predicting climate, calculating rainfall, and issuing early warnings. References to rain and weather are found in numerous ancient texts, including the Rigveda, Shrimad Bhagavad, Parashara Samhita, Panini's Ashtadhyayi, and Meghmala. These texts offer insights into rainfall patterns and seasonal changes.

Answer

Text	What it contributes
Rigveda	Hymns to Indra, Varuna, Parjanya and Surya that observe cloud formation, thunder, lightning and the coming of the rains — the earliest recorded Indian observation of weather.
Shrimad Bhagavad	Descriptions of the seasons and of the monsoon's arrival and behaviour.
Parashara Samhita	Attributed to the sage Parashara; deals with rainfall prediction from the movement of planets, wind direction and cloud type, and with the timing of sowing.
Panini's Ashtadhyayi	The great grammar, which preserves a precise vocabulary for clouds, rain, seasons and the measurement of rainfall — evidence that these things were closely observed and finely distinguished.
Meghmala	A work devoted to clouds (megha means cloud) and their signs — the kinds of cloud, the winds that carry them, and what each foretells.

The kinds of sign these traditions read, many of which villagers still use:

Sky signs — cloud colour and shape, haloes round the sun or moon, the direction and smell of the wind.
Animal and bird behaviour — ants shifting their eggs, peacocks calling, frogs croaking, cattle restless, termites swarming before rain.
Plant signs — the flowering of certain trees, or the direction in which a particular plant leans, taken as a marker of the season.
Almanac and calendar — the panchang and the nakshatra system, which divides the monsoon into fortnights, each with its expected rainfall.

How this connects to the story — and it is not a simple opposition. Velu rejects the astrologers, and the story does not scold him for it. But his weather office cannot help him either, and the person who finally does is an old woman with no instruments at all, whose knowledge is exactly of this traditional kind: long observation of how land and seasons behave. The story's real distinction is not modern versus ancient but observation versus ritual — knowledge built from watching the land, whichever century it comes from, against a promise to make it rain.

Try this: Ask an elderly farmer or gardener near you for one local sign of coming rain. Write down the sign, who told you, and then watch for a fortnight to see whether it holds. That is exactly how these traditions were built in the first place.

Q4.

IV. Meteorological Services for Agriculture in India — The primary objective of the Agricultural Meteorology Division, India Meteorological Department (IMD) is to minimise the impact of adverse weather on crops and to leverage crop-weather relationships to boost agricultural production. In addition to forecasts and advisories, several other weather related services are also provided. For detailed information, please visit: imd.gov.in/responsive/servicesMetEnvironment.php

Answer

This is exactly the office Velu walked to the city to visit — so it is worth knowing what it can and cannot do.

What the IMD's Agricultural Meteorology Division does	What it means for a farmer
Weather forecasts at district and block level	rainfall, temperature, wind and humidity for the next five days, updated twice a week
Agromet advisories	not just the forecast but the advice that follows from it — when to sow, when to irrigate, when to postpone spraying because rain will wash it off, when to harvest before a storm
Early warnings	alerts for cyclones, heatwaves, cold waves, hailstorms, floods and heavy rain
Monsoon onset and seasonal outlook	an idea of when the monsoon will arrive and how the season may go, so that crop choices can be planned
Crop–weather studies	research into how each crop responds to weather, and into pest and disease outbreaks that follow particular conditions
Delivery to farmers	SMS and app-based advisories, the Gramin Krishi Mausam Sewa, Kisan Call Centres, radio, television and newspapers

Why the office in the story could not help Velu — and why that is realistic. Meteorology can tell you what the atmosphere is doing over the next few days with fair accuracy. It cannot tell you when a monsoon that has failed for months will finally break. That is precisely what the officials admit: 'We are at a loss ourselves! So many favourable conditions but still no rain. Very odd!' A short-range forecast is a real and useful thing; a promise about a whole season is not. Reading the story alongside this page teaches something worth keeping — respect for what science can do, and honesty about where it stops.

Did you know? The India Meteorological Department was founded in 1875 and is one of the oldest meteorological services in the world. Its agromet advisories now reach several crore farmers directly on their phones — the service Velu made a whole day's journey for is delivered free to a handset.

Was this helpful? Report an error