NCERT Solutions Exploring Society: India and Beyond Chapter 7 Introduction — LET’S EXPLORE

Method first. Walk one fixed stretch — a market road, a lane, or the shops around your school — with your group, and record what you see rather than what you remember. For each establishment write down four things: what it is called, how many of that type you counted, what it produces or provides, and what it needs in order to do that. Those four columns are exactly the columns of the book’s table.

The key idea to test as you walk: separate goods — physical things you can hand over, like bread, vegetables, a repaired phone case — from services — work done for you that you cannot carry away, like a haircut, a bus ride, tuition, a phone repair.

This is the model your group report should copy. Here is the report exactly as it is printed on page 165, and then what it is worth noticing in it.

Three things this report shows.

• The commonest shop needs the least capital. Vegetable vendors are the largest group (15 of 43, a little over a third). Their inputs are a basket, a weighing scale and a cart or stall — the cheapest set on the list. Mobile repair shops, needing tools, spare parts and specialised knowledge, are only 4.
• Every row already contains all four factors. Storage space and water are land; the cook/helper and the repairer’s skill are labour and human capital; the weighing scale, utensils, cart and scissors are capital; the shopkeeper who started each one is the entrepreneur.
• One shop’s output is another shop’s input. The vegetable vendor’s fresh produce is listed as an input for the restaurants. This is the beginning of the idea of a supply chain, which the chapter defines on page 178.

They start with their own money and the people closest to them, and borrow the rest. The chapter sets out three sources, in the order a business usually reaches for them.

1. Personal savings, family and friends. Generally the first source of funds and support for individuals when they start a business — this is what Ratna did.
2. A bank loan for the shortfall. The funds were insufficient for Ratna to start Pause Point, so she took a loan from the bank. She paid interest along with a part of her loan amount over a period of time. Interest is what a borrower pays the lender for using their money for a specific time.
3. The stock market, for large companies. Big businesses need a lot of money to expand, so they raise it from the general public by selling shares of the business in the stock market — a special type of market where shares are bought and sold — and offer buyers a share of the profits, called a dividend.

Almost never in a classroom alone — through practice beside someone who already had the skill. The chapter’s own definition explains why: a skill is “the ability to do an activity or job well with practice and training”, and training is “the process of learning the required skills to do a particular job or activity”.

The usual routes, any of which a real hairdresser might name:

• Apprenticeship in an existing salon — starting as a helper who washes hair and sweeps, watching the senior stylist for a year or two, then being allowed to cut.
• Family transmission — learning from a parent or uncle who runs the shop. The chapter notes this pattern for India generally: knowledge was passed on from generation to generation, and also built on.
• A short course at a beauty and wellness training institute, an ITI, or a skill-development programme, followed by supervised practice.
• Free online courses of the kind SWAYAM offers, which the chapter mentions as technology opening access to skill development.

Usually the family kitchen first, then years of working in someone else’s. Food vendors mostly learn the way skills have long been passed on in India — by watching, helping and repeating, rather than from a written recipe.

• At home, from a mother, father or grandparent — which is why a stall’s speciality is so often a family dish from a particular region.
• As a helper in another food stall or dhaba, chopping and washing for a year before being trusted with the tawa. Notice that the book’s own table lists “cook/helper” as an input for restaurants — the helper is a cook being trained.
• From a formal course — a catering or hotel-management institute, or a food-processing skill course — which is the route a chef in a hotel is more likely to have taken. The chapter says a chef develops new recipes and requires a special set of knowledge and skills.

Different owners, but the motives fall into four groups — and the chapter names most of them when it describes an entrepreneur.

Ratna is the chapter’s own case. She had a dream, chose a spot on the city outskirts where highway travellers would stop, and planned how to make it a success. Five years later Pause Point is known for tasty, high-quality food and employs seven people — so her single decision also created seven livelihoods.